sentences:  In the 1930s, unemployed people picked up their sugar bags of donated food during the Great Depression; a thousand women in hats, gloves, pearls and floral frocks joined the Queen Mother for morning tea in 1958; and the last of former prime minister Gough Whitlam's "It's Time" rallies was held there in 1972.It was a major ballroom dancing venue throughout the mid and latter part of the twentieth century, when Ballroom dancing was a popular pastime, curtailed when the hall was divided in two as part of the 1994 works (since reversed).For the 1956 Summer Olympics, the building hosted the fencing events.