When women were accepted to study at Melbourne University in 1880, 28 years after the university was founded, Mary Gaunt was one of four who were the first to be admitted.
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So it's fitting a woman at the forefront of equality, who also travelled the world and "lived by her pen when nice women didn't", inspired a biography titled Mary Gaunt: Independent Colonial Woman.
Written in 2014 by Bronwen Hickman, the biography tells the story of the Chiltern woman born in 1861.
Widowed after only six years of marriage, Ms Gaunt wrote articles when the media landscape was dominated by men and later used them to fund her travels overseas to West Africa and China.
When the Second World War came, she was living in Italy and escaped to France, where she died in 1942.
During Hickman's research about Ms Gaunt, she gathered stories about Chiltern, and will present some of those which were left out of her book in the town on Sunday.
Hickman will be hosted by the Chiltern Athenaeum Museum at an event from 2pm at the Senior Citizen's Hall.
She is one of the people who founded the Western Union Writers, a group in the western suburbs of Melbourne, 30 years ago and has published seven books.
Hickman was also a scriptwriter for the ABC for 13 years.
Contact the museum on (03) 5726 1280 for bookings to Sunday's talk.
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