They worked hard in Wonthaggi’s early days and they partied just as hard. By Carolyn Landon
BEFORE the “talkies” made their impact on social traditions at the several cinemas in Wonthaggi, young people got together at dances. Peruse the Powlett Express or the Sentinel – and even the Criterion – from 1909 until the mid-1930s and the columns are littered with advertising for dances at halls scattered round the district. Among the halls, there seemed to be a roster so there was at least one dance being held somewhere every week and, more importantly, so that the different bands – or orchestras, if you were lucky – were available to play.
BEFORE the “talkies” made their impact on social traditions at the several cinemas in Wonthaggi, young people got together at dances. Peruse the Powlett Express or the Sentinel – and even the Criterion – from 1909 until the mid-1930s and the columns are littered with advertising for dances at halls scattered round the district. Among the halls, there seemed to be a roster so there was at least one dance being held somewhere every week and, more importantly, so that the different bands – or orchestras, if you were lucky – were available to play.
The first “Plain and Fancy Dress” Ball in Wonthaggi’s history took place on Friday night, 1st of July 1910. The Sentinel reports in the 9 July issue that, “Although little or no publicity was given to the event the attendance was highly satisfactory and everything went as smoothly as could be desired. The floor was in excellent order, the [piano] music good, the right man in the right place as Master of Ceremonies and the company congenial. What more could be desired by those who delight in tripping the light fantastic? Dancing was indulged in from 8 pm til the wee small hours of the morning.”
It must have been an adventure to have a ball so soon in what was still a frontier town. Only eight months earlier, in November 1909, all that existed where the new town now stood was tea tree, sand and “clouds of plovers”. Amazing that they were having a ball at all in a newly erected building with an “excellent floor”, an MC and Mrs May at the piano. (Unfortunately, the Sentinel, only a month old in July 1910 and clearly with journalists wet behind the ears, neglects to tell us exactly where the ball was held.)
There must have been a need for dancing because as soon as the first ball proved to be a success, balls and dances started happening continually in town. The ‘Roman Catholic Church’ announced they were holding a ‘Grand Concert and Plain and Fancy Dress Ball’ in aid of their building fund to be held “on Wednesday, Next, 27th July at Messrs Guilfoyle and McRae’s building, McBride Avenue.”
Hang on! Guilfoyle and McBride were the ‘promoters’ of the first ball. So, that’s where it was: in their building. These fellows were entrepreneurs. They were charging two shillings for the concert and one more if you stayed on for the ball; or, if you wanted to miss the concert, you paid three shillings for the ball.
According to The Sentinel, this ball was even better than the first, partly because Mr Fitzgerald of the Vienna Bakery & Café (‘Weddings & Birth-day Cakes a Specialty’) did the catering and the Ladies’ Committee supplied “large quantities of eatables”.
New halls were being erected in the Wonthaggi area at a fast pace. The Ryanston Ball was held in Archies Creek Hall, and “Euchre and Dance Parties” abounded. The first annual Manchester Unity Independent Order of Oddfellows Plain & Fancy Dress Ball [there were several men who always came to these as either clowns or cowboys or soldiers] was held in the new Smith’s Hall in McBride Avenue. A ‘Social Dance’ – another fundraiser for the ‘R.C. Church’ Building Fund – was held at yet another new hall, The Lyceum. The Caledonia Club held their First Annual Games Day on New Year’s Day 1911 and capped it off with a Grand Ball and Hog-Ma-Nay. Even though the Dalyston Boxing Day Races were postponed until 12 January, it also finished with a Grand Ball.
Smith’s Hall continued to have “Social Dances” just about any day of the week, but they also began to compete with their own dances by putting in the first cinema in Wonthaggi. On 3 February 1911, they announced that, “An up-to-date Electric Lighting Plant has been installed by the management. No expense has been spared and everything necessary for screening the Latest Up-to-Date Pictures has been provided”. Smith’s also offered skating morning, afternoon and evening with a Ladies’ Day on Wednesdays, admission 6d, skates 6d.
So dancing had to compete with all this plus football, cricket, tennis, netball, cycling, music clubs, churches, men’s clubs. But it didn’t matter: the dance venues thrived all along the coast, not just Wonthaggi. People would travel miles for a good dance. They’d go on horseback, on bicycles, but most got to the dances on “shanks ponies” until a bus service began. Once they got to the dance they wouldn’t leave.
In September 1912, the San Remo Hall Committee applied to the Woolamai Shire Council to change the closing hour of its dances from 4am to 3am! Disgusted dancers argued that “It would have the effect of turning dancers into the un-sheltered road at times of darkness and heavy rains.” The journalist from the Criterion wrote that it would be up to the Shire Council to “exercise the wisdom of Solomon, but no chance of pleasing everyone.”
