Honour calling for Golden City piper

CALIFORNIA Gully’s Helen Ann Dilks has been honoured on King’s Birthday for her service to music with pipe bands with a Medal of the Order of Australia.

A long-time member of the Golden City Pipe Band, Ms Dilks said the bagpipes were in her blood after getting her first taste of them early in life.

“My father was a piper,” she said. “He was a piper before I was a twinkle in his eye.

“He used to tell the story that the day mother brought me home from the hospital when I was born he wrapped me in a blanket, put me in the middle of the kitchen table and played pipes to me.”

Ms Dilks has been a member of the Golden City Pipe Band since 1959, was then made a life member, and has been the Pipe Major twice, first in the early 1990s and again now since 2013.

It’s her work with the Golden City Pipe Band that has led to the accolade, one Ms Dilks said she is honoured to receive.

“It’s extremely overwhelming,” she said. “I do what I do because I love it and I don’t expect any more out of it other than the bands and the people I’m teaching to achieve and get to their highest ability.

“So, obviously people see things a lot deeper than what I do. It’s just an everyday life for me, and I just roll on from day to day.”

It’s been a storied life of playing the bagpipes for Ms Dilks and there’s been several highlights.

“I’ve had some wonderful overseas experiences,” she said. “I have played with a band in Newcastle in England at the World Championships, and I’ve done Celtic festivals in Britain, France, and Spain.”

Yet before she hangs up the instrument, there is one thing Ms Dilks said she wants to do.

“I’m still waiting for the elusive Australian Championship,” she said. “I have gone close, gone second on a few occasions I just want to go that extra step and we will get there one day hopefully.”