From tiaras to markets: Pageant queen Kerrie Humphrey reflects on Wollongong’s thriving modelling scene of the 80s

Wollongong boasted a thriving modelling and pageant scene in the 1980s that took Unanderra businesswoman Kerrie Humphrey from modelling a few dresses for a clothing store to rubbing shoulders with the industry’s elite.

Today, she’s more likely to be seen at the successful Bulli, Berry, Moss Vale and Milton markets that she operates – a far cry from her earlier days.

Kerrie’s modelling career started at age 17 when working at the Angus and Coote jewellery store in Warrawong, just across from the Vonnie Mulligan fashion house.

Vonnie often asked her to model dresses for newspaper photographers she had visiting the store.

“That’s how it all began,” she said.

“She then said, ‘Would you like to do our Melbourne Cup?’”

Kerrie said it led her to be involved in fashion parades and bridal shows, with many remarks at the time that it was bad luck to wear a bridal gown before getting married.

“That’s what must have jinxed me because I’ve never been married,” she said, laughing.

Kerrie transitioned into entering pageants, winning many titles, including Miss Wollongong, Miss Illawarra, Miss Wollongong Showgirl and Miss Steelers through the 80s.

“I think it was Miss Wollongong Showgirl that I won a trip to the Philippines,” she said.

“When they knew we were coming, they sent the local Manila newspaper to meet our plane when it landed, and they featured us at the airport, with ‘Miss Wollongong coming to the Philippines’. It was a really big thing for them at the time,” she said of it being 1983.

Visiting the Philippines during that time was an eye-opener for the then-22-year-old.

“Back then, it was a bit of a culture shock with the poverty; every restaurant and shopping centre had armed guards with guns out the front,” she said.

“I’d never, ever experienced that in my life.”

It wasn’t the only trip she won, though.

“For Miss Wollongong City Mall I won a trip to Paris with Robyn David [now te Velde] from Wollongong,” she said.

Robyn, who was Elle Macpherson’s head hairdresser, also had a modelling agency.

“When I won the trip to Paris – with an introduction to the Pret-A-Porter Modelling Agency – Robyn David was going to go with me,” she said.

Amid all this, Kerrie had been running cafes and restaurants since she was 21.

When Robyn was unable to travel to Paris, Kerrie had to reevaluate whether going to Paris while running a cafe was the right decision.

“It could have been great and changed my path in life, but at the time, I’d bought a home with my boyfriend. I was mortgaged quite heavily, and I also had a little cafe,” she said.

“So I had to make a decision. Was I willing to give up my life here and live in Europe, which I just wasn’t.”

Instead, she chose to stay, continuing to compete and win competitions and appearing on the front page of the Illawarra Mercury almost every week before becoming its last ‘page 3 girl’.

She also decided to open her own Wollongong modelling agency called Elle.

“Everybody used to quote, ‘Kerrie Humphrey is the Elle Macpherson of Wollongong’,” she said, laughing.

“I looked very similar to her, and I was around the same age.”

She said that by this time, she was still working part-time for other companies and organising big fashion shows in Wollongong for the Gateway Shopping Centre, now known as Wollongong Central.

“I crossed over to the other side and started organising pageants, giving young girls opportunities to have the same experience and opportunities I had,” she said.

“I mean, now you wouldn’t dream of running a Miss Bikini Girl competition, or Miss Snow Bunny, because it would be seen as, wow, how sexist getting young girls to parade on stage in bikinis. But in the 80s and early 90s, that was the thing.”

In fact, there was a lot you couldn’t get away with today.

She remembers walking around David Jones modelling animal furs (a thought that horrifies her now) or wearing a bikini while promoting sunglasses.

“It was awesome back in the day, and it was so exciting,” she said.

“There were always jobs to do and fashion parades, and then it all just changed.”

Kerrie said today it was all about social media influencers who could do it all from their bedrooms, with Wollongong modelling jobs “a thing of the 80s”.

Not that there was a lot of money in modelling for TV and magazines.

“You couldn’t survive. I had an office and I hired a secretary. Then I went out and had to get another job just to keep the office open,” she said.

However, it did allow her to work alongside some of the greats, including Sydney businesswoman June Dally-Watkins, who opened Australia’s first modelling agency.

“I won a deportment course with June Dally in one of the pageants, and I went up, and I did the course, and she wrote me a letter and invited me to join her agency,” she said.

“She was a pioneer, and everybody went to June Dally to do a deportment course.”

To sustain her throughout her career, Kerrie ran many successful cafes and restaurants – including Wollongong’s first vegetarian restaurant in the 80s – and worked in marketing and hotels in Sydney.

Today, she operates four markets, having started in 2005 with Bulli, expanding into Kiama for nine years, and now running Bulli, Berry, Moss Vale and Milton.

Now in her 60s, she said she was looking forward to transitioning into semi-retirement after 40 years running businesses.

“It’s been exciting, from tiaras to markets,” she said.