By Neale Towart
BEFORE Muriel Heagney, Kath Williams, Joyce Barry and latter day heroines like Jennie George, Sharan Burrow and Ged Kearney, there was Mary Gilmore.
Tuesday, 25 November, 2014
The woman on our $10 note, Gilmore, was not just a pioneering journalist and poet.
She was a radical political campaigner who was the first woman to join the Australian Workers’ Union. And she did it by masquerading as a bloke.
Under her brother John Cameron’s name, she was on the executive of the AWU during the big strikes of the 1890s.
She broke Henry Lawson’s heart
In 1895, Mary had given up teaching to join William Lane’s New Australia Movement.
She sailed to his Cosme settlement in Paraguay, arriving in January 1896 and there married shearer William Gilmore (1866-1945). Her son William Dysart Gilmour was born in the new settlement in 1897.
Henry Lawson had wished to marry her.
In 1923 she recalled that “it was a strange meeting that between young Lawson and me. I had come down permanently to the city from Silverton”. They were very close from 1890-95 and he was heartbroken when she left for Cosme.
To earn the fare back from Paraguay (via London), Mary taught as a governess and learned Spanish (see Anne Whitehead’s book Bluestocking in Patagonia).
Mary Gilmore celebrating her 90th birthday with the Bushwhackers in 1955.
She made a name for herself as one of the first to translate South American literature into English.
From 1902-1912 she lived with her son at William’s parents’ farm in Casterton in Western Victoria while William was establishing a station in Queensland. Here Mary was able to re-establish her writing and political links.
In 1903 she was featured on The Bulletin’s ‘Red Page’ and she helped with campaigning for the Labor Party in the 1906 and 1910 federal elections for the seat of Wannon (this was later Malcolm Fraser’s seat).
In 1908 Mary commenced editing the woman’s page of the Australian Worker, a position she held until 1931. In 1910 her first collection of poems Marri’d, and other verses was published.
Her interest in Aboriginal issues began early and she was possibly the first Australian writer to champion the need for writers to study Aboriginal story and myth
Later Mary Gilmore was associated with the Communist newspaper Tribune. Her column ‘Arrows’ appeared regularly until mid-1962, commenting on contemporary Australian and world affairs.
Still going strong in her ’90s
In 1954, as she approached her ninetieth year, she published her final volume of poetry, Fourteen Men.
The Australasian Book Society commissioned William Dobell to paint her portrait for her 92nd birthday in 1957. Mary strongly defended the controversial portrait because she felt it captured something of her ancestry: she later donated it to the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Her last years were made memorable by ever-increasing signs of public esteem.
Her birthdays were celebrated publicly by Sydney literati and ordinary folk alike; streets, roads, schools, old people’s homes were named after her; literary awards and scholarships were given in her name; visitors from Australia’s literary and political world, and overseas admirers, made regular pilgrimages to her; her pronouncements were highlighted by the media; she made television and radio appearances; she led May Day processions as the May Queen, winning the fundraising as the Waterside Workers’ Federation entrant, in 1961.
The union movement recognised her contribution, the ACTU introducing a May Day literary prize in 1956. In 1973 – 11 years after she died, aged 97, she was honoured with a new stamp with her image from Australia Post.
The Canberra suburb Gilmore is named after her, as is the federal electorate of Gilmore. Beverly Dunn brought Mary to life in the one woman show The Dame on the Ten Dollar Note in 2009, performed at Melbourne Theatre Company.
So next time you pull out a tenner, dip your lid to a great Australian unionist.
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