There is more to be added to this article but we are so excited about the video that we couldn’t wait any longer to upload it.
Huge thanks to Libby Hathorn and Hamish Gilbert, and the SWW Centenary Committee as well as the other contributors and decision-makers who made this video and song possible.
Dressed in her spangled tights, before Helen performed her poem (below), she read the wording from this plaque, located outside the State Library of NSW, an appropriate introduction:
Female School of Industry 1826-70
The colony was short of servants. In this school, originally a light-horse barracks, the ladies of Sydney sought to teach their lesser sisters “every branch of household work”.
The site is now occupied by the 1910 Mitchell Library.
This plaque is sponsored by Caltex
Commemorating our heritage – the New South Wales Government
At the start of this Society
when women dressed as flappers
already we were rebels,
feminists and rappers.
We dared to smoke in public
and defied the dull convention,
imposed by men, that certain things
a woman shouldn’t mention.
They thought our place was in the home,
cooking, cleaning, washing.
If a young girl had ambition
that ambition needed quashing.
If she chose to be a writer
what publishers expected
was recipes and children’s tales.
Wild passion was rejected.
There’s nothing wrong with recipes
with whisky rum and wine.
If a tale paints putrid parents
young children think it’s fine,
so we started this Society
a century ago
to write with impropriety
of things we shouldn’t know.
In the 60s we shocked publishers
when with adjectives we said
what a man should do to please us
if invited in our bed.
They also didn’t understand
a woman thought it poor
that her boss could squeeze her bottom
and not break any law.
We’re lawyers, teachers, physicists.
We’re a long way from the War
when we worked for half the male wage
upon the factory floor.
But,
when our books win competitions
we dance in spangled tights
then skip back to our keyboards
still demanding women’s rights.
We’re journalists and playwrights
and some of us write crime,
or sci-fi full of monsters
that slither out of slime.
We write our family stories,
poets flout syntactic rules
and satirists aim the big guns
when world leaders act like fools.
We tackle any subject
like destruction of the earth,
dementia, age and violence,
and our waist’s increasing girth.
We elicit condemnation,
alarm and sometimes mirth
when we write of life’s essentials
like the fun of giving birth.
Our membership’s illustrious
with many famous names
but I won’t mention any
in case someone exclaims
that her name’s missing on the list,
then proceeds to cry and moan
and in my haste to add it on
I might delete my own!
We’re not in it for the money
though money’s always nice.
If a large advance is offered
we grab it in a trice.
Submitting to a publisher
is like a throw of dice.
The cake of fame’s a metaphor -
we’ll take the largest slice.
If a publisher rejects our work
we deem their judgement poor
cos among us there’s the talent
the Nobel Prize to score.
And in our second century
we’ll be working to ensure
we beat all records with our sales
and see our royalties soar!
Helen Lyne
Valerie Pybus did us proud in an interview with Sarah Macdonald on ABC Radio 702 on 2 September 2021. Valerie talked knowledgeably about The Society’s history and plans for our centenary celebrations, as well as Ruth Park growing up in New Zealand, Australia and Norfolk Island, and about Beatie Bow. This is the audio file, presented here as a video so it could be uploaded.
We’re hoping this will be a whole year of celebration for all our members. A committee is developing several small and large projects but we are also asking you to contribute your ideas. Click on the suggestion box below to email the Centenary Planning Committee:
To facilitate some of these projects, we will be holding a number of fundraising events and asking for financial support leading up to our official birthday in September 2025. In the meantime, you might like to help by clicking on the $ sign to make a donation, even ask some of your friends to participate in making this anniversary truly special.
Please note that, unfortunately, donations to The Society of Women Writers NSW Inc. are not tax deductible.
