Written by Elizabeth Heffernan, RAHS Volunteer

To celebrate Women’s History Month in 2020, the Royal Australian Historical Society will continue our work from last year to highlight Australian women that have contributed to our history in various and meaningful ways. You can browse the women featured on our webpage, Women’s History Month.

In 1927, popular women’s magazine Woman’s World published a profile on an emerging young female sculptor. “She is such a little bit of a thing,” they reported, “that one half expects the wind to pick her up and carry her off. Yet she can hew and mould and chisel” as well as any man. [1]

The woman was Daphne Mayo, celebrated today as Queensland’s most significant female sculptor, and one of the country’s leading woman artists of the twentieth century.

Daphne was born in Sydney in 1895 but moved to Brisbane during her early years of childhood. Her artistic career started young: at just fifteen she commenced a diploma in art craftsmanship at the Brisbane Central Technical College, studying under such renowned names as painter R. Godfrey Rivers and sculptor L. J. Harvey. [2]

Graduating in 1913, the following year Daphne was awarded Queensland’s first publicly funded travelling art scholarship. Though her departure overseas was delayed for five years by World War I, she made the most of her extra time in Australia, attending Julian Ashton’s Sydney Art School and working on her stone carving skills under Frank Williams.

In 1919 Daphne set off for London, briefly attending the Royal College of Art before entering the Sculpture School of the Royal Academy of Arts in December 1920. She graduated three years later with the school’s gold medal for sculpture and the Edward Stott Travelling Studentship to Italy. Her time in Rome was cut short by her brother’s death in 1924 and in June 1925, Daphne returned home, broke off her engagement with fellow artist Lloyd Rees, and launched headfirst into her career. [3]

Daphne made headlines for her numerous public commissions during the late 1920s and 1930s. She carved, in situ, the Queensland Women’s War Memorial in Anzac Square, relief panels for the chapel at the Mount Thompson Crematorium, and, perhaps her greatest work of all, the Brisbane City Hall tympanum between 1927 and 1930.

During these years she also made great strides towards enhancing the artistic reputation of her home state. Along with her close friend, painter Vida Lahey, she founded the Queensland Art Fund in 1929. She and Vida also oversaw the establishment of the state’s first art reference library in 1936. Daphne also organised Brisbane’s first significant loan exhibition in over a decade in 1930, and helped obtain for the Queensland National Art Gallery the Godfrey Rivers Trust in 1932, a collection honouring the work of her teacher from over two decades ago. [4]

Daphne moved to Sydney during the Second World War and though she no longer worked on large-scale public commissions, her artistry continued to flourish. She turned to portrait sculpting, including the bust of her once-fiancé Lloyd Rees along with a number of other subjects. Olympian, a half-body female sculpture carved in 1946 and cast in bronze after 1958, is one of her more famous works from this period. [5]

She was appointed a Member of the British Empire (MBE) in 1959 and upon her return to Brisbane, Queensland Art Gallery’s first woman trustee in 1960. Between 1961 and 1965 Daphne completed her final major commission of a statue of Sir William Glasgow. Her delayed completion led some media outlets at the time to paint her as an eccentric old woman unfit for the task – but at seventy years old, with the help of assistants, Daphne finished the statue and proved them wrong. [6]

After her death in 1981 at the age of eighty-five, Daphne continued to be honoured amongst her peers and admirers. The University of Queensland conducts a biennial Daphne Mayo Visiting Professorship in Visual Culture; St Margaret’s School, her alma mater, hosts the biennial MAYO Arts Festival and Friends of MAYO who fundraise to acquire artworks for the school. The Queensland Art Gallery held a retrospective exhibition of her sculpture in 2011, thirty years on from her death. Sculptors Queensland honours her as a “cultural icon”. [7] For as small and unassuming a woman as Daphne was, she took the male-dominated world of sculpture by storm. Australian art has not been the same since.

---

References:

[1] ‘Daphne Mayo’, Woman’s World, 1 October 1927, p. 554, in Judith Marilyn McKay, ‘Daphne Mayo, Sculptor’ (Master of Arts Honours thesis, University of Sydney, 1981), p. 4.
[2] Judith M. McKay, ‘Biography – Lilian Daphne Mayo’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, 2012, <http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mayo-lilian-daphne-14954>, accessed 2 March 2020.
[3] McKay, ‘Biography’.
[4] McKay, ‘Biography’.
[5] ‘Olympian – Daphne Mayo’, QAGOMA Learning, <https://learning.qagoma.qld.gov.au/artworks/olympian/>, accessed 3 March 2020.
[6] McKay, ‘Daphne Mayo’, p. 7.
[7] ‘Daphne Mayo Visiting Fellowship’, University of Queensland, <https://communication-arts.uq.edu.au/daphne-mayo-visiting-fellowship>, accessed 3 March 2020; ‘Daphne Mayo’, St Margaret’s, <https://www.stmargarets.qld.edu.au/125/125-notables/daphne-mayo>, accessed 3 March 2020; ‘Daphne Mayo’, QAGOMA, <https://www.qagoma.qld.gov.au/whats-on/exhibitions/past-exhibitions/daphne-mayo>, accessed 3 March 2020; ‘History’, Sculptors Queensland, <https://sculptorsqld.org.au/about/history>, accessed 3 March 2020. 

Written by Dr Catherine Bishop, Macquarie University

To celebrate Women’s History Month in 2020, the Royal Australian Historical Society will continue our work from last year to highlight Australian women that have contributed to our history in various and meaningful ways. You can browse the women featured on our webpage, Women’s History Month.

‘A crank’ and ‘a damn fool’ were two of the epithets applied to missionary Annie Lock in the late 1920s. ‘Missionary heroine’ and ‘Big Boss to the natives’ were two more. As a white woman missionary to Aboriginal people in Central Australia at the time of the Coniston Massacre (1928), Annie Lock was controversial. After Aboriginal people murdered a white dingo scalper on Coniston Station, a police party set out to catch the culprits. In the process they slaughtered anything from 17 to over 100 Aboriginal men, women and children. They did not catch the murderer. Some Walpiri people sought refuge at Annie Lock’s makeshift camp at Harding Soak, near Ti Tree Well. They trusted her to protect them, if only through her presence, even though she was a relative newcomer to the area. She had arrived less than 18 months previously, pitching her tent at a rapidly drying soak and providing basic nursing, childcare and some food, along with her evangelistic message. Local Indigenous people might have appreciated her services, but Annie Lock was intensely unpopular among influential white people in Alice Springs. The local police, government officials and other missionaries, along with the majority of the scattered white settlers in the area found her surplus to requirements. She was ‘a damn fool’, wrote one visiting doctor, with ‘neither the knowledge, the drugs nor the skill required’ to heal the large number of ‘sick and diseased Aborigines’ she had gathered around her. As a white woman ‘living alone amongst naked blacks’, she was ‘lowering [their] respect for whites’. This was one of the conclusions in 1929 of the official government Enquiry into what has become known as the Coniston Massacre, an Enquiry brought about primarily because of the letters written by Annie Lock and her ally, Methodist Home Missionary Athol McGregor.

