'40s twin pin-up girls remember

Our Girls – Aussie pin-ups of the ’40s and ’50s has Coffs Harbour’s Adelie Hurley on the cover.

ADELIE Hurley says when she was modelling to advertise stockings, clothes, knitting patterns, radios, cars and pillow covers in the late 1930s and early 1940s, she had no idea that those pictures would end up as ‘pin ups.’

A new book, Our Girls –Aussie Pin-Ups of the ’40s and ’50s, by Madeleine Hamilton, has Coffs Harbour’s Adelie Hurley front and centre on its cover – one of the most famous pin-ups of that time.

The picture is taken from an advertisement for Tasma radios.

The author sets out to celebrate the pin-ups as complex people and real women who have not been airbrushed or surgically enhanced, unlike modern poster girls.

Their photographs in magazines and newspapers were cut out and cherished in Army camps, tents, workshops and hangars – even featured on aircraft, by men hungry for female company.

Adelie Hurley said her twin sister, Toni, once filled in for her seamlessly when her husband stopped her from going on a trip modelling clothes and the agent said he would sue her if she pulled out.

“It was fun to be in front of the camera, but a different world behind it,” said Adelie Hurley, who later became a well-known press photographer.

“I really loved working in newspapers, it was the greatest education you could possibly have.”