Noeline, Oelena and Kate, who play the piano every Friday in the Amess House dining room at Churchill Island. Kate will talk about the Gershwin era at the May 10 FOCIS General Meeting.
Back in the days before television, Phillip Island residents would dress in their finery and head off to their local hall each weekend to dance the night away. After a big supper of cakes and scones provided by all the good cooks in the district, they'd all wander home in time to milk the cows in the morning.
Thanks to wind-up gramophones, which often used boxthorns as needles to play 78 rpm records, everyone managed to keep up with the latest music trends in Australia and overseas. Lots of people also played instruments and formed bands to play at the dances. Many Phillip Islanders met their future wives or husbands at a local dance.
The next Friends of Churchill Island Society (FOCIS) General Meeting will pay tribute to this era. The meeting will start at 1.30pm on May 10 at the Churchill Island Visitor Centre function room. The speaker will be Cape Woolamai resident Kate Cleeland, who has a background in choirs, musicals, opera and dance, but fell in love with jazz through George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue".
In the late 1920s the two bachelor Jeffery brothers resident on Churchill Island went to the local dances by rowboat, or by horse and jinker at low tide across the tea tree track to below St Paul's Boys Home. Bob and Ted Jeffery Snr worked on Churchill Island for Gerald Buckley from 1929-1936. Kate's step-aunt Reita Cleeland married Ted Jeffery Snr.
All welcome. For more information and to RSVP, contact FOCIS secretary Christine Grayden. Email secretary@focis.org.au or phone/text 0400 900 612.
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