In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, historian and author Dr Yves Rees chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Travelling to Tomorrow: The Modern Women Who Sparked Australia’s Romance with America. This fascinating collective biography examines the lives of ten remarkable Australian women who, in the early twentieth century, threw convention to the wind by setting sail across the Pacific to seek their fortunes in North America.
From artists and activists to scientists and social reformers, these exceptional women challenged societal norms and expectations. They embraced the spirit of innovation and independence, forging their own paths and inspiring generations to come.
Books of the Year 2024: Australian Book Review
Best Books of 2024: Sydney Morning Herald/ The Age
Travelling to Tomorrow
A celebrity decorator with blue hair. A single mother who advised JFK in the Oval Office. A Christian nudist with a passion for almond milk.
A century ago, ten Australian women did something remarkable. Throwing convention to the wind, they headed across the Pacific to make their fortune. In doing so, they reoriented Australia towards the United States years before politicians began to lumber down the same path.
For the artist Mary Cecil Allen, this meant spreading the word about American abstract expressionism. For the naturopath Alice Caporn, it meant evangelising fruit juices and salads. For the swimmer Isabel Letham, it was teaching synchronised swimming. Others imported the latest thinking in dentistry, fashion, design, economics, law, music, medicine and more. Trailblazers and disruptors, each woman had a remarkable story; together, they changed the narrative of Australian history.
Isabel Letham at South Steyne, c. 1917 /
Photographer Judith Fletcher
Image courtesy Warringah Library Service via National Portrait Gallery
In Travelling to Tomorrow, Yves Rees uncovers a new history of Australia’s relationship with the US during the first half of the twentieth century. Through the stories of these trailblazing women, the book explores how America represented a land of freedom, modernity and opportunity. The women were drawn to the promise of a future where they could realise their ambitions and live their best lives.
In their quest for personal and professional fulfillment, the women ventured into uncharted territories, breaking down barriers and shaping the cultural and intellectual landscape of both Australia and the US. These women were rebels, disruptors, fearless and feisty. Individually, they have extraordinary stories. Together, they changed the narrative of Australian history.
President John F Kennedy with members of the Consumer Advisory Council, including Persia Campbell (standing to the right of the president).
Supplied: John F Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, AR7366-A
Travelling to Tomorrow reminds us of the power of storytelling in uncovering hidden histories and shaping our understanding of the past. The ten extraordinary women Yves Rees featured not only defied conventions but also paved the way for future generations. Their stories are a testament to resilience, ambition and courage, the importance of cultural exchange, and the impact of individual stories on broader historical narratives.
May Lahey (right) was a big name in California's legal circles.
Supplied: University of California, Los Angeles
Praise for Travelling to Tomorrow: The Modern Women Who Sparked Australia’s Romance with America
Thoughtful and curious, critical and kind, Yves Rees’s study of these globetrotting Australian women richly renders their lives and times, as well as contemplating how we reach across time to read them today.
Anna Clark, Australian Research Council Future Fellow,
University of Technology Sydney
Fresh, captivating, and full of fantastic women. Yves has somehow managed to assemble the greatest fantasy dinner party you never knew you needed, whilst also uncovering a fascinating and untold side of our history. A real treat.
Zo Coombs Marr, comedian, performer and actor
Yves Rees has the remarkable ability to bring history into the present, reminding us all that the only thing that really separates the generations is a linear notion of time. Travelling to Tomorrow gives voice to the women at the forefront of Australia’s own ‘American Revolution’. What I love most about Yves is how they bring an unwavering commitment to human rights in their exploration of history, the language of equality ever-present in their handling of the past. In Rees, we have found a historian of rare skill they possess the ability to tell us something we didn’t know about something we thought we did.
Clementine Ford, feminist writer, columnist and broadcaster
This book is a knockout. Yves Rees is that rare historian who thinks like a scholar and writes like a dream the literary equivalent to floating like a butterflying and stinging like a bee. You will want to meet these fearless and feisty women: women not only before their time in forging new geocultural paths to independence but also making their times by putting flesh to the bones of modernity. Rees gives us their stories in full-bodied, hot-blooded fashion. A sheer delight.
Professor Clare Wright OAM, Professor of History, La Trobe University
Travelling to Tomorrow is a rollicking, bouncing read.
Rachelle Unreich, SMH/The Age (Book of the Week)
A cracking, never-before-told tale.
Nicole Abadee, Spectrum
Rees’s narrative voice is chatty, empathetic, [and] wise. The reader feels like a charming guide is leading a tour of interwar America. All of this makes the book an engrossing read.
Inside Story
Sydney Morning Herald /The Age
Yves Rees’s accessible, entertaining study blends personal experience with rich archival research…Rees brings their stories to life in a study that balances narrative energy with academic rigor…Rees has a storyteller’s knack for engaging the reader.
Kirsten Tranter, Australian Book Review
Rees’s priority is recovering the stories of their ten subjects, and the book does this brilliantly. These accounts are underpinned by years of painstaking research leavened with imaginative reconstruction…The reader feels like a charming guide is leading a tour of interwar America. All this makes the book an engrossing read.
Barbara Keys, Inside Story
About Yves Rees
Yves Rees (they/them) is a writer, historian and podcaster based on unceded Wurundjeri land. Yves is also a Senior Lecturer in History at La Trobe University, co-host of the ‘Archive Fever’ history podcast (with Clare Wright), and author of the memoir All About Yves: Notes from a Transition. They are also co-editor of Nothing to Hide: Voices of Trans and Gender-Diverse Australia.
Yves Rees was awarded the 2020 ABR Calibre Essay Prize, a 2021 Varuna Residential Fellowship and the 2018 Serle Award.
They are the 2025 KSP Writers’ Centre Emerging Writer-in-Residence.
Yves Rees has judged the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, the Calibre Essay Prize and the Stella Prize.
Yves’s essays and criticism have been published in the Guardian, The Age, Sydney Review of Books, Australian Book Review, Meanjin, Griffith Review, Crikey and Overland, among other publications. They are also co-editor of the history journal History Australia.
Interviews
Did these trailblazing women play a role in building the Australia-US relationship?, Late Night Live, RN, Australian Broadcasting Corporation