08/10/2026
Congratulations to Dr Catherine Gay and Monash University Publishing on launching 'Australian Girls' at Melbourne Museum yesterday.
Drawing on historical materials and artwork, Dr Catherine Gay explores the lives of 19th-century girls in Australia - 'how they learnt, worked, played and connected'.
We’re delighted to share that our beloved Ethel Turner appears in the book, sending secret messages to friends through her school notebook. Fascinating insights! A must-read.
See information below from the Monash University Publishing website.
This book 'Tells, for the first time, the stories of Australian girls in the Antipodes: how they learnt, worked, played and connected.
Settler and Aboriginal girls have been overlooked in our history. Yet these girls were not peripheral to the national story, as is commonly assumed. In fact, they made significant contributions to our past.
Drawing on materials and artworks uncovered in local and national archives and made by girls themselves, historian Catherine Gay reinterprets Australia’s story through the lens of these girls’ experiences. She reveals how the lives of girls in the nineteenth century intertwined with colonial invasion and settlement, labour and education, and family and community.'
The girls in these pages were much more than servants, sisters, settlers’ daughters or subjugated subjects. Australian Girls illuminates the ways in which girls in the nineteenth century were drivers of their own futures, central voices who contributed to the formation of a nation.'
Friends of Ethel Turner -fiction
Dr Catherine Gay is an award-winning curator and historian of Australian children and childhood. She completed her PhD at the University of Melbourne in 2024 and has worked in academic research and teaching roles at the University of Melbourne, the Australian National University and Deakin University. Catherine has delivered curatorial and heritage projects for Museums Victoria, the Australian War Memorial, Cancer Council Victoria and the National Trust of Australia (Victoria). In 2025, she was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Magdeburg, Germany, and is currently a Research Assistant at the University of Newcastle.
Her book AUSTRALIAN GIRLS: GROWING UP IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY is out next month.
