Minding Her Own Business

Join award-winning historian Dr Catherine Bishop on this revealing new walking tour that brings the stories of Australia’s early entrepreneurial women to life.

If you have always imagined Sydney’s 19th century women ensconced in their homes, hardly daring to venture out into the ‘public sphere’, think again. There were proud publicans and pert prostitutes, feisty fortune tellers and demure dressmakers; there were bankrupts, bigamists, and business tycoons.

We learn about the one colonial businesswoman everyone sees every time they use a $20 note - Mary Reibey. And we end in a pub, whose early female publican has been written out of its history.

Enjoy a leisurely walk, a drink and a chat about those money-making, multi-tasking women who helped create the city we know now.

You will never look at Sydney in the same way again.