A Branch… Canberra and District Branch – past and present Canberra and District Branch was formed in 1978 by thirty-five RSCDS (headquarters) members then resident in Canberra, with support from another thirty-eight members in Nowra and Cooma. Miss Milligan’s 1974 visit to Australia was the catalyst. Members of the Scottish Country Dance Club of Canberra (SCDCC) had investigated the formation of a Branch about 20 years earlier, shortly after the SCDCC was established, but it foundered on the Society’s requirement to have two certificated teachers.
was the first secretary of the Branch, which, at its peak, had well over 100 members. Initially, the Branch ran a monthly advanced class and a teacher training program, while the other Canberra clubs held weekly general classes. Since the early 1980s, the Branch has held a weekly general class and a low-impact class on Friday afternoons for ‘Gentle Dancers’. Some members of the Cooma and Nowra clubs, and also dancers in Batemans Bay and further south on the NSW coast, remain members of the Branch.
Branch records indicate that Bob and Jean Clark, who arrived in 1950 and Bob and Helen Morrow, who arrived in 1948, began teaching dances to RSCDS instructions after observing the many variations on display at dance events in Canberra. Early dancers faced considerable difficulties. Some of the available halls were very small; recorded music was primitive in comparison with today - 78rpm records were of insufficient length to record a whole strathspey until about 1958, and they had only a single copy of an RSCDS instructional film on loan from the National Library. No YouTube videos in those days! The informal group of SCD enthusiasts in Canberra grew quickly and established SCDCC. For a time, membership of the Society was a condition for joining this group, which is the oldest of the Canberra clubs and still in existence more than 60 years after its foundation.
The Branch currently has about 70 members, of whom around half are active dancers resident in Canberra. Only a small proportion are ‘younger’ dancers. Attracting young people to SCD is a real challenge, but the enthusiasm of the
Jean Conway (one of the four Australian Ladies for whom the dance was written)
www.rscds.org
Alan McCulloch, Branch Secretary
Members of the Branch at the annual National Multicultural Festival in Canberra
Dancers at the National Folk Festival held annually at Easter time
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active members enables us to maintain a lively program of social dance events and displays. With members of other local SCD groups, Canberra dancers have performed regularly in recent years at the National Folk Festival, the National Multicultural Festival and other local events. We maintain a level of awareness of SCD in the local community, but regrettably the long term trend of membership numbers is slightly downward, and the average age of dancers rising. To increase the appeal to festival organisers of our displays, we have used creative themes and fancy dress and our display at the National Folk Festival last year consisted of dances from Ian Boyd’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ collection.
