As the newer pursuit of leisure marching takes centre stage in Dunedin this weekend, a group of women have been reflecting on a time when competitive marching was at its peak. Kim Dungey reports.
Sixty years after taking the United Kingdom by storm, the members of a former Dunedin marching team are still very much in step.
In 1952, the Blair Atholl team spent eight months overseas, promoting the New Zealand sport of marching.
Now nearing their 80s, the women still meet regularly and have just held their fifth reunion. Only one of the 13 has died.
Paraded around Britain like stars, the girls marched in dance halls and holiday camps, attracting large crowds and considerable media attention.
They were photographed marching down the Strand in London and with the penguins at Edinburgh Zoo, appeared on television and were recognised in the street.
However, they did not - as some had predicted - leave a "trail of British marching teams" in their wake.
Marching began in the 1930s as a way of keeping the nation's young women fit and healthy.
The first teams came from business houses and factories.
In 1945, the first national championships were held and by 1952, there were almost 400 teams.
Dunedin's successful Blair Atholl combination was founded by Hugh Cameron, who had initially trained girls to take part in the city's 1945 victory parade. Thirty years after emigrating, he was returning to Scotland for a visit and jokingly suggested he take the team with him.
Soon, the typists, machinists, shop assistants and bank clerks were working extra hours or two jobs to raise the money needed, former member June Adamson said.
"We had to take our own spending money - 50 in travellers cheques - and 50 in those days was a lot of money."
For an entire year, the team stepped back from the domestic competition and spent Saturday and Sunday mornings at Logan Park learning new displays.
After three and a-half hours of practice, they sold raffle tickets to raise money for their fares.
Instead of the usual 10 members, the team had 13 marchers aged 16 to 23.
Mrs Adamson and her former team-mates Olga McConnachie, Shirley Chapman and Norma Smith, still recall the excitement of departing Dunedin by train on March 25 and giving displays in various centres before leaving.
In Wellington, they were officially farewelled by Prime Minister Sid Holland. In Auckland, workers lined Queen St eight deep to watch them parade through the city with several local teams.
On the six-week sea voyage, they practised every morning and within 24 hours of their arrival in England, gave their first demonstration.
While the dance halls they marched in had slippery floors and limited space, the press praised their military-style precision.
One newspaper stated that "they would have made a Guards' sergeant-major's eyes shine with pride". Another described marching as "feminine, entrancing and new".
Many commented on the fact their routines were performed without shouted orders, the team responding instead to the whistle of leader Shirley Leith.
A Birmingham newspaper was intrigued that marching could be a sport, saying that to most of war-tired Britain, it had been only a burden.
Part of the tour was organised by the Central Council of Physical Recreation; another by the Mecca dance-hall chain whose general manager of dancing, Eric Morley, had just organised the first Miss World pageant.
Morley insisted that after giving their displays, the girls stay and dance with anyone who asked them.
In between their travels, rehearsals and twice-daily performances, the girls attended civic receptions, were taken down a Welsh coal mine, visited Blair Atholl village in Scotland and snapped up jeans, a new fashion item that some parents would not let them wear out when they returned home.
They also met some of the stars of the day, including "The Forces Sweetheart" Vera Lynn, comedy actor Jimmy Edwards, Scottish musician Jimmy Shand and comedy double act Laurel and Hardy.
Singer Des O'Connor was a "redcoat" at one of the Butlins holiday camps at which they marched.
At one stage, their instructor wrote to the New Zealand Marching Association, saying the team had appeared on television "but I hope we never have it in New Zealand - it's not worth the bother".
A Scottish newspaper reported that while the average British teenager was influenced by "flashy American standards", the girls from down under were "quite remarkably lacking in sophistication and hardness for a team who have been feted and fussed over, firstly in New Zealand and then every place where they have visited in Britain."
Others called them "kilted cuties" and "as sweet as the mutton chops and butter of their own happy land". One mayor commented on their well-developed calves.
