'Ruth Park’s novel The Harp in the South (1948) is a classic of Australian fiction. Just as television viewers in recent decades would recognise “Ramsay Street” as the fictional centre of Australia’s longest-running television soap opera Neighbours, earlier generations of readers would have recognised with affection “Twelve-and-a-half Plymouth Street”: the hearth and home of Harp’s fictional Irish-Australian family, the Darcys.'
'The Australian Women’s Weekly, the first Australian magazine dedicated solely to the interests of women, turned 90 this year. The magazine is known for its coverage centred around the home and child-rearing, but the early editions of the Weekly also created a space for Australian women to engage with politics through the lens of womanhood.' (Introduction)