Noel and Dawn still in the swing
dance, Noel doesn’t do too much dancing these days due to two new knees, a dodgy leg and a tendency to giddiness, but he still loves to watch the others on their toes.
“I can sit there quite happily all night. If I see someone on their own I’ll go and have a yarn. I like the fellowship.”
Noel grew up at Lillico, on the same bit of land he still farms. He can still name the families along the road: the Turnbulls, the Cooneys, the Pattinsons, the Frasers, the Crocketts, the Rushes, the Woollens. Everyone had cows.
Back then his parents had 40 acres but he’s added to it over the years and it’s now 220 acres. He still manages the place himself, raising cows and calves, with a hand from his son Trevor when he needs it.
His parents milked about 30 cows. They sold the cream to the Warragul Butter Factory and raised calves on the skim milk. The funny thing was that was a family living back then.
Noel used to help with the milking before school, after school, at weekends and on holidays. Of course it was all hand milking then.
“That must have been hard work?” the Gazette suggests.
He looks sceptical. “Well, you were sitting down,” he points out. “It wasn’t that hard.”
But it didn’t
leave much time for studying. He wanted to be a school teacher; instead, when he left school, he went straight onto the farm.
He was about 14 when he started going to the dances in the Nilma North Mechanics Institute hall, which was actually on what is now his farm.
For decades, before a dance, he used to take wood over during the day and light the fire. The dancing would be in the main room – music by Jack Drake and his orchestra, Mr Frawley of Shady Creek, who played the button accordion, or Daisy Rogers, on piano and drums – and there would be cards in the back room and jugs of milk coffee for supper.
When the old hall gave up the ghost, the dances moved to the Lillico Memorial Hall in Bloomfield Road.
For a while there was badminton in the hall but the badminton players and dancers were at cross purposes. “They thought the floor was too fast and were trying to rough it up,” Dawn explains.
In the 1970s and 1980s it was common to have 100 or more at the dances, mostly aged under 25. “A lot of our young friends met their partners at the dance.”
These days most of the dancers are over 50 but they still attract a big crowd. At last month’s dance there were about 80. They come from all over: Traralgon, Moe, Morwell, Trafalgar, Drouin, Warragul, Leongatha, even Kilcunda.
Dawn says people tell them they go to dances at other places and if you don’t have a partner you don’t dance. “Here you’ll soon be up, and if you can’t dance, someone will show you.
“We don’t encourage new vogue because they stay with the same partner and it’s very serious. They don’t look as if they’re enjoying themselves. With the old dances you can chat away and you know what to do.”
If the dancing is good, the Lillico suppers are legendary. Everyone brings a plate, mostly cakes. Dawn and a couple of friends have a roster for making sandwiches and serving teas. “We used to say we were the younger group but we’re the older group now,” she reflects.
Visitors rave about the sandwiches and the tea. They can‘t get enough of it. “It’s the tank water,” Noel says. “They keep coming back for refills.”
Each time, as the monthly dance approaches, he groans to Dawn, or she groans to him, “It can’t be a month already!”
And every time, after the dance, they come home exhilarated by a night of catching up with old friends and meeting new ones.
They make another cup of tea at home and talk long into the night, exhilarated by the music, the dancing, the sense of community.
The Nilma North Old Time Dance is held in the Nilma Lillico Hall, Bloomfield Rd, Lillico, on the third Friday of the month. Dancing starts at 8pm. Strangers are welcome. Bring a plate of supper to share but partners are optional.