She Shapes History: a trip down memory lane with female trailblazers

Borne out of a six-month journey across Australia, Sita Sargeant’s latest book maps the women who’ve left their mark in our cities and towns.

Reading Time: 2 minutes

 

There is no greater classroom in the world than the world itself, and there’s no greater teacher than travel. In 2023, Sita Sargeant set off from her Canberra home in her fifteen-year-old car, complete with a rooftop tent, and began a six-month journey that took her across Australia. Her mission was ‘to find and document the places where women have shaped history.’  

Why? 

‘For too long, the impact of women on our country has been overlooked and underestimated. It’s time to set the record straight,’ Sita says. 

The trip came two years after Sita, without any tourism experience, established She Shapes History, a business providing guided tours of places impacted by female trailblazers in Canberra. Beginning with a weekly two-hour walking tour on a Sunday, the venture has grown to offer outings every day of the week, and Sita now has about ten guides helping her.  

The book She Shapes History is an extension of Sita’s initial Canberra-centric curiosity. From Cairns to Cooper Pedy, Kalgoorlie-Boulder to Launceston, Sita travelled to every state and territory to find stories about women who ‘showed up, made the best of their situations, and both deliberately and inadvertently shaped history in doing so’ in cities and towns. 

The book covers a series of guided walks, road trips and invitations for the reader to choose their own adventures.  It begins with vignettes about some obvious protagonists, such as Queen Elizabeth II, nationalist Mary Gilmore and soprano, Nellie Melba, all of whom adorn Australian currency. However, in the pages afterwards, She Shapes History reveals lesser-known women, their achievements and the places they worked, lived and influenced. People such as Florence Mary Taylor (1879-1969), Australia’s first qualified female architect who with her husband George, co-founded the Building Publishing Company in Loftus Street, Sydney, near Circular Quay. For fifty years, they produced the highly respected Building magazine, ‘a leading voice on the built environment in Australia.’  However, it’s Florence’s books and journals that sheds light on a visionary mind that wrote about the need for a harbour tunnel, an eastern distributor roadway, and the growth of harbourside apartments. All, as we know, have been realised many years after Florence’s death. 

Among many engaging vignettes is the story of Francis Egan, a café owner and single mother of four who had a running battle with the Restaurant Employees’ Union in the union strong mining town, Broken Hill. We won’t mention the results of this conflict, other than to say a gun, tar, feathers, a whip and a court case all played roles. 

From Myra Juliette Farrell to Bendigo’s Queens Arms Hotel there are more than 200 pages of stories enhanced by maps, graphics and photos. She Shapes History is not the type of book that demands to be read from cover to cover. Instead, it is a reference book that allows the reader the freedom to randomly flick through the pages and read stories in no set order. As is the way with such books, some stories may not be remembered, but others could stir the imagination and become the starting point for deeper dives into lives and places.  

Such books are not easy to write. Sita deserves a holiday after writing this one. Perhaps another road trip is in order?

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