Unruly women demanding space on the footpath

Three tourists at Bald Hill Lookout in Wollongong, New South Wales, 8 August 1932.
Image credit: National Library of Australia.

Bushwalking is a hobby that most Australians enjoy, but there was a time when women were not allowed to take part in these treks until some pioneers decided to go trekking.

Many Australians are drawn to exploring the bush on foot. A walk in the woods provides an opportunity to escape the city, form friendships, explore beautiful scenery, and keep your body and mind healthy.

But the hiking trail wasn’t always a place where women felt welcome.

In the 1920s and ’30s, some people ridiculed the idea that women could cope with difficult encounters with nature. Bush was considered a place for men.

Besides, how could women walk along rocky paths and steep hills in their long skirts and dainty shoes?

But some brave women went anyway. The Melbourne Women’s Walking Club was founded in 1922 and was the first of its kind in Australia.

Women were criticized and sometimes harassed, especially when they experimented with wearing trousers or even shorts.

But the women found solace in friendship and a common love for nature. New research sheds light on the stories of these remarkable women.

Birth of a movement

Indigenous people have walked the Australian landscape for many thousands of years. European walking for recreation dates back to the early settlers, although the word “bushwalking” appeared much later.

As Australian scientist Melissa Harper has shown, walking became a more popular pastime in the early 1900s. Several men-only clubs appeared, but women were excluded – only occasionally on Women’s Day were they allowed to go out with men.

In 1922, a group of women decided they needed their own walking club and the Melbourne Women’s Walking Club was born. The women defied society’s expectations by bushwalking across Victoria and beyond – sometimes for weeks at a time.

The annual program offered 30 to 40 walks for people of varying abilities, as well as a busy calendar of other community events.

Go hiking with the Melbourne Women’s Walking Club

In a time when most women did not have access to cars, club members typically met at Flinders Street station and then boarded a train before starting their trek. Walking destinations included Wilson’s Point, You Yang, Phillip Island, Grampian, Anglesey and Mount Buller.

In the early years of the club, women would wait until they were in the bushes, out of sight, before removing their bulky skirts and putting on breeches instead. By the 1930s, some women were even wearing shorts.

Women carried a joint account with them and took their meals seriously. For a weekend hike, the recommended packing list for every woman included:

• creamed rice
• precooked stew and vegetables
• canned pineapple and cream
• grapefruit
• eggs and bacon
• grilled steak
• six teaspoons of tea
• four teaspoons of coffee
• two crumpets (for tea on Sunday)

Women carried homemade sleeping bags for overnight stays and multi-day walks. Sometimes pack horses joined the journey.

On caravan journeys such as the one pictured above, women were taken into the bush in a specially converted open furniture van.

Difficult Travel

Not every Melbourne Women’s Walking Club trip went to plan.

One of the club members, Margery Lute, recounted a particularly challenging trip to Mount Buller in 1938 in the club magazine. During the hike, there was a hail storm. They stopped for the night in a barn, but the roof leaked and it was flooded. On the way home, the bus broke down and had an accident. Lute, however, found the trip “very pleasant” and wrote lyrically about watching the bushes after dark:

It was a heavenly night (…) all the beauty of the bush was visible, the feathery foliage of catkins, the shine of eucalyptus leaves, the pattern of tree ferns and the tangle of undergrowth.

On another walk in December 1928, the group became lost on the high plains of Bogong for two days due to the unbearable December heat. Their food supplies dwindled and they ran out of water. The women eventually found shelter for the night in a walker’s hut, where one woman photographed the group grinning wildly.

And, unfortunately, in 1937, one club member died in an accident on the pedestrian street. Olive Sandell, a young employee at Melbourne Children’s Hospital, fell and hit her head while walking along Cathedral Range. She died surrounded by her fellow walkers.

For some women, even getting to the track was a challenge. For example, a young mother wrote in a club diary about how she missed her friends walking in the woods and joked about creating a “rival walking club” consisting of herself, her baby and her dog.

Marriage and household responsibilities can also keep women from walking. In 1936, a magazine editor wrote about the upcoming marriage of one of the club members and expressed the hope that the future husband would not force his wife “to give up traveling with the troops in order to keep him in socks without holes and juicy steaks!”

Controversial pastime

Members of the Melbourne Women’s Walking Club treasured their time in the bush. They became friends, laughed and sang together. They rejoiced at the opportunity to escape their domestic duties and the hustle and bustle of city life.

During a hot trip through the Bogong High Plains in 1928, a friendly farmer offered walkers a swim in his dam. The women only had one pair of bathers, but they came up with a solution: one walker would wear the bathers and jump into the dam, and when she went into the water, twist out of the bathers and throw them next. -be a swimmer and so on. The women’s written accounts express pleasure in this small, shared scandal.

While some observers applauded the women’s disregard for convention, others were highly critical.

In a 1932 newspaper article, Brisbane Archbishop James Duhig called women walking through the woods in men’s clothing “absolutely disgusting”. He warned that wearing trousers could encourage risk-taking, saying:

I know that young girls dressed in men’s clothing went to places where they would never dare to wear proper clothing.

Other critics accused the women of being attention seekers or simply following a whim.

Women often attracted unwanted attention and lewd comments, especially when taking public transport to the start of each outing. They felt relieved to start their walk, safe with friends and away from judgement.

True pioneers

The Melbourne Women’s Walking Club was the first of its kind in Australia. But other women of that era also took their place on the footpath. They include Jessie Luckman from Tasmania, Marie Byles and Dot Butler from New South Wales, and Alice Manfield, who led guided walks at Mount Buffalo in Victoria.

Thanks in part to the courage of the first female Bushwalkers, it is no longer controversial for women to go unaccompanied or wear shorts.

But that doesn’t mean women don’t still face discrimination and safety threats in the outdoors. There is a way to do this before everyone feels welcome and safe in Australia’s beautiful outdoors.

Many members of the Melbourne Women’s Walking Club went on to become committed conservationists. Some of them have played a vital role in protecting the natural spaces we enjoy today.

For example, Jean Blackburn, an active member of the club from 1934 until her death in 1983, played a leading role in the creation of national parks in Victoria.

The club survived the stresses of World War II and a sharp decline in membership in the 1950s. Today, more than 100 years after its creation, the Melbourne Women’s Walking Club is still going strong. In fact, today it boasts its largest membership ever.

So, next time you go hiking, think about the remarkable Australian women who fought for their place on the trail and paved the way for generations to come.

Ruby Eckel is a doctoral student at the Australian National University.

Special thanks to Sheila Hirst from the Melbourne Women’s Walking Club for providing archival images. Images adapted from the Melbourne Women’s Walking Club archive at the State Library of Victoria, the MWWC book Still on the Move: 100 Years of the Melbourne Women’s Walking Club 2021, Uphill Afternoon: The Melbourne Women’s Walking Club 1922-1985 and the National Library of Australia. .

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.