This was probably the most dramatic period in Annie Lock’s missionary career, which spanned over 30 years and four states and territories. She was a faith missionary, which meant that she was not paid and could not solicit donations directly, relying on God to provide all her needs. This understandably meant that she was fairly impoverished, although she became adept at writing letters and reports requesting ‘practical’ support in very specific terms. For example, in 1933 she told her supporters that she had ‘an offer of a nice staunch horse for £12’, asking that they join her in prayer so that God might provide the funds. Needless to say, He did.

Born in 1876 in Riverton, South Australia, in the middle of a large Wesleyan farming family, Annie left school early and was a dressmaker before attending missionary college in Adelaide and then joining what would eventually become the United Aborigines Mission (UAM). Her career started predictably enough: after a brief apprenticeship she was put in charge of the mission at Sackville Reach between 1904 and 1906, before being sent to Forster further north. She looked after children, preached services, taught school and acted as an intermediary when required. In 1909 she was sent to Perth, where she became matron of Dulhi Gunyah ‘Orphanage’, caring for children ‘collected’ by local police, as well as some who were sent by their parents for an education.

In 1912 Annie turned 36 and began to go off piste. As one colleague later put it, ‘God had endowed her with qualities which make for pioneering’, adding, not awfully tactfully, ‘It was soon found that she had a way of her own which would necessitate her working alone’. Annie established a mission station at Katanning in the south west of WA, and was essentially responsible in 1915 for the removal of people from the town reserve to Carrolup, which became one of Chief Protector A.O. Neville’s notorious ‘great reserves’, to which Indigenous people were forcibly sent. By then Annie had moved on, unable to work with her new colleagues, going north to Sunday Island. Here she worked (this time successfully) with the equally eccentric independent missionary Sydney Hadley. She developed an interest in Indigenous culture, although this also manifested itself in her collecting Indigenous artefacts and later selling them to the West Australian Museum to help fund the mission.

The extreme climate of the far north necessitated Annie’s removal south. After a year’s furlough she travelled up to Oodnadatta in 1924, founding what would become one of South Australia’s best-known children’s homes, Colebrook Home. This home for ‘part-Aboriginal’ children would become synonymous with the ‘Stolen Generations’, particularly after it moved south to Quorn and then the outskirts of Adelaide. As ever, Annie did not cope with sharing authority and when assistants were sent to Oodnadatta, she moved on. This was when she went, against the express wishes of the missionary society to Central Australia, where she had an uncomfortable time as we have seen. Her sojourn in the north improved when she moved to the Murchison Ranges, spending two years here looking after a number of children. The son of one of those children recalled decades later that his mother spoke fondly of Annie Lock, she taught them ‘right from wrong’ and, significantly, because she was on country, mothers could visit their children. Such memories complicate the story of missionaries and Indigenous children, particularly when one considers Annie Lock’s own words at this time: ‘the only thing I can see is to get the children right away from their parents’. This is a story of contradictions.

Without any support from the UAM, Annie Lock’s time in Central Australia was necessarily limited. In 1932 she left, never to return. Instead she took an intrepid 500 mile buggy trip across the desert west to Ooldea, where, with the full support of both the South Australian government and the UAM, she established Ooldea Mission at the Soak. She fought with Daisy Bates, who considered her claim jumped, infuriated her fellow workers and found the Aboriginal people ‘the cheekiest I have ever worked with’. After she was attacked by one man because she refused rations (he argued, with some justification, that she had no right to withhold them) and disciplined his daughter by hitting her, it was clear that it was time for her to leave. In 1937 she retired from the mission aged 60 and astonished her colleagues by getting married. For the next six years until her death in 1943, she and her Plymouth Brethren husband, retired bank manager and widower James Johansen, tripped around Eyre Peninsula evangelising to white people.

While one may not admire all of Annie Lock’s actions or opinions, one cannot help but have respect for her courage, perseverance and the fact that she offered a friendly hand, albeit with strings attached. She was a significant figure in Australian history, one of an army of female missionaries who had profound effects, both positive and negative, on generations of Indigenous people. Lest we forget.

For more about Annie Lock’s extraordinary life, both good and bad, look out for Catherine Bishop’s forthcoming biography in 2021.

 

Written by Elizabeth Heffernan, RAHS Volunteer

To celebrate Women’s History Month, the Royal Australian Historical Society will highlight Australian women that have contributed to our history in various and meaningful ways. You can browse the women featured on our new webpage, Women’s History Month.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are advised that this webpage contains the images and names of people who have passed away.

Activist, educator, environmentalist, and the first Aboriginal Australian to publish a work of poetry – it seems Oodgeroo Noonuccal could do it all. Born Kathleen Jean Mary Ruska and known for most of her public life as Kath Walker, Oodgeroo (meaning ‘paperbark tree’) chose to go by her traditional language name in 1988.

Born on Stradbroke Island off the coast of Queensland, Oodgeroo’s childhood was spent amongst the nature that would later play an important role in her poems. Her father, a labourer of Noonuccal descent, was a prominent campaigner for better conditions for Aboriginal workers, and this too left an impression on a young Oodgeroo. [1]

Though she left school at age thirteen to pursue work as a domestic servant, for which she was paid a lower rate than white domestics, Oodgeroo had already learned how powerful the written word could be. In later years she would take classes in stenography and secretarial skills, though her office jobs were short-lived. [2]

During World War II, after the capture of her brothers in Singapore by the Japanese, Oodgeroo joined the Australian Women’s Army Service (AWAS), one of at least nine Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women to do so. She rose through the ranks to become a lance corporal, working in switchboard operations and the pay office until discharged in January 1944. Afterwards, she and her husband Bruce Walker became involved in the Communist Party of Australia as they were the only party at the time who did not support the White Australia policy. Oodgeroo eventually left because “they wanted to write my speeches” – an insult to a woman who could captivate her audience through language better than any politician. [3]

