Sarah Baish has been styling hair into dreadlocks for over 15 years, but it’s only recently that she’s hit the main street of Bellingen equipped with a mobile salon.
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It’s a handmade wonder created from found and recycled materials, complete with wheels, decorative stencilling, a comfy chair for the client, assorted succulent plants, a mirror, an umbrella, storage space for her hairdressing wares, and even a modesty screen to shield the shy from the public gaze.
It took her two weeks to make and she built it herself after googling Asian street cart designs.
“I really enjoyed it. I’ve never actually built anything before. I found the wheelchair first and I pretty much built a box on top of it,” Sarah said.
She tells a funny story about making the lettering for her RAWthentic sign.
“We had done a big clean-out of the property I live on, so we took heaps of stuff to the kerb for the truck to come and get. On the day they were coming, I suddenly thought, I need to get pieces of metal to do my sign. So my brother-in-law passed me an angle grinder, ear muffs and safety glasses and I ran out there and found a chain and some metal poles, and the truck was just about to pick up our gear and I said ‘just hold on a second’ and I was out there with sparks flying everywhere, cutting madly, just to get a few pieces.”
The customer’s chair was a ‘found’ object that Sarah reupholstered. And she built the modesty screen by sewing hessian onto an old clothes rack and then spray painting it, using the same stencil pattern as she put on the body of the cart.
She was almost sorry when she had a finished product because she’d so enjoyed the fever of creativity involved in making it.
“It took two weeks. I didn’t stop. Sometimes I’d light it up at night and keep going because my brain was on fire, thinking I need to do this, that, the other. It was so much fun! I loved it.”
Like getting a complicated tattoo, getting dreadlocks is a time-consuming process. How long it takes entirely depends on the type of hair, its length, and whether it is inclined to twist naturally or not.
That said, creating a full set of dreadlocks from normal hair is likely to take 8 to 16 hours spread over multiple sessions. And a typical maintenance session might be two or three hours.
For this reason, Sarah offers her services on an appointment basis.
“I don’t think most people walking past will have time to sit down and have their dreadlocks done,” she said.
Sarah’s technique for creating nice tight dreadlocks is to use a crochet hook. She doesn’t use any product - her dreadlocks are ‘raw-thentic’.
“I don’t like using product. Sometimes people go to Bali or Thailand, where they use wax or soaps. You can tell, because if there’s a wind, the dust all just sticks. and they become horrible.”
People often ask if she can wash her hair.
“I wash my hair twice a week. They don’t come undone,” she tells them.
“You can have nice, clean, beautiful dreadlocks – they don’t have to be manky. That’s a misconception.”
- Sarah Baish
She used to do the dreadlocks in people’s homes, but decided to stop that because it became time-consuming when their family life intruded.
“That’s where the idea of the mobile cart came from,” Sarah said. “And to put a little energy into the town. I have my little sound system there, I play music. And every time I set up, I have at least three or four interested bystanders. Usually they’re the elderly, they come up and take photos and ask ‘what are you doing?’”
She’s thinking about taking her cart to the markets, and plans to start making hair jewellery and accessories, little things that she can sew into people’s hair.
“When I take my daughter to festivals, she always wants to get her hair wrapped. So they’re pre-made and young girls or whoever can just come in, choose one of the already wrapped pieces with beads and pretty feathers and stuff, and I can sew them in. And I’m also going to get dreadlock jewellery that people can just purchase.”
When she has an appointment with a client, Sarah’s cart is on display outside Amelia Franklin cafe on Hyde St. You can also contact her on her Facebook page, RAWthentic Dreadlocks.