Dance bands, musicals, melodramas, weddings, choirs, recitals, examinations - she's done it all and is still a long way from putting down the lid of her beloved piano.

Gwen goes all the way back to 1922 when she was born Gwen Shaw in Finch Hatton, west of Mackay. She's rather proud of the town's connection with the Finch-Hatton family - Denys Finch-Hatton, immortalised as Karen Blixen's lover in Out Of Africa, was the son of Henry who, with brother Harold, founded the town.

Gwen had a chuckle over the adventures of the head of the Finch-Hatton clan, the Earl of Winchelsea, when he was invited by the town's Historical Society to pay a visit in 1993. (He was marooned on the top of Mt Dalrymple in foul weather.)

Gwen's father was a sawmiller turned publican and she lived most of her young life in a majestic Queensland pub, the Royal, of course. The hub of the town's social life was typical of the times - the town hall adjoined a pub - and for Gwen there was always music at the local concerts, travelling shows from around Australia, films and weddings.

Piano tuition with Professor Edward Chandler began when she was about 10.

"He ran the town brass band, his entire family was the dance band and there is no instrument I know of that he couldn't play," she said.

Practice and lessons in the hall had special audiences during the monsoon.

"All the hens and roosters had to be put in the hall so they were perched on the canvas seats - the ducks of course were happy outside."

Gwen joined a temperance-style group The Band of Hope when still at school. From there, the Presbyterian minister roped Gwen into playing the organ for Sunday services when she was 15.

"One day, a visiting missionary whipped up a fervour of evangelism and organised the band to sing hymns outside my father's hotel on a Saturday night, also picture night," she said.

"I didn't think my father would want me to sing hymns outside his pub so I detached myself from the group and worked inside the pub serving drinks."

She played the church organ for six years and started to spread her wings at her first gig with a dance band aged 17.

She worked at the post office until she was 21 and then moved around - a while in Sydney, back to Mackay for a year and down to Hobart.

She was a telephonist/receptionist for ABC Radio's 7ZL and 7ZR.

"The ABC put on wonderful performances and once I went to see Harold Blair, who was the first Aboriginal opera singer, with a Cockney who wanted me to help him put his aitches back in the right place," she said.

"We became aware of a man snoring behind us. Harold was in the middle of a dramatic aria, the cymbals clashed, the snorer woke up and exclaimed 'Oh, Jesus George!'

"Several rows erupted laughing, except the Cockney who went crook because he thought we were laughing at Harold, which we weren't of course.

"I didn't bother with his aitches any more after that."

She joined in with a three-piece dance band and played regular gigs on the mainland and on Bruny Island.

Next stops were both islands of New Zealand and by 1950 she was back in Finch Hatton, behind the bar at the Royal.

In town were two lads from Batemans Bay - Tim Wray and Noel Baghurst, who were boarding with Tim's aunt and working at the Cattle Creek sugar mill in the crushing season.

"It's rather a funny thing," Gwen said, "I met Tim at a dance.

"A while later we played together at a local dance with Tim on drums."

Next year Gwen travelled south to Melbourne and six months later arrived in the Bay, where she has been ever since.

Gwen and Tim's first home after their marriage was a small house behind Tim's parents', where Raymond's restaurant is now sited.

Tim's father was an oyster farmer and his grandfather was Timothy Wray, a pioneer oyster farmer who built "Wrayville" at Runnyford.

"The block stretched over where the highway now is and the back fence looked over the mangroves," she said.

An unexpected career move took place soon after Gwen did a home perm on a friend. Word spread and "before long I was doing most of the perms and cuts in the town".

"A home perm in those days was a long process," she said. "Clients had their hair washed in my kitchen sink. I had teenagers coming to me for their haircuts as well.

"A reason for my surprising new career as a hairdresser was that one of the local barbers had been a shearer. The wife of the other barber had done a quick course in perming and women came out with frizzy hair!"

"One of my clients was Daisy Street whose husband owned Streets Ice Cream. She travelled all the way from Narooma and I wasn't a qualified hairdresser," she said.

A chance remark from a client, June Hobson (Errol Lassau's pharmacy assistant), got Gwen back on the keyboard. June told Gwen a pianist was needed for the Batehaven Progress Association's dances at their new hall in Observation Avenue.

Gwen said that she used to play for dances.

"Would you?"

"Yes!"

And so began Gwen's music career in the Bay, which has now been going on for 50 years.

"That was very fortuitous - someone had dobbed me in for illegal hairdressing," Gwen said.

