Dame Mary Gilmore Traditional Cache

This is my first cache ever placed. in a Quiet little park just off Pennant Hills Road in Thompsons Corner. This park features a spectacular clean view into the City both day and night. Amazing on NYE. It is also the site of the Bicentanal Flag Pole one of he biggest i have seen.

 Dame Mary Jean Gilmore (1865-1962), writer, was born on 16 August 1865 at Mary Vale, Woodhouselee, near Goulburn, New South Wales. 

Over the years Mary Gilmore campaigned in the Worker and any other available forum for a wide range of social and economic reforms, such as votes for women, old-age and invalid pensions, child endowment and improved treatment of returned servicemen, the poor and deprived and, above all, of Aboriginals. She wrote numerous letters, as well as contributing articles and poems, to the Sydney Morning Herald on these causes and such diverse subjects as the English language, the Prayer Book, earthquakes, Gaelic and the immigration laws, the waratah as a national emblem, the national anthem and Spanish Australia. All her life she encouraged young writers and enthused over their work.

In 1980 a selection of her letters was published posthumously. She was a founder of the Lyceum Club, Sydney, a founder and vice-president in 1928 of the Fellowship of Australian Writers, an early member of the New South Wales Institute of Journalists and life member of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

To mark the considerable public acclaim for her literary and social achievements, she was appointed D.B.E. in 1937. Thereafter she was a celebrated public figure.