Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 181
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[Page 181]
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no convenient motor cars in those simple days for surreptitious cuddling, though some couples sometimes appeared to be cuddling in public on the dance floor.
Programmes were invariably used by all participants. They were small folded cards, suitably coloured and appropriately decorated on the outside, with a numbered descriptive list of the dances, inside; a small sharpened pencil was attached by a silken cord. During the half-hour before the first dance, a gentleman would approach a lady he knew, or to whom he was formally introduced, and ask if he might have the pleasure of a dance with her. She responded by handing him her programme, through which he glanced, and then suggested a particular dance that was not already booked. If accepted, he entered his name for it in her card, and her name in his: if he had already forgotten her name, on a first introduction, he put down the colour of her dress or some other short identification. He was required to be very careful to present himself again, at the right time, to where she would be sitting. Everybody living locally walked to the ball and home again, and no lady was left to go to her gate unescorted, and if very young, unchaperoned, particularly in the best families.
The lesser social citizenry also had their dancing club, the "Valeta", where the members did not dress up so much, and younger people predominated. When I had acquired some proficiency in ball-room dancing I became a member of both clubs, and found myself going to balls or dances at least twice a week.
In the "upper crust" of the town's population, social status was rather clearly defined, the main cleavage being into those who were shopkeepers, or in trade, and the rest; wealth was not an important consideration, and the most junior bank clerk, newly arrived, was on a higher social plane than the wealthiest merchant. In the town the professional class, bank managers, and senior civil servants ranked highest. In the country the primary producers had a prestige grading all of their own, big station owners, squatters, graziers, wheatgrowers, and dairy farmers, in that descending order. However, all these distinctions