The Camerons and Beatties owned adjoining properties. Donald Cameron, a wanderer by nature, was in turn farmer, mail contractor, property manager, carpenter, innkeeper and builder, moving with his family around south-western New South Wales.
In the family moved to Houlaghan's Creek and she attended the school at Downside. For the next four years she was an unofficial pupil-teacher in small schools at Cootamundra, Bungowannah and Yerong Creek.
At 16 she passed a formal entrance examination and began as a probationary pupil-teacher at the Superior Public School, Wagga Wagga. After a period of ill health and failure in a teacher's examination in December , she resigned, but was re-employed in May at Beaconsfield Provisional School. She was transferred in March to Illabo Public School. She remained there until December spending the Christmas vacation of in Sydney with her mother. Her relationship with Henry Lawson probably began in in she recalled that 'It was a strange meeting that between young Lawson and me.
I had come down permanently to the city from Silverton'. Her account of an unofficial engagement and Lawson's wish to marry her at the time of his brief trip to Western Australia May-September could be accurate regarding dates, but there is no other corroborative evidence. There was clearly, however, a close relationship between them in , but it was broken by his frequent absences from Sydney.
Mary's later comments on his career were always somewhat proprietorial but the extent of her influence on his literary talents and her contribution to his literary education remain unsubstantiated. She had become involved in the increasing radicalism of the day, supporting the maritime and shearers' strikes as actively as possible for a schoolteacher subject to the strict rules of the Department of Public Instruction.
It was her lifelong claim that she had, under her brother John's name, been co-opted to the first executive of the Australian Workers' Union. She assisted William Lane and the New Australia movement, and was largely responsible for overcoming the financial difficulties that threatened to prevent the departure for Paraguay of the Royal Tar on 16 July On 31 October she resigned from teaching and sailed from Sydney in November in the Ruapehu , arriving at the Cosme settlement in Paraguay in January In August the Gilmores resigned from Cosme and Will left the settlement to work at various jobs.
On 1 April they reached England, stayed briefly with Lawson and his family in London, and arrived in Australia in the Karlsruhe in July.
Back in her familiar Sydney environment Mary was attracted to the busy literary and political scene but, acknowledging her family responsibilities, went with her husband to Strathdownie, near Casterton in western Victoria, where Will's parents had a property. Life there was far from congenial but she had a long-sustained correspondence with Alfred George Stephens of the Bulletin and was delighted to have her life and work featured in the 'Red Page' on 3 October In they moved into Casterton where Billy attended school.
Mary's long connexion with the Australian Worker began in when, in response to her request for a special page for women, the editor Hector Lamond invited her to write it herself. She was to edit the 'Women's Page' until 11 February Mary also began campaigning for the Labor Party, helping to have its candidate for the Federal seat of Wannon elected in and Related Awards Mary Gilmore Award -.
Related Women Crist, Alice Guerin - Lees Ltd. Details Sub-series 7. Details Papers of Jean L. Details State Library of Victoria Papers, [manuscript].
Details Journal Articles Foster, I. Details See also Famous Australians , Rigby, , pp. Details Caine, Barbara, Gatens, Moira et al. Details Wilde, W. Three days later, Sydney witnessed the first state funeral accorded to an Australian writer since the death of Henry Lawson 40 years earlier. Note: Gilmore published numerous volumes of prose and poetry. Further information is available in Notable Australians.
Dame Mary Gilmore — Author, journalist, poet, patriot and campaigner against injustice and deprivation.
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