"Tim wasn't earning much so he was pleased - ‘Thank God, no more hair in the sugar bowl,' he said."

Gwen was warned that a Labour and Industry Department inspector was on the lookout.

"I'd been dobbed in, so when a woman came down the path requesting a hair-do, and dressed in a trench coat, I suspected her of being a spy and told her I'd ceased operations.

"It turned out she was no spy, just the wife of the Fisheries inspector."

Gwen and Tim bought a hillside block overlooking the Clyde on an unnamed street on the north side of the river in 1956.

"We asked Ron Prior, then a councillor, for a street name and he said ‘what about Wray!'." And so it was.

Soon after the house was built Mrs Street rang for an appointment.

"I told her I'd given up. She tried to persuade me as she was to have a photo taken for her passport and I did her hair so well.

"I agreed and I was awaiting her arrival when I heard someone bellowing from the foot of the steps.

"‘My wife can't go up there. She's been in hospital,' and off he went, taking his wife with him."

Gwen's prowess on the keyboard was heard throughout the shire and beyond from Ulladulla to Tuross Head, at dances, weddings and funerals.

Gwen had a nostalgic reminder of her music-filled days in Finch Hatton the first time she played at the Batemans Bay Public Hall. A cast member of Sloggetts travelling show - regulars in Finch Hatton - had engraved the name on the wings.

"It was hard work in those days - pianos with notes missing, no amplification and unlined wooden halls - from 8pm to 2am at times," she said.

Sometimes she played alone, sometimes with a drummer and sometimes with a three- or four-piece band. And the crowds could be a bit rough - she remembered the antics at Nelligen Hall in particular.

The opening of the service clubs was heaven sent. No more thumping on clapped-out pianos, comforts such as indoor toilets.

At the Soldiers Club she accompanied several rising young stars, among them Janice Slater, Dorothy Barry and Kamahl, and the Bowling Club once called on her to accompany Gloria Dawn because the hired band couldn't read music.

She was a regular at the Catalina Club where Canberran musicians would sometimes sit in.

Gwen was among the group of women who formed the Batemans Bay Cultural Society in 1971. Two melodramas were staged before the Bay Theatre Players was formed and took over the role of staging plays and musicals in the Bay.

Honoured with life membership of the Players for her dedication, Gwen has played for countless productions over the past 30 years. After the close of Oliver, she is now in rehearsal for Trolls. She also plays for the group's Barber Shop Choir.

Pop music spelt the end of the dance hall era. Her last dance engagement was a hogmanay at Durras. The young surfie crowd couldn't dance and Gwen and her fellow musicians were slow-clapped out of the building.

Gwen's daughters received their music tuition from the St Joseph's sisters at the convent, then the only music teachers in the Bay, while Gwen accompanied the convent school choir. When the convent closed its doors, Gwen took on the 30 pupils left without a teacher for many years.

The Bay's first ballet school began under the directorship of Michael Anderson in 1971 with, of course, Gwen on the piano for rehearsals and exams. Michael was a professional dancer with an early Australian company, the Borovansky Ballet. When he moved on, Stepz Academy filled the void, and Gwen still plays for exams.

In 1973 the Bay's first pre-school opened its doors at the Batehaven Hall and Gwen was director for four years until regulations required a certificated teacher be in charge. She then became library assistant at Batemans Bay Public School, a post she held for 12 years. When Ralph Brown was headmaster, a school choir was formed with Gwen as accompanist.

Gwen said that Ralph was one of the best friends she'd ever had in her life and that she was still very proud of the choir's wins at several Goulburn eisteddfods.

On Anzac Days past, in the early 1950s Gwen played a portable organ on the back of a truck for the services at the Honour Stone.

Gwen's house is adorned with many fine photographs - from her early Box Brownie shots to modern day. Her talent behind the lens is matched by the natural wit and observation of her verse.

"It gets it out of my system," she said. "It's doggerel about things that annoy me." One such verse pointed the finger at a fashion trend which revealed the midriff, often in unsightly form, and another has a few words of wisdom for apocopates (those with the Cockney's problem).

As well as her regular rehearsals with the Bay Players and the choir, she entertains the elderly at the Day Care Club at the Soldiers and is accompanist for the Sing Australia Choir in the Bay.

It's all a busy schedule for anyone aged 84.

"The piano has been my best friend," she said.

"Hopefully, without a degree behind me, I've managed to spread a little cheer.

"A woman said to me the other day, ‘Stay around a little longer, Gwen'."

And many in the Bay will be hoping she does, too.