ONE OF THE HILLS FINEST ...
Shirley has managed to fit a lot into her 91 years ! by Lorna Gordon
Shirley Purser started her voluntary work at a young age when at just eight years old she and her friends became part of the Junior Red Cross and started raising funds for the war effort .
She grew up in Granville and attended William Street Primary school , where she was the Dux , before going to Parramatta Domestic Science High School . Shirley was smart enough to go to Parramatta High School , but they didn ’ t teach sewing there , and her mother wanted her to learn dressmaking . Shirley explained why it was so important to her mother that she learned that skill .
“ My parents were from the depression era and my mother wanted me to be able to sew . She said I would always be able to earn some money no matter what happened in the economy , and she was right .”
From high school she went to work at David Jones ( Grace Brothers ) and got a position in the workroom where she learned dressmaking and sewing . She had to attend Granville Technical College to be taught the practical side but told me the course was so slow that she taught herself to sew and cut patterns .
Shirley loved to dance and would go with her girlfriends to dances in Auburn Town Hall , which is where she met her beloved husband , Geoff . The dances were what she called 50 / 50 dances , with half of them being old style dances and half being more modern dances like the foxtrot .
“ Geoff had been taking dance lessons at an old RSL hall in Castle Hill and was quite good at dancing , he swept me off my feet !”
The couple were married in 1953 and moved to a piece of land that Geoff had purchased in Baulkham Hills . At the time skilled labour and
materials were scarce because of the war , so many people built garages on their plot of land to live in until they could finish building their homes . Geoff , however , had been very clever in designing their home , and they were able to move into part of it instead of a garage .
“ The design of our house in Pearce Street Baulkham Hills , was an L shape . It was a weather board house , and we built part of the L instead of the garage . We had the part which was the dining room , kitchen and laundry , the dining room became our bedroom , and we turned the laundry into a bathroom and sewing area for me , it worked out very well ,” Shirley recalls .
At this time Shirley was travelling into the city to work with fashion designer Germaine Rocher when her doctor gave her the idea of starting her own business at home instead of travelling to and from the city each day . She was very lucky that her mother-in-law was part of the CWA and knew a lot of local women , so Shirley had an instant clientele as there were no other dressmakers as good as her in the area .
While she was pregnant with her third daughter , Shirley started volunteering again and was the needle work examiner for the local Girl Guides . She also became involved with a group of other mothers and together they set up a pre-school and kindergarten .
Between them they got the council to agree to giving them a plot of land on a long lease and set about raising the funds to buy a demountable classroom . When they had raised enough money , they organised their husband and an architect and builder , and between them they managed to open the building in Torrs Street in 1963 . Shirley was on the management committee for ten years , helping run it every day , until she left to do other things .
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6 ISSUE 83 // MAY 2022 theindependentmagazine . com . au THE HILLS INDEPENDENT