When Delma Jones (nee Herd) fell down some stairs at age three, it set the scene for a lifetime love of dancing. The fall was followed by a mysterious case of juvenile arthritis: mysterious because it involved painless swelling of her leg, later followed by similar problems with her other limbs and joints. Doctors put her in a splint but couldn’t get to the bottom of the problem. Eventually one specialist suggested the youngster take up ballet as therapy. She was signed up with noted Hamilton ballet teacher Jessie Brownlie. From the start, ballet captured Delma’s heart and imagination. She sailed through her exams and, as an advanced student, aged 14, she was asked to help with teaching younger girls. “I was going to school at Newcastle Girls’ High School, so it wasn’t far for me to come back after school to Hamilton to do the teaching,” she said.
Even before that, when she was 12 – in 1951 – she was given the chance to dance with the travelling Sorlies entertainment troupe, which came to Newcastle once a year around Christmas time, set up a big tent and presented a pantomime and a revue. Sorlies had an arrangement with Jessie Brownlie to supply some of her best dancers for the pantomime shows. “The pantomimes were very popular,” Delma said. “They were packed with people.”
Sorlies was run by Grace Sorlie and Bobby Le Brun, of whom Delma has very fond memories. “He was a real gentlemen to the girls. He always called out to make sure we were ‘decent’ before he came into our room and he always treated us very well.”
back row, (l to r) June, Carol, Gail, Claudia, Meryl. Front row Ann, Irene, Delma, Barbara, Bernadette.
While the pantomimes were aimed at children, the evening revue was a very different matter, pushing the boundaries of what was then acceptable on stage, with Bobby Le Brun telling very risque jokes in language that could be “quite ripe”, Delma said.
Delma was one of the pantomime dancers for three years until she turned 15. “You had to be 12 to dance with them but they would only have you for three years because after you turned 15 they had to pay you adult wages,” she said. “That was my first paid job, when I was 12.”
Around the same time Jessie Brownlie was approached by another travelling show group to supply two accomplished young classical dancers who were urgently needed for a professional show season in Newcastle. This was “International Attractions”, run by singer Helen Reddy’s father, Max Reddy, and his wife – noted actress Stella Lamond. This travelling Follies show visited Newcastle a number of times over the years it operated. Delma and fellow pupil Barbara Jones were the dancers Jess Brownlie supplied, and their photos were featured in the program at the time – much to the youngsters’ delight. After this show the Follies wanted the girls to stay on and join a tour of New Zealand, but Delma – though tempted – had a big plan of her own.
At age 15 Delma took the remarkable step of opening her own ballet school at Wallsend, where her parents had a corner store and fruit run.
“I’d finished my school certificate at age 14 and I turned 15 in the school holidays,” she said. Delma was already often needed to help at the family shop, but she said she couldn’t really serve customers properly because – unlike her parents – she didn’t have the prices of all the items the shop sold stored in her memory. In those days the prices weren’t displayed on the items. “It wasn’t self-serve. The shelves were full, and ladders everywhere. I’d just go and get the items and Mum and Dad would have to do the adding up and deal with the money part,” she recalled.
Weekends in the shop were very busy. The shop was packed but many of the people just came in for company and to chat with one another.
“They’d come in and talk and talk for hours. They used to sit on the ‘Arnott’s Biscuit’ chair and just talk,” she said. Arnotts supplied the chair free, as advertising, just as the Victor Ice Cream company shouldered the expense of painting the shop facade, in return for prominent advertising space. Delma said that many “New Australians” visited the shop, often to get advice from Delma’s mother about how to do things in their adopted country.
The corner store had its beginnings with Delma’s grandparents, who had started a fruit run and shop years before. “My grandfather had the fruit run and my grandma ran the shop. Then my grandfather got sick and my father, who was about 18 and an apprentice baker at Thompson’s Bakery in Wallsend, had to take over the fruit run from his father. Then when my father got married he and his wife decided to build a new shop and residence two doors up from the old shop. That was because my grandma was getting old. They closed her shop and transferred the business over to the new one. My father had the fruit and vegetable run and both parents ran the shop,” she said.
