On 9 May 2021, Old Parliament House celebrated it’s 94th birthday and I have been pondering it’s history in connection with women and Parliament. I have been slowly reading Professor Clare Wright’s
You Daughters of Freedom, which is about the women, ‘who won the vote and inspired the world’. I say slowly reading, because I have been pausing after the introduction of each new player to investigate the primary sources for myself. I recommend reading or listening to Professor Clare Wright’s author talk on her book here.
With these procrastinations away from the book into the National Library’s collections, and with recent events in Australia’s political and cultural life, I have been turning to our history for inspiration and consolation, and for reading about Australian woman who were ‘first’. So, as I move from my introduction to one of my favourite ‘first women’, here is my second favourite photograph of the birthday building, Old Parliament House, surrounded by sheep.