A thoroghly modern Miss

Andrew Mathieson
THE 1989 Miss Australia contest was as much about avoiding spills of pasta sauce at dinner and the etiquette surrounding eating shellfish than any sceptre or crown.
Wearing the elaborate ornamental headwear was hard enough already for a beauty expected to show grace and poise in the limelight.
Just ask Geelong’s Lea Wilson, now happy to be a mother of three but still in front of the cameras for a Sydney lifestyle show.
“I remember having to actually hold on to the crown,” the 43-year-old recalls of the ceremony.
“Newspaper reports the next day thought I was saluting my country because I had my hand up to the crown.
“In fact, it was too small for my head and it was wobbling, so I was trying to keep it on.
“I remember thinking I was going to be the first one to actually drop the crown and it would break.”
Memories of that night nearly 20 years ago in the West Australian town of Bunbury are something of a blur but Lea’s silk sea-green dress, complete with fashionable ruffles, remains entrenched in her mind.
Another lasting recollection from the night was the appearance of tycoon Alan Bond’s wife, Eileen, still a popular local figure toward the end of the ’80s, to judge the pageant.
“I was quite sure that Miss Western Australia was going to take out the title,” Lea says.
“I just didn’t expect to win it where I was at.
“When they called out my name, I was pretty shocked.”
Lea suspects the contest was not won on the night but during the preceding week of endless engagements.
It was more gruelling than glamorous, she insists.
No bikini-clad girls back then, just business suits and an evening dress.
The thought of her culinary skills never being under more scrutiny still raises a chuckle or two from Lea.
“The main meal they gave us was shellfish and a bowl of pasta, which was guaranteed to get slopped on anything,” a bemused Lea recounts.
“They were again checking to see whether we could use the right knife and fork and all that and didn’t end up wearing too much food.”
She didn’t spill a drop and blissfully chewed with aplomb.
Selling raffle tickets, conducting charity auctions and hosting cocktail parties had previously kept Lea busy in a quest to raise money for Geelong Spastic Society, a beneficiary of the Miss Australia awards.
“There was no defined way but of course it had to be legal,” she chuckles.
The hardest part was fielding topical questions that could trip up the most polished politicians.
One example was solving the needs of Aboriginal people was one.
Another question had something to do with Indonesian, she thinks.
“They wanted people who had an opinion, but a bit like a politician, they were fairly diplomatic,” Lea reckons.
In the days, weeks and months after capturing the title, Lea’s obligations went from speaking in the NSW parliament one day to talking down a hole with some miners the next.
“I had to do public speaking, which I had never done before and I found quite nerve-racking,” she says.
Little did she know it would transcend her into a TV presenter for Sydney Weekender on stories about tourist attractions, restaurants and theatre shows.
In a previous life, a young Lea Dickson lived an idyllic existence on a Curlewis property before the family moved to Newtown.
Every idle moment was spent with her horse, lambs, calves, cats and dogs and summer weekends at Ocean Grove beaches.
Such a simple life back then still says more about Lea than the glitz of the Miss Australia crown ever did.
“I don’t really talk about the Miss Australia awards much anymore because it is so different to my day-to-day life,” she remarks.
“You don’t exactly turn to people you meet and say ‘By the way, I was Miss Australia”.