It must have been an adventure to have a ball so soon in what was still a frontier town. Only eight months earlier, in November 1909, all that existed where the new town now stood was tea tree, sand and “clouds of plovers”. Amazing that they were having a ball at all in a newly erected building with an “excellent floor”, an MC and Mrs May at the piano. (Unfortunately, the Sentinel, only a month old in July 1910 and clearly with journalists wet behind the ears, neglects to tell us exactly where the ball was held.)
There must have been a need for dancing because as soon as the first ball proved to be a success, balls and dances started happening continually in town. The ‘Roman Catholic Church’ announced they were holding a ‘Grand Concert and Plain and Fancy Dress Ball’ in aid of their building fund to be held “on Wednesday, Next, 27th July at Messrs Guilfoyle and McRae’s building, McBride Avenue.”
Hang on! Guilfoyle and McBride were the ‘promoters’ of the first ball. So, that’s where it was: in their building. These fellows were entrepreneurs. They were charging two shillings for the concert and one more if you stayed on for the ball; or, if you wanted to miss the concert, you paid three shillings for the ball.
According to The Sentinel, this ball was even better than the first, partly because Mr Fitzgerald of the Vienna Bakery & Café (‘Weddings & Birth-day Cakes a Specialty’) did the catering and the Ladies’ Committee supplied “large quantities of eatables”.
New halls were being erected in the Wonthaggi area at a fast pace. The Ryanston Ball was held in Archies Creek Hall, and “Euchre and Dance Parties” abounded. The first annual Manchester Unity Independent Order of Oddfellows Plain & Fancy Dress Ball [there were several men who always came to these as either clowns or cowboys or soldiers] was held in the new Smith’s Hall in McBride Avenue. A ‘Social Dance’ – another fundraiser for the ‘R.C. Church’ Building Fund – was held at yet another new hall, The Lyceum. The Caledonia Club held their First Annual Games Day on New Year’s Day 1911 and capped it off with a Grand Ball and Hog-Ma-Nay. Even though the Dalyston Boxing Day Races were postponed until 12 January, it also finished with a Grand Ball.
Smith’s Hall continued to have “Social Dances” just about any day of the week, but they also began to compete with their own dances by putting in the first cinema in Wonthaggi. On 3 February 1911, they announced that, “An up-to-date Electric Lighting Plant has been installed by the management. No expense has been spared and everything necessary for screening the Latest Up-to-Date Pictures has been provided”. Smith’s also offered skating morning, afternoon and evening with a Ladies’ Day on Wednesdays, admission 6d, skates 6d.
So dancing had to compete with all this plus football, cricket, tennis, netball, cycling, music clubs, churches, men’s clubs. But it didn’t matter: the dance venues thrived all along the coast, not just Wonthaggi. People would travel miles for a good dance. They’d go on horseback, on bicycles, but most got to the dances on “shanks ponies” until a bus service began. Once they got to the dance they wouldn’t leave.
In September 1912, the San Remo Hall Committee applied to the Woolamai Shire Council to change the closing hour of its dances from 4am to 3am! Disgusted dancers argued that “It would have the effect of turning dancers into the un-sheltered road at times of darkness and heavy rains.” The journalist from the Criterion wrote that it would be up to the Shire Council to “exercise the wisdom of Solomon, but no chance of pleasing everyone.”
The newspapers always reported on the dances, especially the balls. The thing they were meticulous about describing was the way everyone looked – most importantly, the way the ladies looked. They listed names and dresses: “Miss Hodge, crystalline silk; Miss Macleod, white silk; Miss Munro, white muslin; Miss Beckley, cream voile; Miss Radcliff, brown cecillian [sic]; Mrs McRae, cream nun’s veiling… and so it went.
Doll Keily, who had just had her 100th birthday up at Rose Lodge when she talked to us about her life, remembered her dancing days in great detail. The preparations were elaborate: “Well, I suppose you’d start with Butterfly Soap which ‘lathers like winkey turns out dirt, does not damage and wears like a board’. Then, the boys could go to the Chicago Hairdressing Saloon, smoke cigars and play pool while they waited for their hair to get cut. Also, the Miners’ Hairdressing Saloon boasted that it had three chairs and first-class tradesmen.
“Men would go to a tailor to get suits made or fitted. The J. Visbord’s Tailor on Graham Street advertised in the Sentinel throughout 1910. He cleaned and pressed suits for 3s 6d.
“We girls could go The Corner where we could buy ‘Frocks’, blouses & skirts or ladies neckwear plus ribbons, laces and trimming. Or we could go to Bird’s Draperies and buy fabric to make our frocks either by hand or with a new sewing machine (£6/10s) available at the Austral Store McBride Avenue.”
The women usually made their own dresses, which may be why so much fuss was made over them in the paper. Doll remembers, “We had nice dresses. I was no ‘sewer,’ so I didn’t make my own clothes. Mum used to get them for me. I was the spoiled one. Bond’s corner is where everybody met.”
