June 1st, 2026Joan Pickering’s life’s work – doing for others
The first time I met Smeaton’s Joan Pickering she was encouraging a craft group at Daylesford Library to weave vintage lace, wool and fabric into future projects.
Joan, now 86, was clearly in her element after being taken by a community carer to see for herself where surplus materials, sent to the group on earlier occasions, had landed.
Her eyes lit up when a piece of stretch fabric was pulled out of a box by someone determined to turn it into a pyjama top, putting the material to good use.
Wasting time and things simply isn’t in Joan’s nature; a quality developed growing up in a block of houses built for returning WWI veterans.
“My parents got it just as the second world war was starting…my father was a signalman, at a time when they sent messages out with carrier pigeons,” Joan said.
However, being born in 1940, it’s her father’s post-war charity work and time at the PMG (Postmaster-General’s Department), she recalls.
“We all called the PMG ‘private monkey’s garden’, it was like Telecom, took in public phone boxes and all that sort of thing,” she said.
“I remember my father saving little globes and torches from the PMG. He painted them all different colours and then he wired them up so we had lights on our Christmas tree which was a piece of pussy willow – there was no money for anything as frivolous as Christmas lights.”
Joan credits her father, who belonged to a band of charity entertainers, for her own creativity and community spirit.
“My father would dress up as a girl, white stockings, white dress, red wig, and they’d go around entertaining on the back of a truck to raise money for dogs for the blind.”
But it was Joan’s mother and brothers she was with the first time she set foot in a dance school.
“Mum lost a baby and we were out walking; in those days there was a dancing school in nearly every empty hall (and) Mum took us in one, I was only a tot then, hadn’t even started school, and I just loved it.”
Joan said her community-minded father organised debutante balls at Preston Town Hall and as a result when she was six or seven she led a deb set as part of their presentation.
“I had to do the whole length of the hall on my toes, today there’s no way you’d have ballet shoes on at that age, but in those days if the ballet shoes fit you’d do it.”
When Joan was 19 one of the mothers in a dance class she was enrolled in asked if she would like to teach, pointing towards an empty hall.
She then went on to teach tap, ballet and character dancing in Lalor and Preston venues between 1959 and 1976 through her own school.
“It started as JD Dancing School because my brother was with me, it became the Miss Joan Scott School of Dancing. My mother took over playing the piano.”
Joan said early craft skills learnt at school, from her mother and a young Scottish woman in her neighbourhood, allowed her to become a costume creation seamstress.
“Most of the mothers were working, so the first year there wasn’t much in the way of costumes, you’d ask for them and they’d turn up with flowers attached with safety pins and what have you, so I started doing costumes for one or two of the girls and by the next year I was doing the whole lot, about 200 pieces, two or three pieces to a costume.
“I loved the dancing, putting concerts together, the colour, everything about it, but I love helping people, that’s been my life since I was a little kid.”
Joan said when she was six or seven one of the returned soldiers who lived a few doors up from her family home was in a wheelchair following his war service and after school she would “sit on the grass and talk to him because he was on his own and had no-one to talk to”.
“You were involved with everyone. You didn’t have meals on wheels, if someone was sick up the corner of your street everyone went up and took a meal up or did something. There was one phone in the whole block so everyone would come and use it and paid sixpence for the use of the phone.
“If you were growing rhubarb and people knew you had it they’d come up and get a bunch of rhubarb from you for sixpence and that sixpence would buy your sausages for tea from the butcher.”
Today Joan, who moved to Smeaton when she married her second husband Louis Pickering 20 years ago, is herself thankful to have lovely neighbours nearby and fellowship within St John’s Creswick Church community, particularly since Louis passed.
She said it was too late for her to have children of her own when she married her first husband at 36 years of age, but she doted on her dance students, occasionally taking those with busy parents for outings to Como House and other interesting places during school holidays.
“I like doing the quilts, hand embroidering, knitting, crochet, cooking, gardening – anything I can make – it keeps you going.”
Joan said she would like to think sharing her crafting remnants encourages others to make good use of their hands through a hobby you can enjoy at home or with others. “That’s been my life’s work – doing for others.”
Above, Joan in her self-embroidered apron; inset, a School of Dancing advertisement (contributed)
Below, debutantes and partners at the Fairytale Ball in Northcote 1969-70 hosted by Cr Larkin and Mrs Larkin
Words: Kate Foulds | Images: Kate Foulds & Darebin City Council
