When Myra Rendle was 14 years old she began an apprenticeship with a Brisbane dentist named Robert Thomason. After completing her training four years later she opened her own practice, which was situated on the corner of Queen and Edward Streets, Brisbane. This might seem unremarkable if it weren’t for the fact that Myra opened her practice in 1899. She was 18 years old, and she was the first female […]
Harriett Brims ran the Britannia photographic studio in Ingham, North Queensland, at the end of the nineteenth century. Harriett Pettifore Elliott was born near Toowoomba, Queensland, in 1864. In 1881 she married Donald Gray Brims, a contractor and coach builder. In the early years of their marriage, the Brims’ made their way to Townsville, where Donald worked as a contractor, and from there they went to Cardwell, where Donald became […]
In 1909 almost half of Townsville’s 43 hotels were run by women. It was a similar story in other North Queensland towns too. In Ingham, 46 per cent of the hotels were run by women, while in Charters Towers, 41 per cent of pubs had female licensees. Of Bowen’s 11 hotels, 7 were run by women and in Cairns, a third of the city’s 30 hotels had women publicans. Some […]
Margaret Monaghan set up and ran Bay View Private Hospital, one of the most successful and longest-running private hospitals in Townsville in the first half of the twentieth century. Margaret was a popular and well-respected woman, who deservedly enjoyed a revered position within the Townsville community. Margaret Jane Lewis Monaghan was born in Durham, England, in 1883 and later migrated to Australia with her family – arriving in early 1890. In […]
When Sarah Wheelhouse was 89 years old, she told a reporter from the Bowen Independent newspaper that during her time as a midwife she had probably delivered as many as 500 children, “and most of them without the assistance of a doctor”. This was 1950 – three years before her death. Sarah gave the reporter enough first-hand information to write more than 1,600 words on her life, and with it, […]
Women of the North 