One wonders how people – some still living in tents – or – more often – living in newly erected houses – walking from the building site over ash and stone roads, dodging the mud near open drains, ever got themselves to the dances in such finery. But the young people knew what to do: when they were making their way to the dances, they all wore boots, the boys with their trousers rolled up and the girls carrying their dainty shoes with their dresses tucked into farm trousers. Nothing could stop them.
Doll Keily, who had just had her 100th birthday up at Rose Lodge when she talked to us about her life, remembered her dancing days in great detail. The preparations were elaborate: “Well, I suppose you’d start with Butterfly Soap which ‘lathers like winkey turns out dirt, does not damage and wears like a board’. Then, the boys could go to the Chicago Hairdressing Saloon, smoke cigars and play pool while they waited for their hair to get cut. Also, the Miners’ Hairdressing Saloon boasted that it had three chairs and first-class tradesmen.
“Men would go to a tailor to get suits made or fitted. The J. Visbord’s Tailor on Graham Street advertised in the Sentinel throughout 1910. He cleaned and pressed suits for 3s 6d.
“We girls could go The Corner where we could buy ‘Frocks’, blouses & skirts or ladies neckwear plus ribbons, laces and trimming. Or we could go to Bird’s Draperies and buy fabric to make our frocks either by hand or with a new sewing machine (£6/10s) available at the Austral Store McBride Avenue.”
The women usually made their own dresses, which may be why so much fuss was made over them in the paper. Doll remembers, “We had nice dresses. I was no ‘sewer,’ so I didn’t make my own clothes. Mum used to get them for me. I was the spoiled one. Bond’s corner is where everybody met.”
One wonders how people – some still living in tents – or – more often – living in newly erected houses – walking from the building site over ash and stone roads, dodging the mud near open drains, ever got themselves to the dances in such finery. But the young people knew what to do: when they were making their way to the dances, they all wore boots, the boys with their trousers rolled up and the girls carrying their dainty shoes with their dresses tucked into farm trousers. Nothing could stop them.
“I would teach others to do the Charleston. We would go anywhere as long as we could do the Charleston. We had nice dresses. Flapper dresses, you’d call them.”
- Doll Keily
Doll remembers, “We used to go to the Hicksborough Dance. Too right we did! We’d go out there on the buses once they started. Too right. We danced a lot. We did old time dances, waltzes. We went to the Scottish dances. We used to go everywhere to the good dances. Buffalo Hall. Too right! We danced. Different dance halls everywhere. I was a good dancer. I needed good partners.
“I met my first husband at the dances. The Crystal Palace. They had moving pictures downstairs and dancing upstairs. Oh, that was great. We’d dance with the boys and go up to the top and have a kiss and a cuddle and then back in and dance again. I got to more dances than the other kids because, when we lived in Watt Street, I could just go around the corner and be there. That was the Charleston era. I Charleston-ed more than anybody else in the whole place.
“Mum used say, ‘Where are you going?’ And I’d say I was going to the dance to teach my friend how to Charleston. I’d say, ‘She doesn’t know how to do it properly. I have to go to teach her more.’
“I would teach others to do the Charleston. We would go anywhere as long as we could do the Charleston. We had nice dresses. Flapper dresses, you’d call them.”
This must have been after the soldiers returned from the war in 1919 and after the world managed to beat the Spanish Flu. There must have been a sense of devil-may-care everywhere. Doll never said whether or not she knew the shire wanted to disallow the Charleston at the dances because it was unseemly and decadent, but it clearly didn’t stop her or anyone else from becoming a ‘flapper.’
“I was lively,” she remembered.
This essay was first published in The Plod, the newsletter of the Wonthaggi & District Historical Society.
“I met my first husband at the dances. The Crystal Palace. They had moving pictures downstairs and dancing upstairs. Oh, that was great. We’d dance with the boys and go up to the top and have a kiss and a cuddle and then back in and dance again. I got to more dances than the other kids because, when we lived in Watt Street, I could just go around the corner and be there. That was the Charleston era. I Charleston-ed more than anybody else in the whole place.
“Mum used say, ‘Where are you going?’ And I’d say I was going to the dance to teach my friend how to Charleston. I’d say, ‘She doesn’t know how to do it properly. I have to go to teach her more.’
“I would teach others to do the Charleston. We would go anywhere as long as we could do the Charleston. We had nice dresses. Flapper dresses, you’d call them.”
This must have been after the soldiers returned from the war in 1919 and after the world managed to beat the Spanish Flu. There must have been a sense of devil-may-care everywhere. Doll never said whether or not she knew the shire wanted to disallow the Charleston at the dances because it was unseemly and decadent, but it clearly didn’t stop her or anyone else from becoming a ‘flapper.’
“I was lively,” she remembered.
This essay was first published in The Plod, the newsletter of the Wonthaggi & District Historical Society.