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'This is Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls meets Amelia Earhart. It's the real-life story of a daring Australian woman who did something extraordinary - then met an early, mysterious end.
'From the end of the Great War and into the 1920s, Alice Anderson was considered nothing less than a national treasure. She was a woman of 'rare achievement' who excelled as a motoring entrepreneur and inventor. Young, petite, boyish and full of charm, Alice was the first woman in Australia to successfully pull off an almost impossible feat: without family or husband to back her financially, she built a garage to her own specifications and established the country's first motor service run entirely by women.
'Alice was also an adventurer, and her most famous road trip occurred in 1926 in a Baby Austin she had purchased exclusively to prove that the smallest car off a production line could successfully make the 1500-mile-plus journey on and off road from Melbourne to Alice Springs, central Australia.
'However, less than a week after her return, Alice was fatally shot in the head at the rear of her own garage. She was only twenty-nine years old. Every newspaper in the country mourned her sudden loss. A coronial inquest concluded that Alice's death was accidental but testimonies at the inquest were full of inconsistencies.
'Alice's life was brief but extraordinary, and in this richly detailed and entertainingly told book this pioneering Australian woman comes to life for readers for the first time.' (Publication summary)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Sound recording.
- Dyslexic edition.
Works about this Work
-
Force of Nature
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , January / February no. 418 2020; (p. 32)
— Review of A Spanner in the Works : The Extraordinary Story of Alice Anderson and Australia's First All-girl Garage 2019 single work biography 'On the evening of 6 August 1926, Alice Anderson donned her driving goggles and gloves, waved to the cheering crowds outside Melbourne’s Lyceum Club, and got into her tiny two-seater Austin 7. With her former teacher Jessie Webb beside her, the boot packed with two guns, sleeping bags, a compass, four gallons of water, a supply of biscuits, and, strangely, two potatoes with red curly wigs, she tooted the horn and set off. Her mission? A three-week pioneering trip to the never-never. ‘There is only one main route from Adelaide to Darwin, and that is only a camel track,’ the tiny young woman behind the wheel said breezily of the 2,607-kilometre journey ahead of her. ‘We are not going to stick to the beaten track.’' (Introduction)
-
Force of Nature
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , January / February no. 418 2020; (p. 32)
— Review of A Spanner in the Works : The Extraordinary Story of Alice Anderson and Australia's First All-girl Garage 2019 single work biography 'On the evening of 6 August 1926, Alice Anderson donned her driving goggles and gloves, waved to the cheering crowds outside Melbourne’s Lyceum Club, and got into her tiny two-seater Austin 7. With her former teacher Jessie Webb beside her, the boot packed with two guns, sleeping bags, a compass, four gallons of water, a supply of biscuits, and, strangely, two potatoes with red curly wigs, she tooted the horn and set off. Her mission? A three-week pioneering trip to the never-never. ‘There is only one main route from Adelaide to Darwin, and that is only a camel track,’ the tiny young woman behind the wheel said breezily of the 2,607-kilometre journey ahead of her. ‘We are not going to stick to the beaten track.’' (Introduction)
Awards
- 2020 longlisted Davitt Award — Best True Crime Book
- 2019 longlisted 'The Nib': CAL Waverley Library Award for Literature