DME was an Australian invention from the 1950s with application in the terminal area and as an enroute nav aid. In its heyday (long before GPS) enroute nav aids were fairly sparse - being VARs at capital city airfields and a scattering of NDBs. IFR enroute fix requirements could be met with an NDB at each end of track or an NDB at one end and a DME at the other.... if you could track on the DME. This is why the DME homing procedure was used and a logical extention of tracking in on a DME was to develop a cloud break procedure, which became the "DME descent".
So enroute Nav requirements could be met on the leg DN-MGD with dual ADFs (and two lots of ADF errors) or an ADF and a DME (which gave you track & distance and you could calculate ground speed). If you wanted to get visual, then do an ADF approach. But if your ADF or the NDB failed then you could use the published DME descent procedure (not to be confused with the DME arrival procedure).
Halas you probably were the last one, if you did homings in the 90s. We were still doing DME descents at Darwin for renewals late 80s-early 90s, but I never did one in anger.
All this is explained here
DME Operational Notes