A long-time Katherine resident has been poring through some old picture albums and remembers how a debutante ball was the only proper way to be introduced to society.
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Neila Boyle also thinks she took part in one of the town's first ever deb balls.
Years ago in Katherine a debutante ball served as a right of passage for young girls to finally go out dancing on the weekend.
"In those days you didn't go dancing with your partner until you had been to a deb," Neila Boyle said.
"You would stay at home, so you could see that everyone was very eager to go."
The 82-year-old was one of the first young women in Katherine to take part in the tradition, seen by some as rather old fashioned today.
Historically, a debutante ball served as a formal entrance to society, but for 17-year-old Neila and her friends it was a chance to get dressed up, in a town with little else to do.
Born and raised in Katherine in a small tin shed with a fire outside for cooking and a creek out the back for washing, Neila Boyle can't remember a debutante ball before 1954.
Mrs Boyle had been working in the post office as a switchboard operator for one year. She'd been to boarding school, but was fed up by 15.
There were few shops in the town she remembers, two supermarkets, CJA Cox and Katherine Stores, a railway station and an open air cinema.
"We spent a lot of time at the river swimming," she said.
"In my teen years I remember the open air cinema on the main street. Me and my friends would sit in deck chairs and watch movies about cowboys.
"There were not many people in the town, that's for sure, but I remember most of the young boys worked at the Post Office as delivery boys."
It was there she met her partner for the debutante - Jim Macdairmid.
"It was different back then, we used to have picnics by the river, there was no alcohol, and he definitely wasn't courting me."
Nine girls were to be presented on May 28, 1954 to Bishop O'Loughlin, a man from Darwin who always needed his shoes polished and his shirt washed.
"We all rallied around and got our dresses together," Mrs Boyle said.
"Most got them from down south, but I got mine made by Eve Turner, she made a lot of the clothes back then.
"There was one girl who came from a very poor family so we organised a dress for her and shoes.
"It was very much a community event, everyone was involved."
Hazy memories of a lifetime ago serve Mrs Boyle well, and while she can't remember why exactly it was decided the town would hold a deb, she remembers the hall with open windows on O'Shea Terrace with clarity.
"We had to put candle wax on the cement floor for the dancing and the big hall was decorated with frangipanis," she said.
"We all walked through an archway and then we were presented to the bishop.
"There was lots of dancing, it was more about fun than anything else.
"The whole town came to watch."
About one year later Mrs Boyle was married to a mechanic she had met at the Department of Civic Aviation's Christmas party, now the museum.
She had four children, three of which girls who did not follow in their mother's debutante footsteps.
Over the many years living in and around Katherine, she has seen scores of girls wait in anticipation for their own debutante as the tradition has lived on in Katherine.
She sewed white dresses for two of her grandchildren and watched on as they learnt the dances she had practiced many years ago.
While Katherine has expanded over the years, it remains a small, outback town where sport rules and deb balls are still held once a year.
The river, frequented by saltwater crocodiles is no longer an option for lazy afternoons.
Times may have changed, but Mrs Boyle still believes debutante balls are a good idea, especially in towns with little else to do.
"It is a chance for [girls and boys] to get dressed up and learn dances they might not have know otherwise," she said.
While advances in technology and social equality set Mrs Boyle's debutante worlds apart from the one just passed, the fun factor remains the point.
For the 21st century debs and their partners the event, held in June of this year, was their only chance for an end-of-year dance, and something they didn't want to miss.
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