The game dames: The bold Australian women who found the world, then brought it home

February 27, 2026 — 3:00pm

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I was idly flipping through the Oxford Companion to Australian History this week – “Retirement going a bit slow, Richard?” – when I noticed the entry for Miles Franklin, author of My Brilliant Career. I thought I knew her story, working as a bush governess. Did you know, though, she went to Chicago in 1905 where she joined the Women’s Trade Union League, edited a journal for American female workers, then moved to London in 1915, a force in working-class and feminist politics? And that she then worked on the Macedonian front line in the First World War?

Oh, you knew all that? Well, it sure wasn’t in the movie.

Here’s what caught my interest: her story chimes with that of other intrepid Australian women in the first two decades of the 20th century. Much has been written about the Australian expatriates of the 1960s – people like Clive James, Germaine Greer and Robert Hughes. But what of this earlier era and its well-travelled women: these game dames?

This column has already featured Teresa Cahill, who, along with her brother Reg, set up Sydney’s famous Cahills restaurants. But what about........

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