Trailblazers

Caroline Chisolm's hard work and determination changed the history of female migration to Australia and ensured better conditions for families on migrant ships and offered them paid work. Eliza Hawkins was a trailblazer, surviving a dangerous journey as the first European woman to cross the Blue Mountains to Bathurst, travelling by horse and cart. Mary Gaunt from Ballarat dared to lead her own expeditions in West Africa and China, travelling from Peking to the edge of the Gobi Desert in a mule cart and became a very popular travel writer and novelist. Hilda Rix Nicholas fought for women painters to be taken seriously and held successful exhibitions in France and Britain, before returning to Australia to paint superb images of rural life in the Monaro. Sister Anne Donnell was one of the first nurses to volunteer in World War One. Her letters made her famous, recounting the sufferings of Anzacs in a military hospital on Lemnos, where British administrative bungles kept the nurses and patients short of sheets, bandages and drinking water. Nell Tritton from Brisbane became personal assistant and translator to handsome Alexander Kerensky, the reformist Russian Prime Minister who was later deposed by Lenin. As Madame Kerensky she helped him escape assassins sent by Stalin. As the Nazis advanced on Paris Nell used her own money to purchase forged Spanish visas so her husband's Russian-Jewish employees and their families could escape from the invading Nazis. Louise Mack worked in Tuscany and became the world's first female correspondent based in German-occupied Belgium. She wrote a best selling war memoir and donated her royalties to help Belgian war victims before returning to Sydney, where she married an Anzac veteran. Margaret Ogg and Vida Goldstein were ridiculed when they dared to claim that women were intelligent enough to sit in Parliament. Enid Lyons, mother of twelve, became Australia's first Cabinet Minister, but it took another 50 years for Julia Gillard to become Australia's first female Prime Minister. A lawyer by profession, mother and grandmother, Dame Quentin Bryce blazed a trail for women by becoming Australia's first female Governor-General. After leaving office she returned to her home state of Queensland where she now heads a programme designed to combat domestic violence.