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[1] From the 1947 "Hollywood Ice Fantasy" program. [2] With Dunbar Poole, Adelaide Glaciarium, 1904. [3] On right with Leila Thomas, 1936. (Syd Mail 10 June 1936 p 26). [4] At Sydney Glaciarium, 1936. [5, 6] In net with the Western Witches, Sydney Glaciarium, 1949. [3]


CAREER SUMMARY

Birth
1896
Portland Vic Australia

Death
March 2nd 1956
Sydney NSW Australia

Clubs
Sydney Figure Skating Club, Western Witches [Ice Hockey]

Skating Championships
Australian Women's Champion 1911 (NISAAV), 1935

Gower Cups
1924 [Ice Hockey]

Inaugural winner, Croll Cup
First coach of Pat Gregory
State player, women's ice hockey
State champion, SingIes, Ice Waltz
State quarter and half-mile champion

BORN IN 1896 IN PORTLAND in Victoria, Mirey Reid was the only daughter of Lucy Marsden and Henry Newman Reid, the founder of Australian ice sports. Her father was the advisory director of the Portland Western Districts of Victoria Freezing Company when she was born, and she also lived in Adelaide, but grew up in Haverbrack Avenue Malvern in Melbourne, completing Form 4 at Toorak College in 1909. She skated and played hockey on the ice at Australia's first ice rink in Adelaide in 1904, when she was about nine years-old, and then in Melbourne in 1906. [1] It is possible she earlier skated overseas, because she said she had been placed on the ice from the moment she could walk.

Reid developed under Professors Caldwell and Brewer in Adelaide and Melbourne, then Professors Webster and Claude Langley. She may have attended the opening celebrations of the Sydney Glaciarium when Langley and his pupils performed a figure skating exhibition there on July 27th 1907, two days after it had officially opened. Reid was a contemporary of skaters such as: Melbourne's Billie Clegg, a student at Princes in London; Sydney's Fannie Trotter, the first Australian woman to compete at the ISU World Championships, but representing Sweden; and Sadie Cambridge, the first Australian to be inducted to the Skate Canada Hall of Fame with her partner Albert Enders.

The National Ice Skating Association of Australia formed in Melbourne in 1911 when Reid was 15. She won the first NISAA Ladies Figure Skating title before ISU affiliation, the same year her brother Hal became the inaugural Men's champion. After the war, she moved to Sydney with her parents, and joined the Sydney Figure Skating Club started by Chas Maclurcan.

Between 1919 and 1926, Mirey and her brother Leslie won the state waltzing title eight years straight, as well as a ten-step competition. [1] She won the first figure skating championship of NSW in 1925, the year the National Ice Skating Association of Australia (NSW) formed from the Sydney Figure Skating Club, despite the NISAA in Melbourne which preceded it by fourteen years. Reid won the state title again in 1931, but did not defend it in the years that followed. She was National Ladies Champion in 1935, five seasons after the two associations in Melbourne and Sydney finally agreed to work together.

The inaugural winner of the Croll Cup for women's single skating in 1932, Reid successfully defended it each year until the Victorian champion, 14 year-old Betty Cornwall, wrested it off her in 1936. She also won the women's national title for the quarter-mile speed skating event, and the state title for the half-mile.

The first coach of young show skater, Pat Gregory, who went on to the British Gold Medal standard of free and figure skating in 1947, Reid performed in such shows as Hollywood Ice Fantasy at Sydney Glaciarium in 1947, and trained skaters for the end-of-year carnivals—the biggest ice events in Australia during the 1940s.

Still teaching in 1950, at the age of 54, she entered a special contract with the newly opened Ice Palais in Perth, Western Australia. On her return to Sydney Glaciarium in 1953, she taught with such professionals as: Rona Thaell, Alison Lyons, Dorothy Coulter, Loretta Brain, Shirley Daley, Mary Hill-Trevor, Bill Black, Leo Marshall, Percy Wilson, Val Cullen, Betty Rossbridge, Hazel Edwards, Dawn O'Donnell, Robert Hamilton, and Margaret Miller. [2]

Although Reid never competed internationally, she was one of Australia's first home-grown women's ice skating champions. She made one of the earliest and most significant contributions to competitive ice skating in Australia, particularly for women in New South Wales, during some of its most difficult years. Fortunately for local skaters, she remained at home while others such as Enders and Cambridge based themselves overseas.

