by Dolly Parton at Belgrave Station remains one of the most unexpected celebrity moments in Melbourne history. Exactly when it happened, abd why, is unclear.
Dolly Parton passed away this week, her death sparking an outpouring of emotion: grief, love, fond memories, and replays of great tunes.
Born in Tennessee in 1946, Parton had begun singing professionally as a child, appearing on radio and television. She recorded her first single when she was 13, and at the same age appeared at the Grand Ole Opry, where she was introduced by Johnny Cash.
From the mid-1960s onward, she found success as a country singer, and would become one of the biggest names in popular music. She also hosted her own TV shows, and worked as an actress, appearing in several hit movies.
Beyond her accomplishments as an artist: a caring humanitarian, whose philanthropic legacy is large. Her literacy program, Imagination Library, gifts books to disadvantaged children, she ran many other programs through her charitable foundation.
A lot was written this week about Parton, and there are some great articles online. Many of my friends posted tributes as well.
Among these, a small footnote. A photo I had not seen before: a younger Dolly, snapped at Belgrave railway station, on the outskirts of Melbourne.
I was curious about this, as it seems an unusual place for a famous celebrity to visit. When was this photo taken, and by whom?
Some of the information was readily available.
A quick google search lead me to an article from 2021, published in the ‘Star Mail’, an outer suburban news outlet. This had comments from Chris Rostron, the credited photographer.
Rostron remembered meeting Dolly in the 1980s. He was then a photographer for Knox News, another small outlet, who received a call one day to come and photograph the star’s visit to the Dandenong Ranges.
The Dandenongs are a scenic getaway location on the outskirts of the city; Rostron met Dolly at ‘Burnham Beeches’, a historic home that had been converted into a restaurant.
She had some lunch and I asked her what she thought. She said it was nice but a little too fancy for her.
Chris Rostron
From Burnham Beeches, Dolly moved on to ‘Puffing Billy’, a preserved steam train that operates on a short stretch of track near Belgrave.
Puffing Billy had started as a standard commercial train line. Opening in 1900, the track ran from Belgrave to Gembrook, and had been intended to open up the hilly Dandenong Ranges to development.
The train carried passengers and goods up an incline into the mountains.
But the area was only sparsely populated when the line was built, and continued to develop slowly. Passenger numbers never expanded as intended.
A landslide in 1953 closed the track for an extended period; during this time, the state rail authority decided against opening it again.
In 1955, local train enthusiasts formed the ‘Puffing Billy Preservation Society’. Volunteers worked to fundraise and restore the track, intending to develop it as a tourist attraction.
The first section re-opened in 1962, and the line would eventually be restored all the way to Gembrook. A vintage steam train was procured, to carry passengers.
For Parton’s visit, a special train service was run, for her and her entourage. The trip went to the first stop on the line, in Emerald, and back again.
Rostron remembers Parton remarking on the forested, hilly terrain as being ‘just like home’.
Before the trip, they had a second lunch, with Parton’s crew cooking sausages on a barbecue. The singer had one of these in bread, and a stubby of beer.
Rostron took photos of her at the station in Belgrave, and in Emerald.
When we got to Emerald station we got off and I got her down on the tracks in front of the train and photographed her in front of the steam train. When she went to get back onto the platform I realised just how small she really was. She was a tiny, tiny person.
Chris Rostron
Rostron also remembers lifting her down from the train, her weighing only ‘as much as a child’.
After the train ride, the singer returned to the city.
Reading Rostron’s recollection, a few details are elusive. One question is, when did this visit occur?
For such a famous celebrity, I thought this would be readily available.
Rostron himself only says it was sometime in the 1980s. Searching online, the iconic image of Parton at Belgrave station is often labelled as having been taken in 1985.
This is almost certainly incorrect.
Local news archives like trove.com and ProQuest have no record of Dolly visiting Australia that year. And numerous sources that track her concerts and touring schedule, have her appearing multiple times across the United States.
A trip to the Dandenongs seems highly unlikely.
In the Rostron article quoted above, a spokesperson for Puffing Billy says, they think Parton’s visit was part of a tour with Kenny Rogers. This gives us two candidates: one in 1984, and one in 1987.
Parton’s association with Kenny Rogers was one of the biggest musical stories of the 1980s. Both were already famous singers, in combination they achieved the type of success rarely seen.
