"I have another duty, equally sacred, a duty to myself " Dora: A Doll's House, Henrik Ibsen,1879
1. Welcome to Our Foremothers - "Here is one story ..."
2. First Owners
On this page:
KOORIE STORY: Pre 1863.
SOCIAL STORY: Melbourne 1863.
3. Sara and Sheyda Rimmer
On this page:
OUR STORY: Sarah Curry
KOORIE STORY: 1864 Corandarrk - Diaspora, the Start;
SOCIAL STORY: The Immigrants Home, 'The Fortunes of Mary Fortune'.
4. Smythesdale Goldfields
On this page:
SOCIAL STORY: Women on the goldfields - 'What a Woman on Ballaraat Can Do'; The Sandhurst Impersonator; the Sinking Cathedral.
5. The Egalitarian Idea
On this page:
KOORIE STORY: Resisting Oppression - Louisa Briggs;
SOCIAL STORY:
Enlightenment Thinking; Education; the Education Act. 1872.0's-80's - Free, Compulsary and Secular Education; Not Equal if you are Aboriginal
6. A Fair Go
On this Page:
OUR STORY: Sarah's 'Fair Go'.
KOORIE STORY: Struggles; Coranderrk Petition.
SOCIAL STORY: A Fair Go, the 1882 Tailoresses Strike, the Woman's Suffrage Society; the 'Mother of Womanhood Suffrage' - Louisa Lawson; Orphans & Institutions.
7. Going Backwards
On this Page:
KOORIE STORY:
the Half Caste Amendment Act oy Murphy; Coranderrk.
SOCIAL STORY - Reaction; 1890’s Economic Depression; Women's Paid Work.
8. Running Free
On this page:
OUR STORY: "NO DAUGHTER OF MINE ..."; Hard Yakka.
KOORIE STORY: Indigenous Exclusion.
9. Women Were Not Quiet
On this Page:
Social Story: The Hospital Run By Women For Women;The Victorian Lady Teachers' Association; The 1891 'Monster' Suffrage Petition - Vida Goldstein.
10. Building Peace at Home WW1
On this page:
OUR STORY
KOORIE STORY - Coranderrk Closure
SOCIAL STORY - Conscription; White Feathers; The Zurich Women's Peace Conference; Free Trade
11. A World Not Fit For Heroes
On this page:
OUR STORY
KOORIE STORY: Australian Aborigines League; Cummeraaginja; 26th January, Day of Mourning - Beryl Booth, Margaret Tucker.
SOCIAL STORY: Economic Depression; Making Do - Yvonne Smith.
12. Another War - WW2
On this page:
OUR STORY Our Family
KOORIE STORY: There's Work When We Need You - Nora Murray.
SOCIAL STORY: Pulling Together - Edith Morgan; After the War - Things Weren't All Rosy - Joyce Stevens.
13. Howard's Way - the 1950's
On this page:
OUR STORY
KOORIE STORY: Maralinga - Joan Wingfield, Gwen Rathman; More Protest - Warburton Ranges; Lake Tyers; More Protest;
SOCIAL STORY: Camp Pell; Conformity & Hidden Poverty; The Communist Party Dissolution Bill..
14. A Life Well Spent
On this page:
OUR STORY - Sad times
SOCIAL STORY: Hypocrisy; Hope
Our Foremothers is published by
Women's Web Inc.
Telephone: 03 9486 1808
www.womensweb.com.au
womensweb@iprimus.com.au
© Geraldine Robertson except for study, social justice and feminist sharing.
Our Foremothers |
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12. ANOTHER WAR - WW2
On this page:
OUR STORY Our Family
KOORIE STORY: There's Work When We Need You Nora Murray.
SOCIAL STORY: Pulling Together - Edith Morgan; After the War - Things Weren't All Rosy - Joyce Stevens.
Our family was lucky in WW2. Nana and Papa’s second son, my Uncle Bob had, as well as his older brother, left school early because of the Depression but the technical training he had as a mechanical engineer stopped him from going overseas now. Their third son, my Uncle Bill, was at school and my mother was at work until she married in 1941.
Papa joined the Army Reserves (so-called Dad’s Army).
Nana continued to crochet the Afghan rugs, in spite of the difficulty getting wool. I understand it was a time of fear and anxiety for the troops away fighting.
Our Family
Papa Ritchie bought a café/milk bar business opposite Melbourne University at 33 Royal Parade, Parkville where the family could, if necessary, live and work. He, Uncle Charl and Uncle Bob worked at the café. We moved in.
There was enough room (just) for Nana, Papa, Uncle Charl, Auntie Marg and their children Anne, Max, Patricia and Robert (who was born while they were there), Uncle Bill, my mother and me.
Papa and Nana sent Uncle Bill to university, then on a trip overseas.
I remember feeling very proud when Auntie Marg took me with her when she went to the Victoria Market. I remember Uncle Bob singing “Oh, what a beautiful morning” as he cooked.
I remember the returned soldiers who were on the tram I took to school. They all had injuries – they were on their way to the Royal Melbourne Hospital. It was built for the American troops and was only now available for Australians. The returned soldiers must have been in pain, but I only remember them smiling.
On the other hand, I remember women coming to Nana for help with their returned serviceman husbands because the men were suffering nightmares, or were violent with their families. “This is not the man I married”, they said.
