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y separately published work icon A Secretive Century : Monte Punshon's Australia single work   biography  
Issue Details: First known date: 2024... 2024 A Secretive Century : Monte Punshon's Australia
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Australia's modern transformation as revealed through the life of an extraordinary woman. In a life that spanned more than a century (1882 to 1989), Monte Punshon witnessed crucial events in Australia's history. She was a pioneer radio broadcaster, travelled the country with children's theatrical troupes and defied convention with her active involvement in the underground world of queer Melbourne in the 1930s. Her wanderlust took her to China and Japan & she studied their languages before becoming a warden in a wartime internment camp for Japanese civilians. In the postwar era she was an early advocate for closer ties between Australia and Asia. Punshon's complex personality reflected both her middle-class Methodist upbringing in Ballarat and her restless search for new experiences and for her own identity. At the age of 103 she gained fame for speaking publicly about her lifelong love for women. Monte's story shines light into the hidden corners & complexities of late nineteenth and twentieth century society, and the unfinished quest to create an imaginative and unafraid Australia.' 

(Publication summary)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

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Works about this Work

‘Unafraid to Be’ 1888 Exhibition to Expo 88 Susan Sheridan , 2024 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , July no. 466 2024; (p. 57)
— Review of A Secretive Century : Monte Punshon's Australia Tessa Morris-Suzuki , 2024 single work biography

'In 1888, Melbourne hosted a grand Centennial International Exhibition to mark a century of British occupation of the continent. There, a six-year-old girl called Ethel Punshon was excited to see that she had won a prize of two guineas for her needle-work – an embroidered red felt newspaper holder. Almost one hundred years later, as Brisbane prepared to mark the bicentennial with a modern ‘Expo 88’, Ethel – now known as Monte Punshon – was invited to become Expo’s roving ambassador, as perhaps the only person alive who remembered its predecessor.' (Introduction)
Loves of Her Life Sylvia Martin , 2024 single work column
— Appears in: Inside Story , June 2024; 'If Monte Punshon is remembered today, it is for two things: she lived to 106 and in her last years she was feted as “the world’s oldest lesbian.” This woman — born a century earlier but happy to declare in the 1980s that she had always loved women — had always resisted the label. For her, unlike the lesbian feminists of a new era, the personal was not political: “I’m not labelled anything. I’m just me myself. I hate that name.”' (Introduction)
‘Unafraid to Be’ 1888 Exhibition to Expo 88 Susan Sheridan , 2024 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , July no. 466 2024; (p. 57)
— Review of A Secretive Century : Monte Punshon's Australia Tessa Morris-Suzuki , 2024 single work biography

'In 1888, Melbourne hosted a grand Centennial International Exhibition to mark a century of British occupation of the continent. There, a six-year-old girl called Ethel Punshon was excited to see that she had won a prize of two guineas for her needle-work – an embroidered red felt newspaper holder. Almost one hundred years later, as Brisbane prepared to mark the bicentennial with a modern ‘Expo 88’, Ethel – now known as Monte Punshon – was invited to become Expo’s roving ambassador, as perhaps the only person alive who remembered its predecessor.' (Introduction)
Loves of Her Life Sylvia Martin , 2024 single work column
— Appears in: Inside Story , June 2024; 'If Monte Punshon is remembered today, it is for two things: she lived to 106 and in her last years she was feted as “the world’s oldest lesbian.” This woman — born a century earlier but happy to declare in the 1980s that she had always loved women — had always resisted the label. For her, unlike the lesbian feminists of a new era, the personal was not political: “I’m not labelled anything. I’m just me myself. I hate that name.”' (Introduction)
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Last amended 17 Jan 2024 08:18:49
Subjects:
  • Melbourne, Victoria,
  • 1930s
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