Chaperone Rowena Hastings told reporters it was a "hard job" keeping the young men away.
"We did meet some rather nice guys," Mrs Adamson recalls. "You have to remember we were (mostly) 18 or 19.""You wrote to them for a wee while," Mrs Smith adds, laughing. "But then there were so many that you just started answering the ones that were pretty good." Two of the girls later married Irish brothers they met in Belfast.
However, the women add they never went out alone, did not drink alcohol and "certainly didn't smoke".
And the tour was not all about glamour. On the days they were marching, they they had to apply "leg paint" - the equivalent of today's fake tan - then wash it off at nights. On weekends, they washed their own uniforms, which included white serge tunics.
Although some teams were formed in the UK, the women say the sport did not "take off"'.
Their instructor put this down to a lack of playing fields and the girls there not being so sports-minded.
Back home, some of the Blair Atholl members continued marching until marrying and having families. Mrs Adamson coached the Hereweka team, which won the first South Island midget marching championship.
Mrs Smith taught highland dancing while Audrey Rodgers helped start leisure marching in New Zealand.
Mrs McConnachie was also involved in leisure marching but gave it up when her team began fundraising to go away to events: "I told them I did that when I was a teen."
The women say they enjoyed the exercise, travel and friendship the sport offered and put the declining interest in competitive marching down to today's young people not liking discipline.
"It was a fantastic time," Mrs Adamson said, adding that few other sports teams would have toured for eight months or stayed in contact with each other for 60 years.
The six members remaining in Dunedin meet for lunch every six weeks and still get on well but seldom talk about marching, Mrs McConnachie said with a laugh.
"We're beginning to talk walking sticks."
March past
• The National leisure marching event at Forsyth Barr Stadium runs from 9am-4.30pm today. Spectator entry free.
A more leisurely pace
They wear trousers and brightly coloured tunics, have names like the Hot Toddys and the Gumboot City Grans and are staunchly non-competitive.
Welcome to the modern world of marching.
Mostly aged over 50, leisure marchers say their sport is about fun, fitness and friendship. This weekend, 850 of them are strutting their stuff at Forsyth Barr Stadium.
The sport was started in Tauranga in the early 1990s by Audrey Rodgers, a former member of Dunedin's Blair Atholl team that had toured Britain 40 years before. However, leisure marching bears little resemblance to the stiff pleats and precise drills that she and her team-mates once adopted. There is no national association and no rules.
Teams taking part this weekend vary in size from five to 26 members and when the last of them have finished their routines, they will don fancy dress and let their hair down.
While competitive marching is in decline - down from 360 teams nationally in 1973 to 85 today - leisure marching is booming.
"There are over 130 teams throughout the country," says Jan Hoad, convener of the 20th national event, being held in Dunedin. "And that's only the ones we know about.""A lot of the participants are ex-competitive marchers from way back. A lot have never marched at all but always wanted to. The oldest participant is 88 and the youngest is 18 but generally the age group is 50 to 70."
Marching is a fun way for women of that age to exercise, without having to go to a gym, she adds. "It's quite strenuous because they're marching at a pace of 120 beats to the minute."
A former Blair Atholl team member in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Hoad says it is unfortunate that interest in competitive marching has waned: "Weekend work has had a big impact on it. Kids don't like discipline and it's a very disciplined sport. The expense involved has a lot to do with it and there are a lot more sports today for kids of that age to be involved in."
Some of those reasons are also cited by Marching New Zealand chief executive Diane Gardiner, who says team sports in general have declined and sports of an individual nature have become more popular.
Marching has attempted to move with the times. New grades have been added for younger children and a masters section for the over-30s. The technical criteria are more flexible and the display section allows teams to perform to more modern music.
Uniform standards have also been relaxed so marchers can now wear T-shirts and shorts, Gardiner says. The under-12s are encouraged to do this but most who join the ranks like tradition.
"They still want to be 'miniature' marching girls, boots and all."