There was no medical help for them; they were told they were malingering. There was no pension for them or their families.
I remember Nana sitting on the upstairs verandah, cutting up the fruit salad for the hundred or so café customers each Sunday morning.
She said the others worked for the cafe, but she didn’t - she just helped. The unpaid work of women didn’t (and still doesn’t) count, as Marilyn Waring points out so eloquently in her writings.
KOORIE STORY - There's Work When We Need You
Many Aboriginal people, who had been forced off the mission stations after WW1, had moved to areas like Fitzroy. Others came to Melbourne for the employment the war created.
Nora Murray recalls her family coming to Fitzroy in 1941 (for paid work) ... She worked from an early age.
'I was working afternoon shifts at Australian Cans in ... Carlton. We made the cans for the food that was provided to army personnel.
I worked night shifts and Mum worked during the day.
I had worked before at the Rosella Factory in Collingwood where we made tomato sauce and sweet pickles. Quite a few of our people worked there too.'
Nora Murray, Interview courtesy of Bev Murray yarracity.vic.gov.au/Services/Aboriginal
SOCIAL STORY - Pulling Together
- My father was in the Second World War leaving my mother, for the duration, with three children – one just a newborn baby.
I had an uncle who entered the war very early although he didn't like the war. He said to my father “I will go in so that you don’t have to go”. This gives me the sense of why some, at least, of the men went to war. They wanted to win the peace and have a peaceful life.
Hellen Cooke- Bill eventually was in the air force, training as a navigator, and so I went to Sydney to live.
… Probably the only one who was really anti-Communist then was Menzies. He was a very strong influence, and of course it was touch-and-go whether we supported Hitler in those early years.
Of course you would have been too scared to support Hitler after the war had been going for some time, particularly when the Soviet Union came in.
… There was some contradiction between where we had been fighting fascism and peace.
It was very difficult for some, that issue, because it was very important fascism was defeated. I think people generally, even those who would be strong antiwar activists like Joan Coxsedge, would have been out there in campaigns against Hitler.
Edith Morgan - www.womensweb.com.au
The population didn’t seem to be as divided as it was during WW1. Most people seemed to agree that fascism had to be fought.
There was rationing of clothing, footwear, tea, butter and sugar. The sugar rationing was a half a pound every week for each adult, less for children, unless you were a housewife wanting to make jam, when you could get more.
All that sugar! It is no wonder Australians have such bad teeth.
After the War
Now there was peace things were looking up, but there was some fear of unemployment. Another Depression was feared.
There was also an extreme shortage of housing and building materials.
The immediate response to the end of the war was one of delirious joy and relief. People poured into the streets when peace was announced to sing, dance, cry and to kiss and hug absolute strangers.
Peace brought an end to agonising tensions, to shortages, to the separations, and the long hours of work. The urgency of returning to "normality" gripped many like a fever. There was a boom in babies and marriages.
For most women the blessings in the years that followed were mixed indeed. The trend to shift many more women in paid work into the textile and clothing industries started before the war ended, and this continued.
Women who had been metalworkers and ironworkers in aircraft and munitions factories found that their man's jobs and man's pays disappeared. "Rosie the Riveters" went back to waiting on tables at not quite pre-war levels of pay.
"Equal pay" was reduced to 75% of the male rate.
Many of the comprehensive full-day nurseries and other child care centres which had appeared during the war disappeared along with federal government funding for such projects.
Some women found themselves widowed on inadequate pensions or the companions of severely war-shocked men, with little community understanding of or support for their problems.
The full import of the mushroom clouds over Hiroshima and Nagasaki began to dawn and many women gave birth to the first atomic generation.
These children, faced with the fragility of life, on a massive scale, produced a revolt against traditional values. This bewildered parents and placed extra pressures on women, as Experts debated the extent to which working mothers might be blamed for social problems.
As the suburban dream grew out of the post-war housing shortages and a rapidly expanding consumerism, too many women found themselves prisoners of their new homes and captives to the growth industry of valium and drug therapy for suburban neurosis.
Peace also brought the Cold War as new spheres of interest were struck in Eastern Europe, China and the Pacific region.
The technologies triggered by war accelerated both growth and contradictions - development and underdevelopment, privilege and underprivilege, treks to the stars, space adventure and the potential for total annihilation.
From time to time the Cold War flared into open conflict in Korea, Hungary, the Suez Canal and, later, Viet Nam and other areas.
During the 1950s, politics of all kinds were played out against the background of extreme bigotry and a dwindling democratic practice.
Attempts were made not only to ban the Communist Party, but to give the government powers to declare who was or was not a communist, with the onus of proof on the accused.
It was a time which has been described by radicals and conservatives alike as one of hysterical witch-hunting during which anti-communism was used to smother political dissent or to blacken opponents, whatever their real persuasion.
One off-shoot of this was that left and radical groups, including International Women’s Day, were refused the use of many public halls. These, and other more long-standing personal and political tensions, also disrupted the co-operation established between women's groups during the war.
A History of International Women's Day in words and images by Joyce Stevens www.isis.aust.com
Things Weren't All Rosy
Molly Hadfield - When Fred came back from the war, he spent time in and out of hospital. It was there that I saw the physical and emotional impact the war had on these men and, of course, the families who also suffered. This is still upsetting.… www.womensweb.com.au
There was a shortage of housing which, when the wartime fixed rents were stopped, made many homeless.