Something I love about Canberra is the different themes covered in the naming of suburbs and streets. The suburb of Gilmore, was named after poet and journalist, Dame Mary Gilmore, and its streets are named largely after Journalists, many of whom are female.
This Cache is placed in Alice Jackson Crescent. Alice Mabel Jackson was born in 1887 and died in 1974.
After resigning from teaching to have children she returned to work in another career, that of a journalist and magazine editor.
She worked for a number of papers and magazines including Triad, Cobbers, Beckett's Budget, Smith's Weekly, Sunday Times, Daily Guardian, Daily Telegraph, and the Women’s Day, but perhaps her greatest contribution was made in the 17 years she worked for the Australian Women's Weekly. She started working for the Australian Women’s Weekly from the time it began in 1933. Within a few years of starting she was affectively editor in charge.
Over this time the Australian Women’s Weekly developed a style and contents aimed at a broad readership, much of it written for women, by women. Included in the subject matter was “royal pageantry, Hollywood lifestyles, romance, beauty and high fashion—and quantities of practical advice, from recipes and dress-patterns to sexuality.” [1] Over the war years she covered many topics that showed that women could still be feminine yet at the same time independent, and could work in military or heavy work. During these years the magazine had a strong nationalist flavour.
Perhaps the biggest achievement was that she set up offices across Australia and a National distribution system that meant the circulation was nearing 750,000 by the time she left the magazine in 1950. This set the magazine up for further successes after she left.
She died on 28 October 1974 at Meadowbank, Sydney.
[1] Heather Radi, 'Jackson, Alice Mabel (1887–1974)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/jackson-alice-mabel-10597/text18827, accessed 24 January 2013.