Dame Mary Gilmore

Dame Mary Gilmore was born on August 16, 1865, near Goulburn, New South Wales. In 1895, she joined William Lane's utopian socialist expedition to Paraguay, living in the socialist commune 'New Australia' and 'Cosme' for five years. Returning to Sydney, she edited the women's page of The Australian Worker for twenty-three years.

Gilmore was an outspoken early defender of Aboriginal welfare, equal pay for women, and pensions for the aged. Her wartime poem 'No Foe Shall Gather Our Harvest' (1942) became a national rallying cry during the Pacific War. In 1937, she became a Dame Commander of the British Empire, and her portrait adorns the Australian ten-dollar banknote.