Day - 53 The Matilda Effect

Mudgee to Gulong 34kms

I'm on my soapbox today!  This whole region of NSW is celebrated for witnessing the birthplace and youth of Henry Lawson.  You can visit the Henry Lawson Society, the Henry Lawson Museum, climb Lawson Hill and stay in Henry Lawson caravan park.  If you're not quite sure who this Henry chap is then you were probably born outside Australia.  He's a very well known bush poet and short story writer, most notably The Teams, The Drovers Wife and Over the Sliprails.  He is credited with giving Australia a voice in literature and described in his biography as "a man who captured the heart and soul of Australia and its people with more clarity and truth than any writer before him."  

Henry Lawson's childhood home

Kerstin and I visited the site of the house he was raised in, the station where his grandparents worked and his mother was born.  And in none of these places was mentioned the woman who had, I would argue, a bigger influence on Australian culture today than Henry Lawson, Louisa Lawson.  Described in NSW parliament in 1902 as "the Mother of Suffrage", she was an editor, poet, writer, suffragist, feminist and publisher.  Incidentally she was Henry Lawson's mother, and it is this that she is remembered for!  Destined, even in death to be defined by a man.  If you can't tell I'm really quite angry.

If you go to the Henry Lawson Museum in Gulong you will be surprised to discover that Henry Lawson was deaf, an alcoholic, destitute and was in and out of prison for failing to pay maintenance for the support of his children.  Despite all this on his premature death he was the first non-official to given a state funeral in Australia.  Attended by Prime Minister Billy Hughes who described him as "the poet of Australia, the minstrel of the people".  

Keep searching in the backroom of the museum and you will finally find some of Louisa's story.  She edited and published The Dawn, Australia's first journal produced solely by women which was distributed throughout Australia and overseas. The Dawn had a strong feminist perspective and frequently addressed issues such as women's right to vote and assume public office, women's education, women's economic and legal rights, domestic violence, and temperance. The Dawn was published monthly for 17 years (1888–1905) and at its height employed 10 female staff.  She also started The Dawn Club in 1889, which became the hub of the suffrage movement in Sydney.  When she died, two years before Henry, after suffering a brain injury in a fall, she was an inpatient of Gladesville Mental Hospital and was buried without fanfare with her parents.

Happily, an artist by the name of Fiona MacDonald, has undertaken a series of screenprints to emphasise the role of women in History, specifically addressing the invisibility of women in their own right.  This is called the Matilda Effect.

I am not Henry Lawson's mother!