Their lives and times: a photographic gallery
A compelling collection of photographs that delineates the lives of Australian women during the past 150 years. The fascinating images are grouped broadly in themes that emphasise various aspects of life: childhood and education, relationships and marriage, sport and recreation, triumphs and tragedies, professional life and pleasure.
You will find here some of the classic 19th-century images such as the early pioneer women proudly standing in front of their crudely built slab huts, the striking 20th-century wartime photographs of working women in traditionally male occupations while the men were away at the front, and the scenes of suburban domesticity that were so characteristic of the 1950s. But here too are the conflicts of modern life, the search for a balance between the roles of mother, homemaker and professional career.
The book is a celebration of women, an affirmation of their important role in the development of the Australian nation and a recognition of their contribution to the social fabric of society at the dawn of the new millennium. The famous women, remarkable for their achievements in the arts, sport and public and professional life, are well represented, but it is the lives of ordinary women, revealed through a series of evocative images, that tell the real story of what to is to have been born female in Australia.
