This Sunday, the 8th of March is International Women’s Day. It’s a day celebrated all over the world when all women are recognised for their achievements – both great and small.
While there are countless women both here, and overseas, that are at the forefront of improving gender equality and fighting against sexual discrimination and injustice, there are just as many trailblazers who have sadly passed away.
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These women paved the way and smashed glass ceilings for generations to come and deserve just as much recognition this International Women’s Day.
One of those women is Louise Mack, a poet, journalist, novelist one of Australia’s most notable female war correspondents.
After writing for The Bulletin and publishing various novels and poetry collections in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Louise Mack moved to England and Italy, where she lived for many years.
In 1914, when the war broke out, Mack was in Belgium where she worked as the first female war correspondent for the Evening News and the London Daily Mail. According to her obituary, Mack disguised herself by posing as a “Belgian serving made and cut sandwiches for German soldiers in one of the restaurants in Antwerp.”
In 1915, Mack’s eyewitness account of the German invasion of Antwerp was turned into a book titled A Woman’s Experiences in the Great War. Later, she made a living by touring the country to speak about her experiences and raise funds for the Red Cross.
For The Australian Media Hall of Fame, Craig Munro wrote that “Louise – or Louie as she was known to her close acquaintances – revelled in the largely masculine world of 1980s bohemian Sydney, mixing easily with journalists, editors, impecunious poets and eccentric artists.”
In her book The Romantic Lives of Louise Mack, Mack’s niece Nancy Phelam said her aunt “never considered herself a lesser writer just because she was a woman.”
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Louise Mack died in Mosman, NSW in 1935, but her fearlessness in the face of conflict and her ability to adapt to so many different circumstances cements her status as one of the great Australian women in media.
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