Keri Glastonbury grew up in Wagga before she relocated to Newcastle upon graduating from Wagga High School in 1988.

A teenager in the 1980s, Ms Glastonbury whittled away many weekend hours at the roller rink inside the old Hammond Hall in the showgrounds.

"Friday night discos were the place to be," Ms Glastonbury said.

"There were always a few there who were really good, and the rest of us would watch them as we tried to get around the rink."

With the cost of hiring rollerskates being her main drawback from spending every free moment inside the rink, Ms Glastonbury recalls that she eventually turned her hard-earned pocket money into a pair all of her own.

"It was an innocent pastime with a bit of style mixed in. In those days, the brand we were all after was Staggers, that was the glam fashion jeans," she said.

During the '70s and '80s, the rollerskating craze was at such prominence in Wagga that recruits at Kapooka were known to skate from the barracks to the CBD on their free nights.

Jennifer Lanyon owned the Hammond Hall rink with her first husband for a brief time between 1980 and 1984 when the sport was at its peak celebrity in Wagga.

With two young daughters at the time, Ms Lanyon turned the hall into a thriving after-school-care of sorts.

"We kept an eye on everyone's kids when they were there, it was a safe place for all ages," Ms Lanyon said.

"I'm still friends with some of those kids - they've grown up and had their own kids now."

Current partner Ted Schulz spent a lot of time at the rink during those years, though it was not until later that he really met its owner.

"My kids went there all the time, and some of them now have grandkids of their own, so there have been generations," he said.

In hindsight, it is likely the two families spent a lot of time together, though they may not have known the significance they would have to each other's world until later.

"We could take our children along, and at that time my sister was quite young and she lived with us too. We all spent a lot of time there," Ms Lanyon said.

"It was a fairly busy thing, seven days a week, all day and half the night, so it was good to have the family there."

Ms Lanyon and her husband at the time purchased the rink from Lyle Parrs and retained his son as the DJ-in-residence.

"During some of the sessions, we'd do the pair skates, which was great for people who were anxious to ask out someone they'd met there. They could just roll around, holding hands, it was innocent," Ms Lanyon said.

To this day, she is unsure of how many long-term relationships began at the roller rink, but she is certain there were at least a few.

Though the roller rink did see its fair share of boisterous fun as well. To the best of her recollection, however, there were never any serious injuries.

"We had roller hockey there sometimes, my daughters loved that. They were six and nine years old then, and it got hard and fast," Ms Lanyon laughed.

By the end of the 1980s, the Hammond Hall roller rink had permanently closed, as the city moved on to find new entertainment.

Nearly a century before that though, rollerskating held a proud place in Wagga.

A popular pastime for members of the city's top-tier residents at the turn of the century was to spend their Friday nights rolling around makeshift rinks.

On occasion, party-goers were also treated to an evening of costumed skating, with theme nights becoming a popular draw-card to the rinks.

But despite the enormous history of roller rinks in Wagga, recent revivals have failed to take off.

An attempt to re-create its glory days with the Wagga Rollerdome fell by the wayside in 2018, after only a year's operation.

Ms Lanyon and Mr Shulz lament the loss, recognising it as a death knell to a simpler time in the city.

"I think what it is is there's a time an a place for these things to work and unfortunately that time has gone," Mr Schulz said.

"It's the interaction between people that has been lost. That's the difference, interaction is not the same as it was."