Carolyn Crum - Pipin’ hot

From highland dancing to the pipes for delighted tourists and flashing her frilly knickers to the cancan, to singing her heart out in a chorus, former seasoned Arrowtown performer Carolyn Crum is in her happy place on stage.

Now living near Cromwell she’s virtually hung up her dancing shoes but is always on call if her Scottish-loving piper dad, Jim Gilmour, 87, needs her to perform with him.

Arriving in Arrowtown as a schoolteacher in 1995, Carolyn, an avid dancer and performer, was soon snapped up by the town’s famous Buckingham Belles – the darlings of decades of Arrowtown Autumn Festivals. That began a 27-year commitment which she absolutely loved, the Belles becoming popular entertainment for conferences and events, including Kevin Lynch’s History Alive shows, the ladies also performing at the Hokitika Wine and Food Festival twice. Some big nights were had keeping up the party pace with the decades older members of the Arrow Miners Band, Carolyn says.

She’s performed with born and bred Queenstown piper Hec Boyd and the Queenstown and Southern Lakes Highland Pipe Band, Carolyn and the Belles even travelling to China to perform with them, treated like dignitaries on their stay.

Celtic Sounds – a 16-strong Scottish-loving band only wound up last year and she’s performed with Arrow Entertainers and Remarkable Vocals.

In the late 1990s, early 2000s Carolyn starred as ‘Cora’ in Remarkable Theatre’s Calendar Girls and as an “enthusiastic chorus line member” in numerous Showbiz musicals, her favourite being ‘Hair’.

“I’ve done so much really cool stuff through music and dancing,” Carolyn says. “I’ve had some indescribable fun.”

It’s all been in the blood, her earliest memories of that ‘fun’ starting at two, the youngest in a “very musical family”. “I can recall falling out of my cot desperate to get to a party in our lounge where the pipes were playing and people were dancing. I hid behind a man’s plaid. It was ages before Mum noticed me,” she laughs.

Ever since Carolyn’s been drawn to the party, the fun, singing and jamming, her family popular Invercargill Carlyle Street concert performers, life revolving around their Invercargill Pipe Band ‘family’. Her mum was a talented pianist and Jim’s even performed at two Edinburgh Tattoos. Older brother Andy Gilmour’s band has also performed around Australasia.

“We were a team with the pipe band. Dad was a pretty talented piper.” Her Ryal Bush Southland grandfather, conscripted into the Army at 20, took his pipes on board the HMNZT Tahiti headed for Plymouth in 1918 during World War I, contracting Spanish Flu, and surviving while many didn’t. Queenstown piper Duncan Boyd also survived that voyage.

Music was still big at St John’s Girls School in Invercargill, Carolyn winning a choir competition with her cousin at Southland Girls’.

Carolyn spent four wonderful years doing a double degree while at Teacher’s College. “At first I thought these guys don’t really know how to have fun. There’s no music, piano and pipes going, but I eventually made the transition,” she grins.

During four years teaching in Fairlie Carolyn had a ball with the Mackenzie Theatre Group, even scoring a principal dancing part in ‘Joseph’ in Timaru.

As kids Jim had built a family crib in the Arrowtown Camping Ground, then managed by Taylor Reed. “We’d get up put our togs on and head off, the only rule to be home by 5pm.”

So, in 1995 Carolyn was lured to Arrowtown School as music teacher and to train in specialist Reading Recovery.

“The best part was the Autumn Festival. I took the kids down the street to do folk dancing and watch the daily lunchtime entertainment. I saw the Belles performing and thought, “I’ve got to do this!’,” she says.

There were so many fun gigs, one on Coronet Peak Station where Carolyn, in full Belles’ regalia, was hoisted onto a horse behind station owner Brian Dagg to hand out beers to conference goers. “Here I was, skirt everywhere, handing out beers. It was the best of the best. Brian’s wife Dale was my Belle idol!”

Highland dancing for Hec’s traditional addressing of the haggis performed at tourist Scottish nights at Walter Peak was serious stuff. “I’d borrow Graham Brinsley’s martial arts sword to dance around but one night I accidentally kicked it sending it flying across the floor to roars of delight from the tourists,” she laughs.

“Another night Belle Lee Borren forgot her ‘boxer bloomers’ so she had to borrow a pair of farm tour manager Lindsay Westaway’s stretchy lycra shorts.

“Fiordland Travel supplied a bottle of Glenfiddich for the ceremony then on the way home on the Earnslaw the cap was tossed overboard and the bottle polished off!”

Belles and Arrowtown Fire Brigade performances at community concerts were “a mischievous combo”, she grins, beer smuggled to the performers under the stage at Arrowtown Hall.

Celtic Sounds – a colourful Scottish-style band, founded by dad Jim and his Maniototo musician mates, saw Carolyn performing with local singing legend Kath Brentwood until that wound up recently.

Romance bloomed when Carolyn met husband of 21 years Pete Crum in 2003, becoming stepmum to “three gorgeous kids”.

After 11 years at Arrowtown School Carolyn did a postgraduate and Master’s in Educational Psychology through Massey and commuted to Invercargill weekly working as an educational psychologist for the Education Ministry. She then did that job for the Otago branch from Arrowtown before finishing up in 2014.

Carolyn and Pete moved to a rural spot overlooking Lake Dunstan in 2019, retaining their Arrowtown home.

While she’s hung up her dancing shoes for now, Carolyn says her passion will always be performing. “I’ve had an absolute ball. The community events like dancing for somebody’s birthday are as important as the professional ones,” she says. “You do it for love.”