How does an Aussie wear his hat?

[Hugh]

Are there regulations on how the Aussie digger should wear his bush hat:  brim turned up or flat?   An SAS friend took particular pains to crush the crown down almost flat, but we never discussed the turnup.  Flat on some occasions, turned up on others?  Did it change over the years?  I can't remember seeing pictures of Kiwis with the brim turned up, and they like that pointed crown effect, like the Americans in WW I.  

Somebody should give us a little input, please.

 

If you haven't already seen it,  WW2today is a great daily bulletin on events of WW II.  Brit oriented, but he occasionally wanders abroad.  I've borrowed this picture from today's post.  

http://ww2today.com/15th-january-1942-australians-take-on-japanese-in-malaya?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+WorldWarIIToday+(World+War+II+Today*+)

[Farkas]

Hi Hugh

i can't help on the hats question but thank you for a great link

id recommend that site to anyone

tony

[peter monahan]

I was going to say 'On his head.' but I guess that won't help.  The fact that the 'digger hat' has traitionally had an easy to manipulate hook and eye arrangement suggests that 'Either way.' is the correct answer.  Without doing any research but relying on my razor sharp [63 year old] memory, I'm going to suggest that 'turned up' is the preferred modern style, which one sees in photos of parades in particular, but that clearly 'down' was the more practical method in sun and rain and seems commoner the further back one goes in time, especially in 'action photos'. 

All obvious, I know, but my point is that the further back one goes, the less rigidly the regs appear to have been enforced in any but formal contexts:  photos of the Aussie Light Horse in the Middle east, for example, and of WWII troops in the Pacific, show them worn down, for obvious practical reasons.  Photos of individuals in portraits and so on more often seem to show them up - 'for the look of the thing'.  That said, one photo, which I will attempt to locate, shows light horse - near Beersheba, I think - with most brims down but one or two up, supporting my thesis that at some point it became a matter of individual preference.  As someone who wears an Aussie style hat most summers, I can testify that 'brim down' wears better, as the weight balances out and the hat seems less likely to slip on one's head.

My tuppence worth and then some!

Peter

[Hugh]

Thanks for these inputs.  From my limited time with the Aussies on parade and in the field, brim up seems to be on parade and down is in the field, just as you say,  The Americans would have a regulation for it.