It was in the 1960s that Oodgeroo became increasingly engaged in both poetry and Aboriginal rights. Her first poetry collection, We Are Going, was published in 1964 by Jacaranda Press, and some claim its sales ranked second only to the country’s best-selling poet, C. J. Dennis. Though her critics derided her work as “protest poetry”, Oodgeroo continued to write, publish, and win prestigious literary awards for her efforts, including the Dame Mary Gilmore medal. [4]

At the same time as her literary career was taking off, Oodgeroo thrust herself into the political sphere. She became involved in the Queensland Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders (QCAATSI) and the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders (FCAATSI), both of which were instrumental to the success of the 1967 referendum. After unsuccessfully running for election as the ALP candidate in her local electorate of Greenslopes, Oodgeroo turned her efforts towards Aboriginal-run activist organisations rather than white-dominated ones, joining the newly formed Brisbane Aboriginal and Islanders Council and the National Tribal Council (NTC). [5]

Oodgeroo returned to her childhood home in 1971 at age fifty. There, she established the Noonuccal-Nughie Education and Cultural Centre at Moongalba, where her teachings inspired thousands of school children, educators, and visitors. Though her politics had become less demanding Oodgeroo continued to write, and was the poet-in-residence at Bloomsburg State College in Pennsylvania, USA, in 1978. [6]

Ten years later, Oodgeroo adopted the Noonuccal name she is now known by, and returned the MBE she had been awarded in 1970 in protest over the Bicentenary ‘Celebrations’ of White Australia. “From the Aboriginal point of view,” she asked, “what is there to celebrate?” [7]

Oodgeroo passed away in 1993. Throughout her lifetime she had been a proud Aboriginal activist, educator, mother, and poet, forever striving to improve the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and pouring her heart out into verse. Amidst her poems about grief, loss, and devastation, it is her hopefulness for a better and brighter future that lives on:

Sore, sore, the tears you shed
When hope seemed folly and justice dead.
Was the long night weary? Look up, dark band,
The dawn is at hand. [8]

---

References:

[1] Sue Abbey, ‘Biography – Oodgeroo Noonuccal’, Indigenous Australia, Australian Dictionary of Biography, <http://ia.anu.edu.au/biography/noonuccal-oodgeroo-18057>, accessed 27 March 2020; ‘Oodgeroo Noonuccal’, Australian Poetry Library, <https://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/noonuccal-oodgeroo>, accessed 27 March 2020.
[2] Abbey, ‘Biography’; ‘Oodgeroo Noonuccal’.
[3] ‘Kath Walker’, Australian War Memorial, <https://www.awm.gov.au/learn/memorial-boxes/3/online-resources/walker>, accessed 27 March 2020; ‘Oodgeroo Noonuccal’; Abbey, ‘Biography’.
[4] Abbey, ‘Biography’.
[5] ‘Oodgeroo Noonuccal’.
[6] Abbey, ‘Biography’; ‘Oodgeroo Noonuccal: author of We Are Going’, AustLit: Discover Australian Stories, <https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/A12345>, accessed 27 March 2020.
[7] Clare Land, ‘Oodgeroo Noonuccal’, Women Australia, 26 August 2002, <http://www.womenaustralia.info/biogs/IMP0082b.htm>, accessed 27 March 2020.
[8] Kath Walker, ‘The Dawn Is At Hand’, The Dawn Is At Hand (Brisbane: Jacaranda Press, 1966), p. 9.

Written by Elizabeth Heffernan, RAHS Volunteer

To celebrate Women’s History Month, the Royal Australian Historical Society will highlight Australian women that have contributed to our history in various and meaningful ways. You can browse the women featured on our new webpage, Women’s History Month.

For many Australians, skiing at Thredbo is a winter holiday pastime. What people may not realise is how much these iconic ski-fields owe to Czechoslovakian migrant Alexandra Nekvapilová, known during her years in Australia as Sasha Nekvapil.

As a young girl, Sasha learned to ski in the Krknose (Giant) Mountains near Prague. [1] Though WWII in Europe brought with it severe travel restrictions, Sasha continued to ski, even travelling to Austria to compete. Following the war, Sasha became the national skiing champion for Czechoslovakia and competed in the 1948 Swiss Winter Olympics in St Moritz, performing remarkably well for someone without any formal skiing tuition. [2]

Everything changed for Sasha, her husband Karel, and her brother Frank, when the Communist Party seized control of the country in February 1948 in what is known as the ‘Putsch’. [3] Scared to live in a Czechoslovakia that was rapidly becoming a dictatorship, Sasha and her family made several thwarted attempts to escape until finally the opportunity came. Following a meet in Grindelwald, Switzerland, Sasha escaped the train departing Zurich and waited two months for Karel and Frank to join her. Shortly after all three escaped, leaving Czechoslovakia without authorisation became punishable by death. [4]

Sasha and her family spent two years in Belgium waiting to emigrate from Europe. In 1950, Australia offered them a new home.

The Nekvapils’ early years in Australia were spent in Victoria where they worked as the caretakers of the Australian Postal Institute lodge at Mt Buller and operated a ski school. In 1952, Sasha was offered a position as a ski instructor at Charlotte Pass, and travelled there alone. Tony Sponar, a fellow Czechoslovakian, managed the ski school there but took ill the following year. Sasha stepped up to run the school, and is remembered as a fine and beloved teacher by her many students at The Chalet over the years. [5]

Sasha was reunited with Karel in 1958 with the construction of a new ski lodge at the Thredbo resort. Called Sasha’s Lodge, it became one of Thredbo’s most exclusive ski chalets. After twelve years the Nekvapils sold the lodge and built Sasha’s Apartments next door, moving in as soon as they were completed. [6] As locals, Sasha and her husband became actively involved in the life of the village and ski fraternity, selling boutique imported skiwear and donating trophies for the Thredbo Ski Racing Club. [7]

After Karel died in 1992, Sasha moved to Canberra with their son Michael. They made the trip to Thredbo for a two-week ski holiday every year. In 2000, Sasha carried the Olympic Torch up the chairlift in the relay before the Sydney Games. She was honoured with the names “Queen of the Mountains” and the “Angel of Thredbo” during her lifetime, and the run on the western side of Australia’s highest ski lift, named Karel’s T-Bar after her husband, is known as Sasha’s Schuss. [8]

Almost three hundred mourners attended Sasha’s funeral in 2014. [9] Today she is still remembered and admired for her elegance, fluidity, and stylishness on the slopes all the way from Czechoslovakia to Thredbo. Sasha’s legacy is a reminder that where you are born does not automatically determine where you end up. Her contribution to Australia’s history as a European migrant should not be forgotten.

