When my brother and I were young children, we were often bundled up and taken to a hall in Lindisfarne where my parents would be square dancing with their friends. They had been square dancing for many years. In fact, that is where they met in 1952. I have written a post about their square dancing time.

Somehow square dancing rubbed off on me. I joined the Southern Eights Club in Hobart with Barry Chandler as the caller. I found the moves easy to remember but I also enjoyed round dancing, which happened between the brackets of square dancing.

Round dancing is like ballroom dancing but instead of learning the whole dance, you have a caller on stage calling out the moves. So the dance might be a two step but the dancers wont know in which order the moves will be called. This makes it more interesting and the dancers have to listen carefully when the cues are called out.

There were enough people from square dance clubs around Hobart interested in round dancing that we opened a club specifically for round dancing called Roulette Rounds. I was one of two dancers cueing, and eventually I was the only cuer of the club.

I loved calling round dancing and even took part in some Australian Square Dancing Conventions representing Tasmania as a round dance cuer. Whenever I travelled around Tasmania I would take some round dance records with me, in case I was asked to call a few dances at the square dance clubs I visited.

Whenever there was an Australian Convention held here in Hobart, I would be on the committee whilst I was an active dancer.

Readers: Do you enjoy dancing? What type of dancing in particular?

UPDATE from dad:

I just read your square dancing record, did you know that the Bar 8 square dancers danced in Fitzgeralds main window in Collins St, Peter Smith was the caller. Phyl and I ran dances with the Hobart Walking Club  for some years, old time, square, modern, Greek.