Born in Houston in 1938, Rogers was 8 years Parton’s senior. He began performing music in the 1950s as a teenager, over the next two decades he moved through a number of bands and music styles, including rock, pop and country.
Going solo in 1976, and focussing on country music, Rogers became one of the genre’s most successful artists. He and Parton met the same year, when he was a guest on her TV variety show, ‘Dolly’.
They remained casual acquaintances afterwards.
In 1983, Rogers was recording an album in Los Angeles with producer Barry Gibb, of ‘Bee Gees’ fame. Gibb had written some of the tracks, one of these was a song called ‘Islands in the Stream’.
Unable to get the track to work in the studio, Rogers was in favour of abandoning it.
Gibb instead persuaded him to try it as a duet, and suggested Dolly Parton as co-vocalist. By coincidence, she was also recording in the same studio complex.
Rogers and Parton tried the song together, and immediately knew they were onto something. Their different vocal styles naturally complimented each other, and they found they had good personal chemistry.
Their version of ‘Islands in the Stream’ would become a huge commercial success. One of the top songs of 1983, it reached number 1 on the Billboard chart in America (the last country song to do so for 20 years), and sold millions of copies worldwide.
Joint tours would follow, alongside a Christmas album they recorded together in 1984.
Rogers and Parton would play a few shows in Australia in 1984, but none in Melbourne. Their performances were limited to one night in Perth, and a few shows in Sydney, the whole tour completed in a couple of weeks.
While Parton could have journeyed to Melbourne herself during this time, the whirlwind nature of the visit probably makes that unlikely.
Rogers and Parton would come back for a more substantial trip to Australia in 1987. The tour kicked off in Melbourne, with an outdoor concert at the Sydney Myer Music Bowl, on February 4.
Performing in front of 12 000 fans, at an all ages gig, the pair were well received.
Parton played first, mixing quips and anecdotes with her music; The Age reported ‘she had a story to introduce every song, and every song told a story’. It also noted some of her southern-style humour was over the crowds head.
Rogers followed, and gave an assured performance, joined by Parton for their famous duets.
A second show was held a week later at Kooyong Stadium, a tennis venue then still home to the Australian Open. Prior to the concert, fans packed City Square in central Melbourne, to see the duo presented with the keys to the city.
Dolly Parton smiled a big, red smile as she surveyed the largest crowd assembled in City Square, since it was opened in 1980. The country music royal greeted more than 8000 fans with a high pitched, ‘Howdeeeee’.
Wendy Tuohy, ‘The Age’
Lord Mayor Trevor Huggard welcomed the singers and presented them with the keys, and was reported in the press as having bright red lipstick marks on his cheek, afterwards.
This is when I think it most likely, that Parton visited Belgrave.
She had a week in Melbourne between the first and second concerts, with no formal engagements. And her appearance in the Belgrave photos, broadly matches others from the tour.
In an article later in the trip, in Sydney, Rogers quipped that he had ‘no idea’ where his co-star went, between shows. If she felt like it, Dolly had the time and opportunity to slip out for a quiet day in the Dandenongs.
The only remaining unknown is: why was Rostron involved? He noted in his interview he was the only photographer present; if the visit was meant as tour publicity, more journalists would have been invited.
But if Parton had wanted a day off, why bring Rostron at all? The photos seemingly only appeared in suburban newspapers, not in the larger city publications. The relevant local news archives, the State Library and the Melbourne Museum all have no record of the Dandenong visit, at all.
A very small mystery, and one perhaps never to be solved.
The 1987 tour continued with shows in Sydney, Brisbane and Hobart.
After this, Dolly would not return to Australia for decades. Her next appearance would be for the ‘Better Days’ tour in 2011, when she required assistance from future Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
Parton brought her tour bus with her, a custom behemoth that breached Australian road regulations. Two metres too long, five centimetres too wide, and overall too heavy, it was too big for Australian roads.
And its doors, opening on the right hand side, were also against local rules. Customs threatened to block the bus, Parton’s management issued a statement saying: ‘no bus, no tour’.
With 100 000 tickets already sold, intevention was required. Then federal transport minister, Albanese worked with state based officials to ensure the bus received a waiver.
The tour went ahead. At a press conference in Sydney, Parton promised Albo she would ‘smear him with lip gloss’ as thanks.
Albo said, ‘Rules are there for a reason. But common sense tells you Dolly Parton touring here is good for the country.’
Dolly Parton died in Nashville on August 25, after a short battle with cancer; RIP.
