Veteran hat maker turns heads in the outback in far west NSW
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Anticipation is building in the outback mining town of Broken Hill for the iconic St Pat's races.
And few have been as busy this week as 79-year-old hat maker, Lori Johnson.
"You can probably put one together in half an hour," she said, "while others might take four or five hours.
"The hats I like doing are the pleated with the satin wideband frame. My brother and I call them 'artists pallets' because that's what they look like. They're very temperamental."
More than 6,000 people are expected to head through the turnstiles to attend the annual St Patrick's Race Club meet, which began in 1965 when well-known local trainer John Toms came up with an idea to bolster local racing.
Ms Johnston and her brother, Colin, visit St Pat's each year as they follow the country race circuit making hats for racegoers. She said this year's choice of colour by locals was a surprising one.
"Navy and nude has been the most popular," she said. "Navy has been out of fashion for years and suddenly it's back in.
"They like nude shoes, some of the lace dresses have nude underlining and they want the hat to go with the underlining.
"Popular colours last year were watermelon pink, hot pink, or the luminous fluorescent green and all that, but they're gone.
"The trend seems to be what Duchess Kate wears, whatever she wears. The little ones I've found have been popular."
Each year Lori Johnston and Colin travel thousands of kilometres to add colour to the greens.
"We start off at Hobart," she said.
"Kalgoorlie's fairly big and I'm in Newcastle for the Melbourne Cup.
"We go from Hobart to Darwin and all in between."
Mrs Johnston has been decorating the heads of racegoers in Broken Hill for the nearly a decade and said it was more than style that got her to return each year.
"It's like coming back to a home town," she said.
"I've got people coming in for a cup of tea and to say 'hello'.
"They'd like a chat and welcome me — it's a very friendly little town."
A former publican from Victoria, Ms Johnston said it was by accident that she turned her hand from pulling beers to ribbon and thread.
"It was Colin's idea," she said.
"He went over to Ascot one year and came back and said, 'I think I can make these fascinators —will you help me?'
"I thought, 'Oh, I'm an old pub lady, don't know too much about hats', but I said, 'Alright, then, we'll give it a go'.
"In the first year, when I think of what we made, it wasn't so good, but we've got into the swing of things now and you just hop in the car and away you go."
Topics: rural-women, horse-racing, broken-hill-2880, newcastle-2300, yunta-5440, darwin-0800
