
Fashion and fancy footwork: Shirley the ballroom dancing champion
It may have been 70 years ago, but Resthaven Aberfoyle Park resident Mrs Shirley Muller remembers clearly the day she and her husband, Stan, won the Australian Ballroom Dancing Championships in Melbourne in 1954.
‘I started ballroom dancing when I was 17,’ Shirley says. ‘Stan and I met at the Hackney Ballroom. One day there were four couples there doing a ballroom dancing demonstration, and I said to Stan “I’m going to do that”. He replied straight away “I’m going to come too!”.’

The pair began at Ross Mitchell’s School of Dance and were very successful, winning many trophies at various competitions.
‘Dancing was our life,’ Shirley says. ‘We really lived, ate and breathed ballroom dancing.’
Partners in dance and love, two years later, Shirley and Stan were married. On the very same day, they received a telegram to say they had made it to the Australian Championships.
‘We drove over to Melbourne, and when we competed in the championship we won!’ Shirley says. ‘It was wonderful.’
Shirley says her favourite dance is the Foxtrot, and that the glamour of the sport was something that appealed to her.
‘I loved the dressing up and the outfits,’ Shirley says. ‘We did straight ballroom dancing, as well as jazz.’
Shirley had a career as a fashion buyer at a department store, and her love of fashion has never wavered.
Sadly, Stan passed away in 2019.
‘People used to call him “Stan the Man”,’ Shirley says. ‘He was the best thing that ever happened to me.’
Shirley moved into Resthaven Aberfoyle Park after enjoying a short respite stay at the aged care home. She has made a close friend with another Shirley, Shirley Grimes, and the pair seek each other out for meals and activities.
‘We get on so well,’ Shirley says. ‘It’s wonderful to have found such a good friend.’