---

References:

[1] Chas Keys, Thredbo: Pioneers, Legends, Community (Canberra: Halstead Press, 2007), p. 39.
[2] Amy Ripley, ‘Sasha Nekvapil, Thredbo founder, dies aged 95’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 1 November 2014, <https://www.smh.com.au/national/sasha-nekvapil-thredbo-founder-dies-aged-95-20141031-11f1fg.html>.
[3] Chrissi Webb, ‘Treasured memories of the Angel of Thredbo’, The Canberra Times, 18 June 2014, <https://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/act/treasured-memories-of-the-angel-of-thredbo-20140617-3abhf.html>.
[4] Keys, Thredbo, p. 39.
[5] ibid, p. 40.
[6] Ripley, ‘Sasha Nekvapil’.
[7] Keys, Thredbo, p. 40.
[8] ibid, p. 41.
[9] Webb, ‘Treasured memories’.

Written by Elizabeth Heffernan, RAHS Volunteer

To celebrate Women’s History Month, the Royal Australian Historical Society will highlight Australian women that have contributed to our history in various and meaningful ways. You can browse the women featured on our new webpage, Women’s History Month.

Edith Cowan is familiar to most Australians as one of the faces on our fifty-dollar banknote, commemorating her achievement as the first Australian woman to serve as a member of parliament. Throughout her life she worked tirelessly to promote the rights and welfare of women and children, and used her political platform to further these aims through legislation. Edith’s beliefs and policies helped pave the way for the 1984 Sex Discrimination Act, which afforded people of all genders, sexual orientations, and relationship statuses the same legal rights and privileges in all areas of public life. [1]

Born in Glengarry, Western Australia, in 1861, Edith had a difficult childhood. Her mother, Eliza, died in childbirth when Edith was six years old, and ten years later her father, Kenneth, who suffered from depression and alcoholism, shot his second wife in a domestic dispute and was hanged for her murder. During these terrible years, Edith attended a boarding school in Perth run by the Cowan sisters, whose brother James she married in 1879. It was these experiences early in her life that steered Edith towards a career dedicated to the protection of women’s dignity and family welfare. [2]

In 1894, now the mother of five children, Edith was one of the founding members the Karrakatta Women’s Club, acting as its first secretary and later vice-president and president. The literature club encouraged the women of Perth to broaden their horizons by reading authors such as American feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and quickly became synonymous with the women’s suffrage movement in Western Australia. [3]

In the new century, Edith helped establish both the Children’s Protection Society in 1906 and its successor, the Children’s Court, in 1907, in which she became one of the first women appointed to its bench in 1915. Edith went on to become one of the country’s first female justices of the peace in 1920. [4]

Edith was also actively involved in the Women’s Justice Association, the Western Australian League of Nations Union, the Western Australian National Council for Women, and the Western Australian division of the Red Cross Society. [5]

In 1921, at the age of sixty, Edith became the first woman elected to parliament in the seat of West Perth, one year after legislation prohibiting female parliamentary representation was lifted. She was elected despite her radical platform, which advocated for, among other things: state kitchens, child endowment payments to mothers, and day nurseries for working women. [6] Such a landslide victory as the one she achieved reveals just how important and overdue women in parliament were in early twentieth-century Australia.

Sadly, Edith’s stint in government did not last. She was successful in passing her landmark Women’s Legal Status Bill in 1923, but the controversy surrounding the at-the-time radical legislation cost Edith the support of her party and her victory in the next election. [7] Even as women’s rights were gaining more momentum in Australia, Edith was still ahead of her time.

Edith was remembered after her passing in 1932 as a woman who strived to work “unselfishly, unceasingly and constructively in the interests of her country… Nothing daunted, she blazed the trail.” [8] Her actions should serve as inspiration for all female Australian leaders today.

---

References:

[1] Clare Wright, ‘Cowan, Edith Dircksey’, The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia, <https://www.womenaustralia.info/entries/cowan-edith-dircksey/>, accessed 26 March 2019.
[2] Margaret Brown, ‘Biography – Edith Dircksey Cowan’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, <http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cowan-edith-dircksey-5791>, accessed 26 March 2019.
[3] Wright, ‘Cowan, Edith Dircksey’.
[4] Rosemary Francis, ‘Cowan, Edith Dircksey’, The Australian Women’s Register, <http://www.womenaustralia.info/biogs/IMP0130b.htm>, last modified 12 September 2017.
[5] ‘Edith Dircksey Cowan’, Edith Cowan University, <https://www.ecu.edu.au/about-ecu/welcome-to-ecu/edith-dircksey-cowan>, accessed 26 March 2019.
[6] Wright, ‘Cowan, Edith Dircksey’.
[7] Ibid.
[8] ‘Memorial to Edith Cowan’, The Beverly Times, 9 December 1932, p. 1.

Written by Elizabeth Heffernan, RAHS Volunteer

To celebrate Women’s History Month, the Royal Australian Historical Society will highlight Australian women that have contributed to our history in various and meaningful ways. You can browse the women featured on our new webpage, Women’s History Month.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are advised that this webpage contains the images and names of people who have passed away.

Dr. Thancoupie Gloria Fletcher James of the Thanakwithi people went by her totemic name of Thancoupie or Thanakupi, meaning ‘wattle flower’, for most of her public life. She is widely credited today as the founder of the Indigenous ceramics movement in Australia.

Born in Napranum on the western coast of the Cape York Peninsula in Far North Queensland, Thancoupie had a traditional Aboriginal childhood of hunting, seasonal travelling, and storytelling, which would go on to inspire the artworks of her later life. [1] From a very early age she was aware of the deep significance clay had for her people: “The men used to keep the clay in a special storehouse and we kids were not allowed to touch it.” [2]

Thancoupie started her career as a pre-school teacher, only practicing art part-time. In 1971 she made the bold decision to move interstate and attend the East Sydney Technical College, today the National Art School. After her initial struggle with using sacred clay as an artistic medium, Thancoupie studied in earnest under famous Australian ceramicist Peter Rushforth and world-renowned Japanese potter Shiga Shigeo. Upon her graduation she became the first qualified Indigenous Australian ceramicist in the country. [3]

Thancoupie found working with clay to be “strange but exciting”. [4] She developed a unique style that evolved over time, from large bowls to spherical shapes to more organic forms inspired by nature. Clay became a means by which she expressed her own personal and cultural connection to the land and its creatures. Her work was well-received and quickly gained traction within Australia’s artistic circles.

