In the late 1920s, poet Mary Gilmore – the woman on the A$10 note – declared she’d encountered only two instances of “genius” during her four decades in Australian literature. The first was a man who remains a household name: Henry Lawson, bush poet, author of iconic stories like The Drover’s Wife, who upon his death received a state funeral. Today, Lawson’s work is still widely taught in schools.
But what of Gilmore’s second genius? The writer who “wrote an Australia never before presented in prose”? This second virtuoso was a young, disabled woman and – funnily enough – she has been largely forgotten.
