Musings of a 1965 Dapto debutante

Just shy of 60 years since the night of Helen Crimmings’ debutante ball at the Dapto Masonic Hall, her recollections are, understandably, a combination of “would haves” and vivid snippets.

A shy young woman of then 18 years, she “would have” practised her curtsy “about a million times, because I was terrified of falling over and making a spectacle”.

“But I remember clear as day, walking down the middle of the aisle and doing that curtsy, as was tradition, in front of a lovely lady who I suppose would have been the wife of the grand master of Dapto Lodge at the time,” she says. “Afterwards, we went down the road to the local community hall and danced and danced. And I didn’t fall over, thank goodness.”

Hailing from Bega, Helen’s extended family moved, bit by bit, to the Illawarra in the 50s. They opened numerous local businesses including a local butcher and fruit shop.

Helen herself was almost 11 when her family joined them.

“My dad was a truck driver, and he got a job driving coal trucks from Tallawarra Power Station to the Huntley Coal Mine and back,” Helen says.

“We lived in a house that belonged to Brown’s Farm. Everyone in Dapto knew that farm. The land is still there but it’s not used as farmland anymore. I’m sure it’ll eventually become housing.”

Helen attended Dapto primary and high schools where she made lifelong friends she still keeps in touch with today, though they were not among the other 12 debutants she debuted with in 1965.

“The first and only house Mum and Dad bought backed onto the Commonwealth Cottages in Dapto, so most of my closest friends were ‘Ten Pound Poms’,” she says.

“We had wonderful childhoods, walking to and from school together.”

There are other details about the night of Helen’s deb ball that have stood the test of time. Her escort was her then-boyfriend, who would eventually become her first husband and the father of her three children – a hard piece to forget.

Other memories are perhaps more ephemeral, but still precious. Helen recalls her father photographing her from behind, as she applied a modest amount of makeup.

He was trying to capture her elaborate hairstyle, coiffed to perfection by Jan Fergusan, a local hairdresser with no small amount of skill.

“I had an old-fashioned quilted dressing gown on, which was very threadbare because we were quite poor. But waiting nearby was my dress, and it was so beautiful,” Helen says.

“It was made by our next-door neighbour, Mrs Aspinall. She was a wonderful woman, a family friend and a talented seamstress. She did a such a beautiful job … You can’t see them in the photo but the dress had these roses at the bottom I can still picture in my mind’s eye – she must have spent hours on them.”

Life has taken Helen all around the country in the decades since that night, though she often came back to the Illawarra, and recently settled here again.

“I’m an Illawarra girl. I’m home, and I’m so happy to be back,” she says.

A photo of her deb ball, unearthed during her recent (and final) relocation from South Australia back to the Illawarra, floods her with nostalgia, but it’s not necessarily a tradition she feels is missing in this day and age.

“It was a normal thing to make your debut at 18, you were meant to be all grown up, although we were as silly as any other 18-year-old,” she says.

“It was a beautiful thing to do; it was lovely to get dressed up, get your hair done – apart from your wedding, you didn’t have much call to do that back then, unless you were well off, which was rare in a working-class place like Dapto.

“It’s a bit of a useless, outdated tradition. Though I will say, it was also lovely, and I don’t regret it at all.

“I look at the photo with all those familiar faces and I wonder where all these people are now. I’d love to hear what some of them are doing themselves. We were all Dapto girls, after all.”