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SHEILAS: BADASS WOMEN OF AUSTRALIAN HISTORY
Eliza Reilly, Macmillan, $34.99
For several years, Eliza Reilly and her sister Hannah have been re-educating the Australian public online, on air and on stage. Now, Reilly has put out a book, remaking history with 13 mini biographies.
It begins with a bushranger, an Indigenous woman who “because the media assumed that no woman’s story could be of interest” did not take her place in history, and concludes with Reg Ansett’s notorious campaign to prevent Deborah Lawrie from flying one of his planes. Yes, that one: the battle about menstruation.
And don’t forget Ansett’s fears of a putative ectopic pregnancy distracting the wrongly gendered pilot when trying to land a Boeing 727. Lawrie is still flying by the
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