She’s had 25 songs reach the top of Billboard country music charts, holds Guinness world records, has one of the most distinctive voices to ever hit your ears and is recognised worldwide for her glamour, but one sunny day in the 80’s, Dolly Parton was devouring a snag in bread at Belgrave station.
During a time when we are all dreaming of rocking out at a live concert, The Basin photographer Chris Rostron is helping us reminisce on the good ol’ days when some of the biggest stars visited the Hills while on tour in Melbourne.
As a photographer for the Herald and Weekly Times, Mr Rostron was honoured to receive a phonecall in the 80’s inviting him to be the only photographer on Dolly’s tour of the Hills.
“I was the local photographer at the Knox News at the time I got the call. Only one photographer was allowed so they got me to go there and I spent most of the afternoon with her,” Mr Rostron said.
“I remember she was surprised how the Dandenongs reminded her of her home, she lived in a bushy, hilly area,” he said.
Mr Rostron first caught up with Dolly at Burnham Beeches back when it was a thriving upper-end hotel and lunch spot.
“She had some lunch and I asked her what she thought. She said it was nice but a little too fancy for her,” he laughed.
The pair then made their way to Belgrave’s iconic Puffing Billy where a special train for Dolly and her crew departed for Emerald.
“Her and her crew cooked up snags on the barbecue, I’ve got a photo of her somewhere eating a sausage in bread with a stubby in her hand with her long beautiful fingernails,” Mr Rostron reminisced.
“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. I’m about five foot two but even with her three inch heels on she was only just as tall as me,” he said.
Mr Rostron helped Dolly back on the train by lifting her from her waist and describes the moment as “like lifting a nine-year-old child”.
The renown photographer was also lucky enough to stand on the other side of the camera for the momentous occasion.
“She got one of her crew to take a picture of us together because she was blown away that I was a photographer her height, but I never got a copy of it. She had her arms around me in it,” he said.
A Puffing Billy spokesperson believes Dolly was in Australia for her early 80’s tour alongside Kenny Rogers.
As for other career run-ins with the rich and famous, Mr Rostron said he “wouldn’t even know where to start”.
“I was a photographer from the black and white days to colour and then into digital. In the 1980’s if you were a photographer you were the king of the world. You had the key to everything back then, you could just walk into anything and do everything with your press pass. The things you got away with were pretty amazing,” he said.
