‘Friends are like gold’

Mrs Kellock (then Michelle Harrison) from Shepparton was immediately drawn to her Warrnambool friend’s vibrant personality.

“The first day I ever saw Leah, she had bright red lips, big red earrings and blonde, blonde, blonde, blonde hair, and she was loud,” Mrs Kellock said.

“I was a Shepp country girl down in the Big Smoke and she just seemed comfortable there, even though she wasn’t from the city either.”

The 17-year-olds hit it off straight away, collecting the nicknames of Heckle and Jeckle from teachers who paired them in class.

Despite there being other trainees from their home towns in the same class, their bond was instant. They spent breaks outside the classroom together and soon after shared time on weekends, seeing as neither of them took the four-hour train rides home between weeks during their three-week-long blocks of trade school.

They would see each other twice a year at trade school for three years of their apprenticeships.

Mrs Kellock boarded at nuns’ girls’ school accommodation at the Queen’s Gardens, while Mrs Ferguson commuted to the campus from her aunt’s house in Doncaster.

“I used to have to walk down this long road to school and you’d have your bags and you’d have your mannequin heads sitting in the top of them, but we’d do it on purpose so we’d get a reaction,” Mrs Kellock said.

“A lot of us all purposely put our bags so that our mannequin heads were sitting up the top of the trams after school.”

“I had names for mine: Mrs Alfonse and Murgatroyd,” Mrs Ferguson laughed.

“Mine was Beatrice,” Mrs Kellock added.

Mrs Ferguson is a left-hander and said her teachers weren’t used to teaching left-handed students, so she had to watch what they were doing in the mirror to learn.

“I’d go through scissors quicker than Shelly would because they’d blunt,” she said.

Unlike Mrs Kellock, who had considered becoming a pre-school educator, Mrs Ferguson had grown up wanting to be a hairdresser.

“I started on my doll at four (years old),” Mrs Ferguson said.

“I’ve still got Sally and she’s had plenty of haircuts.”

Mrs Ferguson got the doll when she was one, making the doll 62 now.

Despite hairdressing not being Mrs Kellock’s first preference, she said she’d never considered changing careers because she’s found it so rewarding.

“I grew into it rather than wanting it straight away, so I never tire of it, and I think that’s why I’ve been able to do it for so long,” she said.

“It’s a job that somebody comes in and they feel ‘blergh’, but then they go out feeling lovely and good about themselves.”

At trade school, the students mainly worked on rows of mannequin heads in the mornings and in a real-life training salon in the afternoons, where members of the public could get their hair cut for $3.

But on occasion, they would practise on each other, with Mrs Ferguson recalling a time they dyed her hair pink while trialling colours.

“Because it was blonde, it absolutely grabbed and we didn’t have time to wash it off,” Mrs Ferguson said.

“So I had to go home on the bus and the tram with this hot pink hair and get the Velvet soap onto it when I got home because it was so strong; I had a wedding the next day.

“Back in the day, the old Velvet soap stripped everything.”

While they didn’t return home from trade school with new hairdos, they always ensured their hair was on point before meeting their peers at the beginning of each block.

“I remember wearing stilettos,” Mrs Ferguson said.

“Because they told us to wear heels on our shoes so we didn’t get veins, and I’ve got the worst vein now!”

When their schooling was finished, the women stayed in touch and since then have never gone a year without seeing each other, keeping their friendship alive with phone calls and weekend visits.

“There were no mobiles or texting in those days,” Mrs Ferguson said.

“My father came from Yarrawonga, so my grandfather was still alive in Yarrawonga and Shelly’s family were waterskiers, so we would go up and visit Pa and Shelly and her family would come across and we’d go waterskiing.”

They attended each other’s weddings and their husbands — Ivan Ferguson and Leigh Kellock — get along well, too.

Mrs Kellock is even godmother to one of Mrs Ferguson’s children.

Mrs Kellock has spent her life settled in Shepparton.

After becoming qualified, she worked nine years at Operation Hair before buying her own salon in Poplar Ave. After giving birth to her daughter, she worked part-time for Kathryn’s Kutz for five years before buying that salon and renaming it Hairpinz, where she has been for almost 20 years.

In her early career, Mrs Ferguson exercised her skills as a hairdresser but eventually entered the motel industry with her husband, whom she met 12 months after meeting Mrs Kellock.

“We moved around a little bit, but I had a salon right next to the motel, so we ran a motel that we bought and the hairdressing salon in Mortlake,” Mrs Ferguson said.

From there she went to Cobram and Yarrawonga, temporarily leaving Mr Ferguson to run the motel on his own while she took over Mrs Kellock’s salon so she could have some time off.

Then, 18 years ago, the Fergusons made a permanent move to Shepparton when their kids were in early secondary school — much to the Kellocks’ delight — where they’re firmly rooted with ties to the Tungamah Football Netball Club and a job Mrs Ferguson loves as accommodation manager at The Peppermill Inn.

Mrs Kellock said the pair’s blocks of time together now weren’t as long as when they spent entire weekends visiting each other in different towns, and attributed some of the longevity of their friendship to getting that quality time. Still, their bond consists of more than that.

“We don’t live in each other’s back pockets; we’re both busy people, but we always know we’re around for each other,” Mrs Ferguson said.

“Friends are like gold; you can have heaps of acquaintances, but you only have a handful of friends that you can depend on, life or death.”