With those gloves, this looks like Madonna trying out a new look sometime in the 1980s, but really it’s my Grandma, aged 21, dressed for the Burnie RSL Ball, 31 July 1947. She and my Grandpa were probably yet to meet.
Burnie was a thriving and rapidly growing place in the 1940s, all on the back of the APPM Paper Mill. http://www.tasmanianpioneers.com/blog/now-and-then-in-burnie6756569 The Mill opened in 1938, and the town’s population rose from 4000 in 1937, to 10,000 by 1945. https://historicalaustraliantowns.blogspot.com/2019/11/burnie-nestled-on-tasmanias-north-west.html?m=0
The 1947 RSL Ball was held in the Burnie Theatre, with supper in the adjoining Town Hall. Burnie had a number of theatres at the time. The Burnie Theatre had been reconstructed in 1931 to be a 1500 seat venue, which could have the seats removed for balls, and was considered the most modern venue in the state, with a striking art deco facade. It was in Mount St, near the corner of Cattley St. On Cattley St was the old Burnie Town Hall, which was where the ball’s supper was held – plus a ceremony where young women (each accompanied by a young man) were “debs” and presented to society. (The Town Hall and theatre were both subsumed into the Fitzgerald Department Store in the 1980s.)
My Grandma, her older sister and her sister’s husband moved to Burnie after the war. During the war (1942) Grandma had trained and worked in Sydney, while R and M had lived in Adelaide, where M was exempt from war service due to his role with the railways.
M had applied to work for the paper mill when they were expanding during the war (he found his work in Adelaide to be boring once his apprenticeship was over) but they hadn’t been to take him due to war time controls over “man power.” However, as soon as he was able to leave SA he did, beginning work in Burnie in January 1946. He and R already had friends in the town, but accommodation was tight in Burnie at the time.
Burnie had the opposite problem of much of the rest of the country;it was struggling to find enough people to do all the jobs the town required. The rapid rise in population meant that the post-war housing shortage was extremely acute in Burnie. The young coupleinitially stayed at a boarding house – provided by the company. But this was just for two days…ie only one night! The next few months they lived a variety of places, and were not always able to be living ohether. It was so hard to find a flat via the usual means, that M and resorted to putting ads in the paper, and eventually to going door to door asking people if they had a room. Finally they found a found a flat – a house with shared bathroom and kitchen – at 163 Mount Rd.
Shirley likely followed her sister and brother in law to Burnie, also arriving during 1946. Despite being by now a qualified tailor, with the war over and the return of tens of thousands of men, she was also likely also struggling to secure work and housing in Sydney. The Mill would have offered employment for a young single woman and possibly she was able to stay with her sister at least for a while to overcome the housing issue.
Christmas 1946 was spent by the two sisters, R’s husband and also the sisters’ parents who came from Adelaide for an extended stay, at the flat in Mount Rd.
Charlie and Ida stayed in the state for over four months. During that time R and M moved into a new flat on Marine Terrace, near the Mill, and their first child was born.
Grandma remained in Burnie when her parents returned to Adelaide, perhaps staying with her sister or moving into a boarding house. During 1947 she attended balls, and assisted the Red Cross. At the end of 1947 she flew back to Adelaide for a holiday, accompanied by two friends. Something must have called her back to Adelaide, as soon after returning to Burnie she set sail for South Australia to live.
After a year “at home,” Grandma again came to Burnie, this time for a Christmas visit, but ended up staying! This time she lived in a boarding house at 8 High Street. She shows on the electoral role in High St in 1949, and was there until she left Burnie the following year. In 1948 a J Peart was living there when he put an ad in the paper to sell his car, he may have been there before Grandma and her friends, or he may have been one of those friends.
Grandma found work in the paper factory. The 1949 electoral role shows her as a paper sorter. A glamorous sort of job, with those women known for their outfits and their good looks. I can just imagine Grandma sewing and planning her outfits – and probably for her friends, too! The sisters she travelled to Adelaide with late 1974 both regularly appeared in the newspaper with reference to their outfits. Another of Shirley’s friends was Nancy Marsden. Nancy was one of three sisters, who lived with their parents at 64 Marine Terrace. Nancy and Shirley may have met at work, or socially, or because the Marsden home was near to the one where R and M moved in early 1947. Like Shirley and the Harwoods, Nancy most have had an interest in clothes, as there are also several references in newspapers at the time to outfits she’s wearing to balls and other events. I’m not sure that in 1948 she didn’t repurpose the black dress Shirley had worn to the 1947 RSL Ball…
Late in 1948 Charlie and Ida came to visit their daughters, and new granddaughter, in Burnie. On this trip they holidayed at Cradle Mountain. Family photos of the Burnie years are full of picnics and trips to mountains and fields and beaches. I wonder if the move to Tasmania was not just about the practicality of work and housing, but also a draw to the beauty of the place? It’s a common reason half a century later, so why not back then.
Grandpa also came to Burnie after the war. He didn’t exit the military until May 1947, and first shows on electoral roles in Burnie in 1949, working as an electrician for the paper mill and living in “Camp B.” These “camps” were wooden huts for single men. Both Grandpa and his sister in law have the struggle to find appropriate housing in the post war years as strong themes in their memories of this time.
Grandma and Grandpa met at a cycling race in Burnie. The “first ball he took her to” was in 1949 – Trove shows several balls throughout that winter. He bought an engagement ring in Hobart in February 1949.
Grandma and Grandpa left Burnie after their 1950 wedding, heading first for Moorina and then Storys Creek, before settling in Lutana. R and her family remained in Burnie.
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How to turn trees into paper: http://john-c-medwin.blogspot.com/2010/03/history-of-paper-making-display-case.html
And a video about Burnie in the 50s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkcFMf8_4uc&t=1119s (paper mill at about 18minutes)
*M spoke glowingly about their landlady in Marine Terrace with her kindness to them and their baby daughter, and said that in later years they were able to help out her daughter who lived at Moorina. That landlady was Mrs Hudson and her daughter was Mrs Burleigh, who was living at Moorina during the same time that Shirley and Tas were there in the early 1950s.
*The man in the photo is Ray Oleary. Absolutely no idea if it’s the right guy (there’s also a Ray Oleary the right sort of age living in SA), but here’s a Tasmanian one who so decidedly didn’t go to Grandma’s wedding that he got himself in the paper doing something else that day! Ray ended up marrying Grandma’s friend Beryl Harwood (who she had flown to SA with), in November 1950. Actually, this is probably not fair on Ray, as Grandma and Grandpa’s wedding was in evening of the 5th, so this event he went to that was reported on the 5th, would have happened a day or so earlier.
*”South Burnie” is east of the former mill. There aren’t any house on the waterfront there now, with most of the old houses converted to shops and the beach on the far side of a highway, railway line and six foot fence.
The First Ball I Took Your Mother To 
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