Vale Patricia Clarke

Writer, historian and former journalist Patricia Clarke has died, aged 99.

National Library of Australia Publishing writes:

Dr Patricia Clarke OAM FAHA is the author of over a dozen books and numerous journal articles, and she wrote extensively on women in Australian history and the history of journalism. Dr Clarke contributed to this history herself as the first and only woman on the Melbourne staff at the Australian News and Information Bureau in the early 1950s, before she moved to the press gallery at Parliament House in the 1960s. In 2001, she was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for services to Australian history and was made an honorary fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities in 2005.

Her most recent book, Bold Types, was published in 2022 when she was 95. It was accompanied by a podcast hosted by Amy Remeikis, which the latter turned into a six-part series featuring the stories of trailblazing women journalists. The book and the podcast both included Pat’s own story – of “crowded newsrooms, clattering typewriters, overflowing cigarette trays, fixed round-faced dial telephones with earpieces and long lunches at nearby pubs” (though she noted that women were only welcomed into bars for counter lunches, not to drink, until the 1970s). Throughout her career, she sought to identify and communicate the truth and demonstrated an indefatigable commitment to rescuing Australian women from historical obscurity.

Category: Daily obituary Obituaries