Book – Travelling to Tomorrow: The Modern Women Who Sparked Australia’s Romance with America

Author: Yves Rees
Publisher: NSW Publishing, University of NSW Press Ltd
Reviewer: Brian Morgan

The title of this book immediately appealed to me.

I entered the Law in the days of Elizabeth Evatt and Roma Mitchell, both of whom I am proud to say I met on a number of occasions. At law school, there was a young woman in our group who outshone everyone in the class, male or female, and went on to be a Professor of Law, a celebrated author of legal texts and a State Governor whilst remaining at home!

This book shines a light on the following women all of whom found fame and fortune by leaving Australia, at least for a while.

May Lahey (law), Rose Cumming (decorator), Isabel Letham (surf pioneer and swimming teacher), Dorothy Cottrell (novelist and story writer), Mary Cecil Allen (painter and decorator), Vera Bradford (concert pianist and music teacher), Persia Campbell (academic and consumer activist), Alice Caporn (nudist and health entrepreneur), Dorothy Waugh, (academic and feminist) and Cynthia Reed (nursing student and novelist).

I doubt that anyone reading Travelling to Tomorrow (“Travelling”) could avoid being affected by the various stories. In the 1920’s, it seems clear that the United States was far more liberated, in respecting women as the equal of men, than Australia. As an aside, when my sister was studying to become a specialist physician, she was actively treated by the males in that field as a second rate person, not suited to her specialty. She managed to show otherwise.

I will refer in a little detail to one of the subjects of Travelling, Isabel Letham. Letham was lifted onto what today we would call a long board at Sydney’s Freshwater Beach by a visiting Hawaiian Olympian. Surfing at that time was new to Australia. Soon she turned to the United States to further a career in surfing and swimming.

In time, she turned to swimming, alone, as a means of income as there was no money in surfing. Ultimately, she was employed by the University of Berkeley. She taught probably thousands to swim and made her home in San Francisco. But, in late 1926, she returned to Australia to be greeted by the Press but shunned by the surf lifesaving community as “we do not teach ladies the work”.

Obviously, Australia was still way behind the United States.

All the subjects of Travelling had complex, demanding and interesting lives and this book presents them in great detail. Just think, the first Australian woman judge was appointed in the United States.

Travelling refers to places the subject of the text by their Indigenous names. While educational, I found it a little distracting and led to an excessive dependence on my part upon Dr Wikipedia. While I appreciate the education I, thereby, received, an internal glossary of place names might also have been helpful.

Dr Rees refers to having low level terror of entering a Country that had passed 86 anti-trans bills that year alone.[1] While I was not sure that this statement added to the book, perhaps, it reflects how the tables have been turned over the last one hundred years between what was then an intolerant Australia compared to a then tolerant United States.

Travelling really captures the divide between Australian working women and, in particular, those in the United States, 100 years ago. To many, perhaps, the perfect dream was to travel to the United Kingdom but many of our most successful pioneers made their names, if not their fortunes, in America.

[1] See All About Yves: Notes from a Transition (Allen & Unwin, 2021) and Nothing to Hide: Voices of Trans and Gender Diverse Australia (Allen & Unwin, 2022).