In 1986, Thancoupie attended the seventeenth Sao Paolo Biennale as Australia’s Cultural Commissioner. Through this, she was able to tour her sculptures in Brazil, Mexico, and later in Britain during the Portsmouth Festival. [5] Throughout her career she mounted more than fifteen solo exhibitions, beginning with her very first held in the backyard of close friend and later agent, Jennifer Isaacs, in 1983. [6]

Thancoupie maintained a strong connection to her native culture throughout her lifetime. As the last fluent speaker of Thaynakwith, she was determined to preserve it for future generations. To this end she published Thanakupi’s Guide to Language and Culture in 2007, a Thaynakwith dictionary which has since received great praise. [7] She helped found the Weipa Festival on Cape York, and as an elder ran holiday education programs for Indigenous children. [8] Thancoupie’s dedication to the preservation of her culture is seen clearly in her artwork, which encodes the Dreaming narratives imparted to her by her own elders within the clay and pigment of her ceramics.

Thancoupie was appointed a Doctor of Griffith University in 1998 for her services to Aboriginal Arts. In 2003 she received an Order of Australia award for her contributions to the Indigenous Australian and artistic communities.

Thancoupie’s artwork and achievements in history are as timeless as the clay she created with. Her belief in and dedication towards her local community is best expressed in her own words: “Everyone is art. Everybody has it.” [9] Thancoupie spent a lifetime proving those words true.

---

References:

[1] Paul Donnelly, ‘Thancoupie (Thanakupi) the Potter (1937-2011) – Inside the Collection’, Museum of Arts and Sciences, 16 May 2011, <https://maas.museum/inside-the-collection/2011/05/16/thancoupie-thanakupi-the-potter-1937-2011/>, accessed 26 March 2019.[2] Jennifer Isaacs, ‘Thancoupie (1937-2011)’, Jennifer Isaacs, <http://www.jenniferisaacs.com.au/thancoupie/>, accessed 26 March 2019.
[3] Donnelly, ‘Thancoupie’.
[4] ‘Gloria Fletcher Thancoupie – Artists Profile’, Cooee Art, <https://www.cooeeart.com.au/marketplace/artists/profile/ThancoupieGlori/>, accessed 26 March 2019.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Donnelly, ‘Thancoupie’.
[7] Christine Nicholls, ‘Artist kept her people’s culture and language alive’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 7 September 2011, <https://www.smh.com.au/national/artist-kept-her-peoples-culture-and-language-alive-20110906-1jvrl.html>, accessed 26 March 2019.
[8] Donnelly, ‘Thancoupie’.
[9] ‘Thanakupi – Indigenous Australian Ceramic Artist’, Ceramics and Pottery Arts and Resources, 7 April 2012, <https://www.veniceclayartists.com/tag/thancoupie/>, accessed 26 March 2019.

Written by Elizabeth Heffernan, RAHS Volunteer

To celebrate Women’s History Month, the Royal Australian Historical Society will highlight Australian women that have contributed to our history in various and meaningful ways. You can browse the women featured on our new webpage, Women’s History Month.

Professor Dorothy Hill is a well-known name in Australia’s scientific circles. The first woman elected president of the Australian Academy of Science, and the first female university professor in Australia, Dorothy lived a fruitful and fulfilling life and career that left its mark upon the fields of geology and palaeontology forever.

Born in Brisbane in 1907, Dorothy enjoyed an academically successful childhood, winning scholarships to study at Brisbane Girls Grammar School and the University of Queensland. Her interests were wide and varied, from poetry to biology to horseback riding, but it was geology she pursued in her tertiary education. Dorothy never gave up on her early passions, however; most of the fieldwork conducted for her honours studies was done on horseback. [1]

Dorothy graduated university with a First Class Honours degree in geology and a prestigious Gold Medal for Outstanding Merit – the first time a woman had ever gained that honour from the University of Queensland. The medal won her a Foundation Travelling Scholarship to the University of Cambridge in 1930. Whilst in England she published a number of papers on the structural patterns of corals which changed the way they were studied by her colleagues. Her contributions were acknowledged by the Old Students’ Research Fellowship of Newnham College, Cambridge, and the Daniel Pidgeon Fund from the Geological Society of London, which she was awarded in 1932 and 1934 respectively. [2]

Returning home in 1937, Dorothy continued her ground-breaking work in coral palaeontology. Her most outstanding contribution during this time was her effort to map the known coral faunas of Australia in order to outline a wide-ranging stratigraphy, from which more comprehensive studies of these corals could be conducted. The criteria developed in her PhD work and used in her studies have since become the standards for coral work around the world.

During the Second World War, Dorothy enlisted in the Women’s Royal Australian Naval Service (WRANS). Her role as an Operations Staff Officer had her deciphering codes, organising shipping safety, and communicating with Australian, American, and British service personnel. Dorothy devoted up to 90 hours a week to her WRANS duties, and at the end of the war served on the Demobilisation Planning Committee. [3]

Dorothy continued her research post-war. She immersed herself in Russian studies on archaeocyathid faunas, fieldwork trips with the Queensland Geological Survey and Bureau of Mineral Resources, and the collation of a comprehensive Geology of Queensland to aid further researchers in her field. In 1946, Dorothy was appointed a lecturer at the University of Queensland, rising through the faculty to become a Professor in 1960. [4] Her work on the Treatise on Invertebrate Palaeontology during this time continues to be consulted in scientific circles today.

Dorothy’s gender was never an obstacle in her career. She became the first female fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 1956, its first female President in 1970, the first Australian woman to be a fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1964, and the first woman appointed President of the University of Queensland Professorial Board in 1971. Throughout her life she worked tirelessly to promote female enrolment in tertiary science degrees. The Dorothy Hill Medal is today granted to outstanding female researchers in the earth sciences, proving that “previous conventions,” in Dorothy’s words, need not dictate a woman’s chosen life and career. [6]

---

References:

[1] K. S. W. Campbell and J. S. Jell, ‘Dorothy Hill 1907 – 1997’, Australian Academy of Science, <https://www.science.org.au/fellowship/fellows/biographical-memoirs/dorothy-hill-1907-1997>, accessed 11 March 2019.
[2] Campbell and Jell, ‘Dorothy Hill’.
[3] ‘New WRANS Appointment’, The Argus, 4 October 1944, p. 4.
[4] Dorothy Hill, ‘The first fifty years of the Department of Geology of the University of Queensland’, Papers of the Department of Geology, the University of Queensland 10, no. 1 (1981), pp. 1-68.
[5] ‘Great Queensland women of our past – Dorothy Hill,” Queensland Government, <https://www.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/38611/dorothy-hill-biography.pdf>, accessed 11 March 2019.

