Category: Remarkable Characters

Ethleen Palmer was a pioneering artist and designer, sometimes called ‘Australia’s Hokusai’.

Hurricanes, cyclones and other major storms are given human names to make them easily identifiable. The idea came from Queensland meteorologist Clement Wragge.

Yvonne Audette was a pioneering local artist, one of the first to bring the radical ideas of Abstract Expressionism to Australia.

Lina Bryans was a successful female artist and an independent single mother, at a time when both were less common. She also threw a hell of a party.

Annette Kellerman was a champion swimmer, a Hollywood movie star, and a pioneer for healthy living and women’s rights.

From a riverbank in Mildura, to the world’s most prestigious art galleries: this is the story of artist Trevor ‘Turbo’ Brown.

Henry Fielding is a literary legend; the 18th century author of the classic ‘Tom Jones’. In 1754, he witnessed a kitten go overboard.

Francoise Gilot was a friend of Matisse, muse of Picasso, and an exciting and successful artist in her own right.

The Archibald Prize is Australia’s richest art prize. It was founded by a self-made miner turned journalist, who liked to pretend he was French. 

She sang and she shredded on electric guitar. She was black, bi-sexual, and a woman, at a time when it was hard to be any of these things. She is Sister Rosetta Tharpe.