Delma’s parents were very supportive of her ballet school plan. It started off in Wallsend’s Presbyterian church hall and later, as it got bigger, she rented upstairs rooms in a building near the ambulance station in Cowper Street, near the tram terminus. To start with she advertised for pupils by putting notices in shop windows and advertisements in the newspaper. Her pupils were aged from about three to 14.
“You had to be six before you could go for your first exam but I found the three-year-olds were very inquisitive and interested in learning new things.” One mother, Delma recalled, brought her young child who had been ill and wasn’t walking properly as a result. Ballet lessons were seen as a solution to the problem. Given her own background, Delma had a special interest in this pupil’s welfare and, with care and attention she was walking properly after two years.
All the while Delma was still working through the grades of her own ballet tuition, passing her final exam at age 18. As an accomplished young dancer she was also in demand to work with Colin Chapman’s Dramatic Art Club in Newcastle. Delma’s devotion to ballet and her success in her examinations led to her becoming an associate of the Royal Academy of Dance, an accomplishment that entitled her – among other things – to attend a morning tea in Sydney with the academy’s long-serving president, Dame Margot Fonteyn. Delma had the ballet school at Wallsend for eight years until she got married and fell pregnant, when she sold the business.
Delma met her husband Ken at Newcastle’s famous Palais Royale, at one of the Saturday night old time dances that were so popular at the time. Ken, who lived at Dora Creek, worked in the power stations that were then being built around the Hunter area. The pair married in 1961.
“We shifted around a lot to different power stations. When we were in Muswellbrook and Ken was working at Liddell, a lady came and asked me would I take over her ballet school because she was shifting. She told me she only had five pupils and she only taught jazz ballet.” Delma figured it wasn’t worth learning the jazz ballet syllabus for so few pupils but decided to take on the challenge and try to expand the school to make it worthwhile.
“I advertised in the paper and on the radio and from the five pupils I ended up with 250,” she said. Pupils came from all over the Upper Hunter to attend. It started with children, but then many parents expressed interest and the school expanded. Mostly they were interested in the exercise and social aspect, but also loved being part of the annual concert at Muswellbrook Town Hall. After her pupils learned jazz Delma also taught them tap dancing.
It warmed Delma’s heart to see how learning to dance and perform helped boost the self-esteem of some of her students. In a similar vein, she seized an opportunity to run a weekly class at St Heliers, which was at that time a home for state wards. The class size was strictly limited, but the pupils loved the opportunity. Many of the pupils were “rough and ready”, having had difficult starts to their lives. “There was a lot of swearing and bad behaviour but I took my own teacher’s advice which was to always treat your pupils with respect. I did that and they treated me with respect in return,” she said. Only one boy ever joined the class, and it took him a long time to persuade the superintendent to let him participate. Delma also taught jazz ballet as a sport at the local high school.
After eight years at Muswellbrook, Ken was transferred to Liddell power station at Lake Macquarie, so Delma handed over the ballet school to one of her pupils.
Ken retired at 59 and the couple moved to Tuncurry. It wasn’t long before Delma spotted an article in the local newspaper in which an over-50s amateur dramatic group – the Twin Town Troubadors – was calling for a new director. Delma took the job. “They used to do two shows a year and used to go around all the nursing homes and do things for charities,” she said. Delma, who had also played piano since childhood, soon had what had essentially been a singing group doing choreographed movements and learning to tap dance. The boost to the group’s fund-raising led to a NSW Premier’s Award in recognition of the community service.
After two years at Tuncurry Delma and Ken quit and went caravanning for a time before eventually settling at a retirement village at Bonnells Bay, Lake Macquarie. Even there Delma couldn’t help herself, but got involved in organising entertainment for another two years using musical volunteers from among the residents. Not only that, but until she turned 78 she also took on a small number of private piano students.
Ken passed away in 2024, a victim of mesothelioma, contracted from his years of work in power stations.