Written by Elizabeth Heffernan, RAHS Volunteer

To celebrate Women’s History Month, the Royal Australian Historical Society will highlight Australian women that have contributed to our history in various and meaningful ways. You can browse the women featured on our new webpage, Women’s History Month.

The Royal Australian Historical Society would not be where it is today without the remarkable contributions of one of its founding female members, Josephine Ethel Foster.

Born in Paddington in 1870, Ethel – as she preferred to be known – dedicated her life to the preservation, promotion, and appreciation of Australian history. Ethel shared this keen interest with her husband, Theodore Arthur George Foster, whom she married in 1896. Together in 1901 they helped establish the then Australian Historical Society, today the RAHS.

The turn of the century was a time when many of Sydney’s older landmarks were being replaced, urging historically minded Australians like Ethel and her husband to capture the images and memories of early Sydney before they vanished completely. [1]

Even before founding the Society, the Fosters were active participants in the preservation of Sydney’s historic landmarks. From 1900 they devoted two years worth of weekends to photographing, sketching, and recording the inscriptions of over 700 monuments in Sandhills Cemetery before their removal for the construction of Sydney’s Central Railway Station. Today these photographs are collected in five volumes in the Mitchell Library and are an invaluable resource to historians researching the subject.

Ethel also photographed a number of iconic Sydney buildings before their demolition, donating these glass lantern slides to the RAHS collection as windows into the city’s past. [2]

As an active member of the Historical Society, Ethel was elected its first female Councillor on 21 February 1912. She served in this role on three separate occasions, from 1912–16, 1919–21, and 1923–39, moving into the Vice-President position from 1940–43.

As the first woman awarded the Society Fellowship in 1924, Ethel later founded the RAHS Women’s Auxiliary in 1927, aiming to involve “every lady member of the Society” as well as to raise funds for the purchase of a building. She was president of the Auxiliary for the rest of her life, and oversaw the completion of its main goal with the purchase of a three-storey wool store near Circular Quay in 1940, which was refurbished and opened as History House in 1941. The lounge room in the building was named the Foster Room in her honour. [3]

During her lifetime, Ethel saw the Society’s membership grow from less than 20 members at its establishment, to over 1000 by the time of her death in 1955. In her 55 years of Society membership she claimed to never have missed an Annual General Meeting.

Upon her passing, she left the RAHS a large, generous, and invaluable bequest: a significant financial donation and, most importantly, her collection of over 250 books, 30 volumes of press clippings, and 381 glass slides for the RAHS Library. Today, the Fosters are commemorated by the annual Foster Prize awarded to the top Australian history student in the NSW Higher School Certificate. [4]

Ethel Foster was remembered in her obituary as an intelligent, generous, and hard-working woman who accomplished much for historical preservation and women’s involvement in the first half of the twentieth century. The Biblical quote chosen by Ethel for her own epitaph, “She hath done what she could,” is therefore fitting – but perhaps even more so is the description of Ethel by her husband as they finished their work in the Sandhills Cemetery. [5] “The lady seated on the crooked bole of the ‘monotoca’ wears a smile of satisfaction,” said Arthur at the conclusion of his 1918 lecture on the topic. “Her labour of love is finished”. [6]

---

References:

[1] Andrew Houison, ‘Some Presidential Addresses: Dr Andrew Houison, 15 March 1901’, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society 87, vol. 1 (2001), pp. 158–59.
[2] Anne-Maree Whitaker, ‘Arthur and Ethel Foster’, History, March 2006, p. 7.
[3] Whitaker, ‘Arthur and Ethel Foster’, p. 7.
[4] Whitaker, ‘Arthur and Ethel Foster’, p. 8.
[5] K.R. Cramp, ‘In Memoriam: J. E. Foster’, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society 41, no. 5 (1955), p. 196.
[6] Whitaker, ‘Arthur and Ethel Foster’, p. 8.

Written by Elizabeth Heffernan, RAHS Volunteer

To celebrate Women’s History Month, the Royal Australian Historical Society will highlight Australian women that have contributed to our history in various and meaningful ways. You can browse the women featured on our new webpage, Women’s History Month.

Born in Kew, NSW, in 1915, Nancy-Bird Walton stayed true to her name as a pioneering female pilot in Australia from the time she received her commercial licence at age 19 until her death in 2009. Learning to fly during 1930s Australia when a female pilot was still called an “aviatrix”, Nancy defied convention and expectation to become both the youngest Australian woman to gain a pilot’s licence, and the first woman in the Commonwealth to obtain a licence allowing her to carry passengers. [1]

Nancy’s career in aviation began with fairs and race meetings along with her co-pilot Peggy McKillop, until she was hired by Reverend Stanley Drummond as part of the Far West Children’s Health Scheme to fly nurses around the outback. This important work brought much-needed aid and support to mothers and children around the country, and forever etched her name into history as the “Angel of the Outback”. [2]

During the Second World War, Nancy played a vital role in recruiting and training women for the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) which, though they did not see combat, operated as integral ground and support staff for the Royal Australian Air Force. As she was married to Englishman Charles Walton, Nancy could not join the WAAF, but remained Commandant of the Women’s Air Training Corps for the duration of the war. [3]

In 1950, Nancy founded the Australian Women Pilots’ Association (AWPA). She became an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1966, and an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 1990. [4] Declared a National Living Treasure in 1997 and inducted into the Victorian Honour Roll of Women in 2001, perhaps Nancy’s most remarkable career achievement was the fact that she was never involved in an accident, despite the many risks early aviation posed. Unlike many of her contemporaries, notably American female pilot Amelia Earhart, Nancy lived to hand in her licence in 2006 at an astonishing 90 years of age. [5] Upon her death three years later, her ashes were scattered from Tiger Moths over the Luskintyre Aviation Flying Museum Airfield. [6]

With construction underway on the new Badgerys Creek airport to be named after Nancy-Bird Walton, it remains more important than ever to reflect upon her achievements as one of Australia’s most skilful, daring, and ambitious women in our history. Far from letting traditional gender roles govern her life, Nancy carved out a new path for women everywhere to tread – and to fly. The title of her 1990 autobiography reflects the shock generated by her career choice at the time, but today also serves as a reminder of the barriers broken down by Nancy’s inspiring and unapologetic life: “My God! It’s a Woman”.

