SOUTH ISLANDERS’ RE-UNION

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XIX, Issue 221, 5 September 1929, Page 5

SOUTH ISLANDERS’ RE-UNION

DELIGHTFUL AND FRIENDLY GATHERING. OVER 300 COUPLES PRESENT. The annual South Island reunion and dance in the Hastings Assembly Hall last night was a most delightful and friendly gathering, which maintained in the fullest degree the principles of comradeship, fellowship, and unaffected cordiality, which form the basis of these South-Islander Assemblages. Some 300 couples were present last evening, including visitors from Napier and district, as well as from Hawke 's Bay and beyond, ranging from Carterton to Wairoa, which provides abundant proof of the popularity of these annual gatherings of the clans and their friends, as well as of the fraternal atmosphere they create. An impression seems to exist among some of the younger generation that this South Island dance was organised for the comfort of middle-aged persons who became “dated” by the rage for jazz dancing, and that it has no attractions for the young people, but such an idea is absolutely without foundation, because last evening ’s congregation of dancers included all ages, from sixteen upwards, and the frank abandonment of boys and girls, men and women, to the pleasures of the evening made it quite evident that each and every one of them was completely at nome in his or her happy surroundings. Nor is the South Island dauce an exclusive affair. With the well-known hospitality of the Southern people, invitations were broadcast to-all their friends througnout the province of Hawke’s Bay and beyond its limits. The hall was most artistically festooned in bright colours, indicative of Spring, and at the upper end of the chamber the legend “For Auld Lang Syne” was strikingly displayed. Previous to the stepping off of the Grand March, Mr Gilbert McKay (president of the executive) welcomed everyone and read apologies for unavoidable absence from the Mayor of Hastings and from .the Mayors of Gore, Invercargill, Balclutha, Christchurch and Dunedin, as well as from Mr L. F. Pegler (Christchurch) and Sergeant Hogan, Rotorua. Jazz was anathema, and the square and the round dances of a couple of decades ago, were the order of the night. The people of the various Southern provinces each wore a distinguishing badge—West Coast, black and white; Southland, maroon; Otago, blue and white; Canterbury, red and black; Nelson and Marlborough, blue—brought “Townies” together to talk over old times.

In tho course of the night, Master Donald and Kenneth McKay and Irvine Me Mill an and Miss Lizzie McIlroy, pupils of Miss Spinks, gave an excellent display of Highland dancing, and little Josie Patterson, another of Miss Spink’s pupils, danced a Highland Fling with a spirit which evoked loud applause. The supper arrangements were well carried out and tho dancers enjoyed themselves under the direction of the M.C., Mr J. Herbison to the music of Mr Fcrbrache’s Band. The whole reunion and its management reflected the highest credit on the hon secretary (Mr J. W. Shaw), and on his energetic executive.