It may be a fading tradition but some men still prefer a barber shop to a hairdresser's. Denise Carter talks to old-time barbers working in one of the last vestiges of male-only terrain about their trade

Men are hairy.

There’s no doubt about it.

A visit to a barber proves hair sprouts from everywhere on a man and it needs to be kept in constant check.

Andrew Stylianou shaves around the backs of their necks as part of his service.

"And hairs around the ears and eyebrows," Andrew says.

He has been 47 years working in his trade, with 37 years in his shop in Grafton St, so he must be one of the oldest traditional barbers in Cairns.

In Andrew’s Barber Shop, as with most barbers, an appointment is not needed.

Men can walk in from the street on spec for a cut or a trim to be paid in cash, perhaps a chat with fellow customers, or to talk to the oracle of all knowledge himself, the barber.

"I know everything that happens in Cairns," Andrew says with a knowing smile.

"You learn everything you want to know here." Andrew is not a huge talker but says his son, Demitrios, who has worked with him for 18 years, is.

Besides, just by listening Andrew has gained valuable knowledge.

"Some men talk about investments, some about races, and some about football," he says.

The barber’s pole twirling its blue, white, and red outside Andrew’s shop tells a story of bygone days when a barber’s trade extended to far more than a cut and a shave.

In the middle ages, barbersurgeons could take out tonsils, or a tooth.

The original barber’s pole had a basin on top where leeches were kept for the purpose of blood-letting patients, a popular cure-all for a variety of ills.

A doctor might prescribe bloodletting but it was usually the barber-surgeon who carried it out.

The patient would grip the pole to promote blood flow, while a dish underneath it would gather the red liquid.

Thus the barber’s pole has the symbolic red for blood and white for the bandages used, while blue often turned up on poles in the United States because of their national colours.

And the short white coats, which Andrew and Demitrios wear as uniforms, have their origins in a European split in the 1200s between academic surgeons who were required to wear long robes and barbersurgeons who were made to wear short robes.

Not a drop of blood hits the floor in Andrew’s shop.

You can’t even, with a leap of imagination, make a sweeping connection between his shop and the meat pie outlets across the road.

I’m thinking Johnnie Depp in last year’s movie Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, who provided the fillings for Mrs Lovett’s meat pies.

There are no shaves to end all shaves, with a chute delivering customers from the barber’s chair under and across the road.

Andrew laughs because, well, there are no shaves.

He hasn’t shaved a customer in years.

His most recent expedition was to mock shave one of his sons in Brisbane before his wedding, which is part of Cypriot tradition.

Andrew says shaving is too dangerous, but in truth it wouldn’t be if he performed the honours as he is highly qualified.

Shaving was the first skill he learned as a teenager when training to become a barber in Cyprus.

"I learned to shave on a balloon," Andrew says.

Using a "cut-throat" razor, he would cream up the balloon and shave it off without bursting it.

He used the same method to teach Demitrios.

There were "quite a few" that burst, he says, laughing.

When Andrew began his career, it was a time when men took their grooming seriously.

Some had an account with the barber shop and paid monthly.

Andrew’s job was to turn up to their work each morning.

"I would visit them and go to their back office to shave them, bringing my small bag of tools," he says, which consisted of a razor, a razor strap on which he would sharpen the razor, a brush, cream and a tray.

In contrast, today’s shop services are simple.

"Men don’t want a shampoo," he says, so Andrew simply cuts hair.

Through the years he has seen many styles come and go.

"When I was young the barber used to come to the schools and cut everything off," he says.

"Now hair can be long or short, or have a flat top."

His customers range from young backpackers staying at Gilligan’s to elderly regulars who come in every two or four weeks.

"We have one customer who comes in once a week," Andrew says.

It’s a social occasion for those who repeatedly come in at the same time as others to enjoy one another’s company.

For Andrew, being a barber is such a part of his life, he can’t imagine retiring because he would miss his shop so much.

"I said to my son, I don’t know what I will do," he says.

"I’ll have to come in and work a couple of days a week, otherwise I’ll get too bored."

In another part of town Steve Gadd is running his own bastion of male nirvana in a shop space that has been a barber’s since 1964.

Quicktrim Men’s Barbers on Mulgrave Rd is like a collector’s paradise with various currencies pasted to the wall, signed sports memorabilia from customers, beer bottles, and old photographs.

Steve has cut the tops of Australian Rugby Union’s Berrick Barnes, Rugby League’s Adrian Lamb, and he has chopped half the Taipans basketball team.

He loves his job and wouldn’t consider being a general hairdresser where he would have to cut "ladies’ hair".

"They don’t talk about football or cricket," Steve says.

Steve took an unusual route to the barbering trade, having first trained on "a barber’s agreement" with his uncle, Lionel Gadd, who had a shop on Hartley St, before hightailing it to be a school teacher.

But he didn’t last long.

Just three years later, he returned to the fold.

Like his colleagues in barbering, Steve’s shop is the hub of local gossip, and he can tell at any time what business is moving and who is selling out to whom.

With his radio rumbling in the background, he chats while using the main tool of his trade, the clippers.

"It’s very laid back," Steve says.

He has run his shop for 15 years, having bought it from another barber, Giovanni Lizzio, and he has seen some change.

"Fourteen years ago the most popular kid’s cut was the undercut, which looked like a mushroom bowl," Steve says.

"Then came footballers’ crew cuts, mohawks, and even long shaggy haircuts."

Now most of the time he does flat tops and short back and sides. There is no colouring, no shampooing or even shaving.

Speed, says Steve, is the key to the barber’s trade.

No longer allowed to use cut-throat razors, barbers are supposed to use a "disposable blader" to do a shave.

But Steve says it’s too slow.

"The shave takes 45 minutes, and you have to have hot towels, and to keep the blade sharp you have to strop it well," he says.

"If five guys are waiting you feel the pressure."

Those waiting range from "councillors to big business men to Joe Blow sewage", Steve says, and he’s often served whole families, "kids, fathers, and grandfathers".

His saddest moment was when he heard a young boy of 14 whose hair he had cut since he was a baby had died.

Steve mourns the dying art of barbering which passes through generations of families and says there’s still a need for it.

"Guys like the vibe of a barber’s," he says. "They can talk about anything, joke, swear, and they don’t have to be hoity toity. A barber’s is a guy’s domain."

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