---

References:

[1] Malcolm Brown and Harriet Vietch, ‘Walton, Nancy-Bird (1915-2009)’, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 January 2009, <http://oa.anu.edu.au/obituary/walton-nancy-bird-16918>.
[2] ‘Nancy Bird-Walton’, Australian Biography,<http://australianbiography.gov.au/subjects/birdwalton/bio.html>, accessed 5 March 2019.
[3] Brown and Vietch, ‘Walton, Nancy-Bird’.
[4] Clare Land, ‘Walton, Nancy Bird’, The Australian Women’s Register, last modified 21 November 2018, <http://www.womenaustralia.info/biogs/IMP0124b.htm>, accessed 5 March 2019.
[5] Brown and Vietch, ‘Walton, Nancy-Bird’.
[6] ‘Western Sydney Airport to be named after Nancy-Bird Walton’, Australian Aviation, 4 March 2019, <http://australianaviation.com.au/2019/03/western-sydney-airport-to-be-named-after-nancy-bird-walton/>.

Written by Elizabeth Heffernan, RAHS Volunteer

To celebrate Women’s History Month, the Royal Australian Historical Society will highlight Australian women that have contributed to our history in various and meaningful ways. You can browse the women featured on our new webpage, Women’s History Month.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are advised that this webpage contains the images and names of people who have passed away.

Indigenous rights activist and social justice campaigner Dr Evelyn Scott lived an accomplished and determined life which left a mark upon the Australian political landscape forever. Born in Ingham, Queensland, in 1935, Evelyn first became actively involved with the Townsville Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Advancement League in the 1960s. She was one of the leading campaigners in the historic 1967 referendum, in which more than 90% of voters – making it the most successful referendum in Australian history – elected to remove discriminatory references to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples from the Australian Constitution. [1]

Evelyn’s motto in life were the words of her father, himself the son of a slave labourer from Vanuatu brought to Queensland to work in the sugar fields: “If you don’t think something is right, then challenge it.” [2] There was not a moment in Evelyn’s life where she did not embrace this statement whole-heartedly.

Following the success of the referendum, she joined the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders (FCAATSI) as its vice-president, and when the organisation moved to Townsville to become Indigenous-led in 1973, was appointed its general-secretary. In this role, she played an essential part in re-establishing the organisation as an Indigenous body, as she discussed in a 1996 interview with Leanne Miller and Sue Taffe: “We have to determine our own agenda if we’re going to address the issue right.” [3]

Also in the early 1970s, Evelyn was active in the Cairns and District Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Corporation for Women, and the National Aboriginal and Islander Women’s Council, which met for the first time in 1972. Her drive to empower Indigenous Australian women continued throughout her career, evident in her strident belief that women were an important “voice” in political discussion. These contributions earned her the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Medal in 1977. [4]

From 1997 to 2000 Evelyn acted as chair of the National Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation in a role which culminated with the Corroboree 2000 Bridge Walk, attended by more than a quarter of a million people marching across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in support of an official government apology. This was a remarkable achievement at a time when then-Prime Minister John Howard was cutting reconciliation funding. [5]

Throughout her incredible career, there was not much Evelyn did not achieve. She held audiences with Nelson Mandela, Queen Elizabeth II, and a number of Australian prime ministers. She was friends with fellow significant activists Eddie Mabo, Faith Bandler, and Joe McGuinness. She was the recipient of honorary doctorates from James Cook University and the Australian Catholic University, and was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 2003.

Upon her death in 2017, Dr Evelyn Scott became the first Aboriginal woman to honoured by the Queensland government in a state funeral. Her words on the importance of reconciliation remain as true today as on the day she spoke them: “In true reconciliation, through the remembering, the grieving and the healing, we can come to terms with our conscience and become as one in the dreaming of this land… Will you take our hand? Will you dare to share our dream?” [6]

---

References:

[1] Miriam Corowa and Kirsty Nancarrow, ‘Dr Evelyn Scott, Indigenous rights activist and “trailblazer”, dies aged 81,’ ABC News, 21 September 2017, <https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-21/dr-evelyn-scott-indigenous-rights-campaigner-dies-aged-81/8967192>, accessed 12 March 2019.
[2] Corowa and Nancarrow, ‘Dr Evelyn Scott’.
[3] ‘Collaborating for Indigenous Rights’, The National Museum of Australia,<https://indigenousrights.net.au/people/pagination/evelyn_scott>, accessed 12 March 2019.
[4] Alannah Croom, ‘Scott, Evelyn Ruth’, The Australian Women’s Register, last modified 12 February 2019, <http://www.womenaustralia.info/biogs/AWE6108b.htm>, accessed 12 March 2019.
[5] ‘Because of Her, We Can – Evelyn Scott’, Reconciliation Australia, 9 July 2018, <https://www.reconciliation.org.au/because-of-her-we-can-evelyn-scott>, accessed 12 March 2019.
[6] Corowa and Nancarrow, ‘Dr Evelyn Scott’.

Written by Elizabeth Heffernan, RAHS Volunteer

To celebrate Women’s History Month, the Royal Australian Historical Society will highlight Australian women that have contributed to our history in various and meaningful ways. You can browse the women featured on our new webpage, Women’s History Month.

When remembering the sacrifices made by Anzac soldiers in the World Wars, it is important to recognise the Australian servicewomen who stood alongside them. Lieutenant Colonel Vivian Bullwinkel was a veteran of the Second World War, and her inspiring story of struggle and survival as a frontline nurse and prisoner of war should not be forgotten.

Born in Kapunda, South Australia, in 1915, Vivian completed her General Nursing at the age of 23 at Broken Hill and District Hospital, followed by Midwifery one year later. [1] Vivian relocated to Victoria to commence her nursing career in Hamilton, before moving to Melbourne in 1940 to aid in the war effort. Having volunteered for the Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS) in May 1941, Vivian set sail for Singapore soon after to join the 2/13th Australian General Hospital.

Arriving in Singapore in September, Vivian and her fellow nurses were confronted with a poorly equipped hospital unable to deal with the surgical cases required. [2] The situation only worsened when Japanese troops invaded Malaya in December and quickly advanced south, forcing the Australians to evacuate the islands from January 1942.