Reid never married, but lived near her brother Leslie and, like her brothers, she also played ice hockey. The emergency goalkeeper with the New South Wales women's team in 1924 when they won the Gower Cup, she played at least one interstate contest when the state keeper became unavailable, [1] and she could still play well into her fifties when she returned as goalie for the Western Witches in 1949. [3]

Mirey Reid died suddenly at 60 in Sydney on March 2nd 1956, survived by a nephew Andrew, and a niece Aidrie, the children of her older brother Hal who moved to America. Her skating and coaching career spanned a half-century and more.

01. Historical Notes

[1] "Mirey Reid can skate. Let's put her in". The 1934 Telegraph article, Lure of the Ice Rink, [1] discusses Mirey Reid's entry to state ice hockey, along with other notable women's players. At that time, Ida Waite had been centre-forward for the Gumnut club (field hockey) for 6 years, and played ice hockey for seven years. Mollie Thorpe played field hockey with the Bank of NSW team and left wing in ice hockey. Elsie Rea, a former Gumnut player who won State honours, represented her state for several years at ice hockey as centre-forward and captain, opposing Mrs T Kelly, champion speed skater of NSW and Australia, and captain of the opposing team. Phyl King and E Jackson first learned field hockey at Woollahra Park, then graduated as state representatives in ice hockey. Ettie Wallach, ex-University field hockey player, was a steady full-back for the ice hockey team, in which position she gained state colours. Interstate goal-keeper for many years, Mrs Kellet-Ford, first won fame in the tennis world. Mrs Shepherd combined tennis with ice hockey while Olive Cleveson was a comparatively new recruit to both field and ice hockey. Last was Mrs Tom Gibson, whose husband was one of NSW's champion speed skaters.

[2] First played in 1922 in Melbourne, the women's interstate Gower Cup series continued on through the Twenties. It appears to have lapsed around 1930 in the Great Depression, but there is evidence here that local women's ice hockey teams competed at least in Sydney until the mid-Thirties, and perhaps longer.

02. Citation Details

Ross Carpenter, 'Reid, Mirey (1896-1956)', Legends of Australian Ice, Melbourne, Australia, http://icelegendsaustralia.com/legends-2/bio-reid-m.html, accessed online .

03. Select Bibliography

Napoleon's Ghost: Adelaide Glaciarium, Legends of Australian Ice, Ross Carpenter, Online
Cradle of a National Sport: H Newman Reid and Melbourne Glaciarium, Legends of Australian Ice, Ross Carpenter, Online

04. Citations
Citations
[1] Women's Interests, Lure of the Ice Rink, The Daily Telegraph, Sydney, 10 May 1934, p 16.

[2] The Daily Telegraph, Sydney, Glaciarium advertisement, 28 Feb 1953, p 3.

[3] Girls teams play a fast game on ice, The Australian Women's Weekly, 25 June 1949, p 19.

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G A L L E R YArrows at right scroll the images
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[FULL SIZE]

Interior of the Glaciarium. Reconstructed from historic documents and old press

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ROOF PLAN

Adelaide Glaciarium (former Cyclorama)

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AERIAL VIEW

Glaciarium building footprint on contemporary aerial photograph

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HINDLEY STREET, 1910

Adelaide. Postcard, State Library of South Australia B 73146

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Glaciaria, Melbourne and Adelaide

Comparative floor plans

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Melbourne Glaciarium

Southbank, Melbourne, est 1906

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Melbourne Glaciarium

Longitudinal view looking west.

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Melbourne Glaciarium

Overhead from City Road.

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Melbourne Glaciarium

Sectional perspective looking north.

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Melbourne Glaciarium and Professor James Brewer.

Brewer was a professional instructor from Princes Skating Rink in London where European hockey first began a few years earlier. He trained the first skaters in Adelaide in 1905 and Melbourne in 1906. [5]

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Melbourne Glaciarium

Opening, 1906

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Melbourne Glaciarium

Interior looking north to the river end, 1920s.

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Melbourne Glaciarium

Interior after major refurbishment and additions in 1939. Note the removable timber dance floor.