A Secretive Century Monte Punshon's Australia

In a life that spanned more than a century - 1882 to 1989 - Monte Punshon witnessed crucial events in Australia's history. She was a pioneer radio broadcaster, travelled the country with children's theatrical troupes and defied convention with her active involvement in the underground world of queer Melbourne in the 1930s. Her wanderlust took her to China and Japan, and she studied their languages before becoming a warden in a wartime internment camp for Japanese civilians. In the postwar era she was an early advocate for closer ties between Australia and Asia. Punshon's complex personality reflected both her middle-class Methodist upbringing in Ballarat and her restless search for new experiences and for her own identity. At the age of 103 she gained fame for speaking publicly about her lifelong love for women. Monte's story shines light into the hidden corners and complexities of late nineteenth and twentieth century society, and the unfinished quest to create an imaginative and unafraid Australia.

Tessa Morris-Suzuki is Professor Emerita of History at the Australian National University, where she held the positions of Distinguished Professor and Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow. In 2013 she was awarded the Fukuoka Prize (Academic) for contributions to Asian studies. Morris-Suzuki is the author of 25 non-fiction books, including The Past Within Us: Media, Memory, History; Exodus to North Korea: Shadows from Japan's Cold War; Japan's Living Politics: Grassroots Action and the Crises of Democracy; and On the Frontiers of History: Rethinking East Asian Borders.