Vivian was among the last 65 nurses to be evacuated. Along with 265 men, women, and children from the island, these nurses boarded the final ship to depart Singapore, the SS Vyner Brooke, a vessel originally built to carry twelve passengers. [3] Two days into their retreat, the ship was bombed and 22 of the nurses made it to shore to surrender to the Japanese. Ordered to wade into the ocean, the nurses were machine-gunned from behind in what is today remembered as the Banka Island massacre. Struck by a bullet that passed right through her body, Vivian feigned death until the attackers departed. She was the only survivor. [4]

After twelve days of hiding from the Japanese, Vivian surrendered once again and became a prisoner of war for the next three and a half years. Her determination to bear witness to the massacre, to ensure its victims were not forgotten by history, helped her to survive the brutality of the camp.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Vivian’s lifetime is her return to nursing even after her experiences in the war. She continued to serve in Japan until 1947 when she resigned as Captain, but re-joined the Citizen Military Forces in 1955 until 1970, when she retired for good as Lieutenant Colonel. Among her accolades were the Florence Nightingale and Royal Red Cross Medals, and her appointments as Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 1973 and to the Order of Australia (AO) in 1993. [5]

Vivian’s civilian life was just as important as her wartime achievements. She spent sixteen years as Matron at Melbourne’s Fairfield Hospital and continued there as Director of Nursing until 1977, when she married and moved to Perth. An active member of the Council of the Australian War Memorial, and president of the Australian College of Nursing for a number of years, Vivian returned to Banka Island in 1992 to unveil a shrine to the nurses who died there. [6]

Her perseverance during her lifetime is perhaps most poignantly understood through the words of Irene Drummond, Vivian’s own Matron and one of the 21 nurses killed on the beach of Banka Island. When wading into the surf, confronted with the certainty of what was about to happen, Irene told her nurses: “Chin up, girls! I’m proud of you and I love you all.” [7]

---

References:

[1] Zoe Hughes, ‘The Story of Vivian Bullwinkel – From Massacre to Legacy’, Ausmed, 29 March 2017, accessed 18 March 2019.
[2] Hughes, ‘The Story of Vivian Bullwinkel’.
[3] Hughes, ‘The Story of Vivian Bullwinkel’.
[4] Cory Zanoni, ‘8 women from Australia’s history you should know’, State Library of Victoria, 8 March 2017, <https://blogs.slv.vic.gov.au/our-stories/8-women-from-australias-history-you-should-know/>, accessed 18 March 2019.
[5] Anna Haywood and Barbara Lemon, ‘Bullwinkel, Vivian’, The Australian Women’s Register, last modified 12 September 2017, <http://www.womenaustralia.info/biogs/AWE0362b.htm>, accessed 18 March 2019.
[6] ‘Lieutenant Colonoal Vivian Bullwinkel’, The Australian War Memorial, <https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/P10676383>, accessed 18 March 2019.
[7] ‘Stoic nurses stared down an atrocious death’, Sydney Morning Herald, 25 April 2012, <https://www.smh.com.au/national/stoic-nurses-stared-down-an-atrocious-death-20120424-1xjhb.html>, accessed 18 March 2019.

Written by Elizabeth Heffernan, RAHS Volunteer

To celebrate Women’s History Month, the Royal Australian Historical Society will highlight Australian women that have contributed to our history in various and meaningful ways. You can browse the women featured on our new webpage, Women’s History Month.

The Miles Franklin Literary Award is Australia’s most prestigious literature prize, awarded every year to the most outstanding novel depicting Australian life in any of its phases. The Award is named after Stella Maria Miles Franklin, known simply throughout her life as ‘Miles’ – a tribute to her illiterate convict ancestor, Edward Miles.

She is best remembered for writing My Brilliant Career, one of the country’s most celebrated works of fiction. [1] Published in 1901 and greatly inspired by her own life, it tells the story of a teenage girl’s journey to womanhood in rural New South Wales.

Much like her protagonist, Sybylla Melvyn, Miles was born in 1879 and grew up on her family station in the Brindabella Valley in NSW. A gifted child, Miles was encouraged in her literary passions by her family, private tutor, and teachers at Thornford Public. Though it was a happy childhood, Miles was always conscious of the restrictive domestic role her mother Susannah was forced to play: “I have never seen a like combination of courage, industry and organising ability – (wasted).” [2] Miles was determined not to waste her own considerable talents.

Miles’ first published piece of writing appeared in the local newspaper when she was sixteen. Known by her family and friends as Stella, Miles first used the now-famous moniker in two short pieces written in 1896. [3] Like many female authors before her, Miles had come to find the value of employing a masculine name in the patriarchal world of publishing.

The first manuscript of My Brilliant Career was completed in March 1899 when Miles was not yet twenty. Rejected by local publishers numerous times, Miles approached poet Henry Lawson for aid. Lawson was so impressed by the book he sent it off to a publisher in London. [4] Printed in April 1901 and making its way to Australia by September, My Brilliant Career sold over 1000 copies by the end of the year, an astonishing statistic at the time. [5]

Heralded as Australia’s “comet of wonder,” fame did not come easily for Miles. [6] She retreated from the literary world following the rejection of subsequent manuscripts and failed to make a career out of her brief foray into journalism. It was only upon her departure from Australia to America in 1906 and later Britain that Miles would find her voice again. After aiding in the war effort overseas, Miles published a number of lesser known but still commercially successful works, including Prelude to Waking, Old Blastus of Bandicoot, and All That Swagger, which won her the S. H. Prior Memorial Prize in 1936. [7]

Miles re-entered the Australian literature scene in the 1930s and remained an active participant for the rest of her life. Never marrying – she considered it “rabbit” work – Miles instead devoted her time to writing, collaborating, sponsoring young Australian authors, and lecturing at the University of Western Australia in 1950. [8] Upon her death in 1954 she bequeathed her estate to establish an award in Australian literature, first given in 1957 to Patrick White for Voss.

Though she lived a life full of as many rejections as successes, Stella Miles Franklin remains one of the country’s foremost fiction authors. In her early admissions of her first manuscript to publishers Angus & Robertson, Miles wrote: “Nothing great has been attempted”. [9] She was correct – something brilliant had been achieved.

---

References:

[1] Dr Rachel Franks, ‘Miles Franklin,’ State Library of New South Wales, <https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/stories/miles-franklin>, accessed 20 March 2019.
[2] Miles Franklin writing about her mother in her diary, 13 June 1939, quoted in Franks, ‘Miles Franklin’.
[3] Franks, ‘Miles Franklin’.
[4] Jill Roe, ‘Biography – Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, <http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/franklin-stella-maria-sarah-miles-6235>, accessed 20 March 2019.
[5] Franks, ‘Miles Franklin’
[6] Ibid.
[7] ‘S. H. PRIOR MEMORIAL PRIZE’, The West Australian, 22 July 1936, p. 16.
[8] Roe, ‘Biography – Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin’.
[9] Letter from ‘S.M.S. Miles Franklin’ to publishers Angus & Robertson, 30 March 1899, quoted in Franks, ‘Miles Franklin’.