I have been writing about Australian women who lived in long-term, intimate relationships in the early 20th century for over 30 years. None of them openly identified as lesbian or queer. Which was not an unusual situation in a period when same-sex relationships were not condoned. My interest lay in how these women living more than a century ago might have understood their relationships, what ideas and understandings were available to them, and how they might have negotiated these personally. They all led productive lives as professional women – poets, a librarian, businesswomen.

When I came across the photograph that inspired Double Act – a joyful image of two smiling women dressed in ‘New Woman’ garb and with elaborate Edwardian hairstyles – I was instantly intrigued. They were clearly artists or craftswomen, but there were certain oddities about the photo. The dark-haired woman on the left is holding a rusty plane and an offcut of wood. An axe rests against the stone step beside her. A carpenter or woodcarver? This is suggested, but these are not fine woodworking tools. A fair-haired woman sits on a lower step at what appears to be an easel, but on closer inspection looks more like the base of a theodolite. She is ‘painting’ with something that is not a paintbrush. The artfully arranged umbrella behind her suggests a shade protector for working plein air. Was this a playful photograph organised with friends? When and where was it taken? Heading off to Canberra, I began my research.

Two slightly different versions of this photograph can be found in the Eirene Mort Papers held in the National Library. On further research, I found that Nora Kate Weston and Eirene Mort had met in Sydney in their twenties and stayed together for the rest of their lives, over 60 years in all. Born within 6 months of each other around 1880, they were descended from prominent colonial settlers. Eirene’s father, Henry Wallace Mort, was the first rector at All Saints, Woollahra, when the eastern shores of Sydney Harbour were sparsely populated. He even kept a cow in the paddock adjoining the church to provide fresh milk for his family. Nora Weston, whose great grandfather, Lieutenant George Johnson, was on the first fleet in 1788, grew up in Parramatta in straitened circumstances after her father died when she was 6 years old, leaving a widow and 8 children.

Eirene left for London to study art when she was only 19, unusual for a young woman in those days to travel across the world alone. She became imbued with the ethos of the British arts and crafts movement, in which handmade arts and crafts were promoted, often taking inspiration from nature. Returning to Australia at the end of 1903, Eirene determined to adapt those principles using native flora and fauna as the motifs for her designs.
 

Around 1906 she met Nora Kate ‘Chips’ Weston through the art scene in Sydney. Chips’ skills as a carpenter, woodcarver and metal worker complemented Eirene's in black and white illustration, watercolour, pottery, tapestry and needlework. The two women began their own business exhibiting and selling their artefacts, later designing their own house and studio where they lived and worked. The Eirene Mort Papers are a treasure trove of sketchbooks full of drawings, folders of watercolours, designs for stencils and metalwork, etchings and much more, most of which feature Australian motifs. This poster for a calendar of protected wildflowers of New South Wales, which was displayed on the walls of many schools, was created by Eirene in 1933.

Collections of their work can also be found in the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of NSW and the New Australian Bookplate Society. Some of their beautiful joint works, such as this fire screen, are held by members of the Mort and Weston families. The lyrebird tapestry screen designed and worked by Eirene hangs perfectly within a timber frame executed by Nora.

Over the course of their years together the two women travelled extensively around the eastern states and Tasmania. Their Rover was driven by Nora, while Eirene sketched the landscape and rural buildings, recording the disappearing history of settler Australia. After Chips died aged 85, Eirene held a memorial exhibition for her in their home in the Southern Highlands. She continued her recording of Australian history in her hand-produced volumes called Tracks, presenting them to the National Library before her death at age 98. This is the frontispiece watercolour Camden from Elderslie, in Tracks, Part IV, found in her papers.

Although Double Act, my version of Eirene and Nora’s life and work, is now complete, I am still reminded of these fascinating women each morning when I open my computer and see my screensaver: a vibrant watercolour of the Australian landscape. It is one of many images that did not make it from Eirene’s papers into the pages of their biography, but I am fortunate to have the private joy stepping into that sunlit world glimpsed through a cleft in the rock wall of the foreground.