Braving rain and wind, Ōtautahi residents filled the auditorium at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna Waiwhetū for WORD Christchurch Festival on Sunday to hear two remarkable women bring to life the stories of the pioneering women who defied expectations on Aotearoa’s goldfields and in its mountains.
Julia Bradshaw drew on stories from her recent book Digging Deep, challenging the long-held portrayal of women on the goldfields as merely "dutiful companions" and revealing their resilience, independence, and vital contributions to life in these harsh environments. Hazel Phillips then shared stories from Great Hearts, bringing to life the pioneering women mountaineers who defied the social expectations of their era to pursue ambitious goals among the peaks surrounding Aoraki Mount Cook.
Great Hearts: First Ladies of Aoraki Mount Cook
Both authors set out to rescue these women from the margins of history. In doing so, they challenged comfortable historical narratives and restored the voices of women whose experiences did not fit the expectations of their era. As Julia and Hazel spoke, it became clear that the reality was far richer, more adventurous, and ultimately more compelling than the simplified versions that had endured suggested.
Hazel recalls a pivotal moment that inspired her book. An experienced alpine adventurer, she was ski touring with a male friend when they encountered another group on the mountain. Although her companion was relatively new to the alpine environment, the men in the other party directed a steady stream of technical questions about the snowpack and mountain conditions to him throughout the day. Repeatedly, he had to shrug and redirect their questions to Hazel, the more experienced mountaineer. The incident was far from isolated. Hazel had encountered similar biases and subtle forms of discrimination throughout her outdoor life, many of which she explored in her previous book, Solo. These experiences left her wondering how long women had been facing these challenges in the mountains and what stories had gone untold as a result. Determined to find answers, she began searching for the experiences of earlier women climbers. Her research led her to Freda du Faur's The Conquest of Mount Cook and Other Climbs, a book she devoured with enthusiasm. Through du Faur's account, Hazel became deeply interested in the Aoraki/Mount Cook region and the history of the women who explored it. Since then, she has been collecting and uncovering their stories.
The Conquest of Mount Cook and Other Climbs
Julia Bradshaw
Julia recounted how she first uncovered the stories of remarkable women on the goldfields while working in a museum in Central Otago. Family historians would often visit and share stories about their fascinating female ancestors, yet Julia found that these women were largely absent from the written record. She encountered the same pattern after moving to Hokitika, where many women's contributions remained overlooked or undocumented.
Determined to address this gap, Julia has spent the past 30 years researching and collecting these forgotten stories. As her work progressed, she uncovered an extraordinary range of lives: successful entrepreneurs and business owners who ran hotels, restaurants, stores, and laundries; women who prospected and mined for gold in their own right; and those who were forced to rebuild their lives time and again after being dealt cruel blows by unreliable partners, poverty, discrimination, or tragedy. Alongside them were countless ordinary women whose resilience, resourcefulness, and determination enabled them to achieve extraordinary things in challenging circumstances. In the end, the greatest challenge was not finding stories to tell, but deciding which women to include in the book.
What particularly struck Julia was that many of these women appeared to cope remarkably well with the physical hardships of life on the goldfields, often as well as, and sometimes better than, their male counterparts. The greater challenge was often psychological and financial. Women frequently found themselves constrained by a legal system that afforded them few rights and treated them largely as the property of their husbands. A man could abandon his family and, in some cases, take the money and assets his wife had worked hard to accumulate. Faced with repeated setbacks such as these, many women struggled to achieve lasting security and independence, despite their intelligence, industry, and perseverance.
Left: Navigating the ice in their Sunday best .... with hemp rope and ice axe for safety! Macmillan Brown Library, MB1065-20251, Right: Ladies' alpine fashions on the Tasman Glacier. New Zealand Alpine Club: Records, MS-1164-2/57/4/001, Hocken Collections Te Uare Taoka o Hākena, University of Otago Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka
Among the many entertaining, and often astounding, stories shared during the event were vivid examples of the additional burdens' women were expected to 'wear', quite literally, under the social conventions of the time. Despite the hostile conditions they faced, and the immense physical exertion required, pioneering female mountaineers were often expected to climb in their Sunday best rather than practical outdoor clothing. They were rarely outfitted with correct technical equipment - and frequently found themselves handed implements that appeared closer to a toothpick than a proper ice axe.
Listening to these accounts, I was struck by how much these women achieved despite the obstacles placed in their way. Their challenges extended far beyond the mountains themselves. They were required to navigate restrictive social expectations while pursuing ambitions that many believed were unsuitable for women. It is a far cry from the equipment, clothing, and opportunities available to me as a female climber in the twenty-first century, and a reminder of just how much today's adventurers owe to these remarkable pioneers.
me in more modern, sensible gear .... but less sensible pose
.... although sometimes my friends and I still like to dress up
I particularly liked the comparison between myself and Jane Kennedy, both photographed at the tarns on Mount Alexander below, but separated by more than a century. The landscape has changed little in that time, yet our experiences as women in the mountains could hardly have been more different. Looking at the two images side by side offered a powerful reminder of how far female climbers have come, and of the pioneering women whose efforts helped make that progress possible.
Left: Jane Thomson at the tarns on Mount Alexander (W.A. Kennedy Collection, Canterbury Museum, 1975.203.18131), right: me ... at the tarns on Mount Alexander.
The talk proved particularly meaningful to me as one of the alpine trailblazers mentioned in Hazel's book was my great-aunt, Greta Stevenson, a pioneering botanist, mycologist, and mountaineer who championed women's place in both science and the mountains. I'd like to think that my own fascination with spotting unusual fungi while out tramping comes, at least in part, from her.
Alongside friends Ivy Smith and Lella Davidson, Greta led the first all-women, unguided attempt on a significant New Zealand peak when they climbed Mount Earnslaw in 1933. By all accounts, she was a natural leader: mentally and physically strong, capable, and widely respected by her peers. What I found particularly interesting ... and what Hazel also explores in the book ... was the language used to describe her. In the alpine records written largely by men, Greta was often labelled "bossy", a term rarely applied to male leaders exhibiting the same qualities. Men in comparable positions were more likely to be described as decisive, authoritative, or commanding. It serves as a revealing example of the subtle biases that have shaped the way women's achievements have been recorded and remembered throughout history.
Reading about Greta, I was struck by how familiar some of these attitudes still feel today. While opportunities for women in the mountains have improved enormously, the tendency to judge female leadership differently from male leadership has not disappeared entirely. Greta's story is therefore not only an important part of mountaineering history, but also a reminder of the generations of women who challenged expectations and helped pave the way for those who followed.
Left: Ivy Smith (L), Greta Stevenson (C) and Lella Davidson on Wright Col, Right: Greta (L) and her siblings ... from our family album!
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