She involved herself with the burgeoning labour movement and the Bulletin School of radical nationalists, and she also became a devotee of the utopian socialist views of William Lane.

Drawing on her connections in Sydney, Gilmore found work with The Australian Worker as the editor of its women's section, a position she held from 1908 to 1931.

Mary Jean Cameron was born on 16 August 1865 at the small settlement of Cotta Walla (modern-day Roslyn), just outside Crookwell, New South Wales.

This itinerant existence allowed Mary only a spasmodic formal education; however, she did receive some on their frequent returns to Wagga, either staying with the Beatties or in rented houses.

Another uncle, Charles White (1845–1922), was a journalist and author of books on bushrangers,[1] while an aunt, Jeannie Lockett (née Jane Beattie) was a teacher and writer.

Although the greatest influence on her work was Henry Lawson, it was Alfred "A. G." Stephens, literary editor of The Bulletin, who published her verse and established her reputation as a fiery radical poet, champion of the workers and the oppressed.

Will left to work as a shearer in Argentina and Mary and her two-year-old son Billy soon followed, living separately in Buenos Aires for about six months, and then the family moved to Patagonia until they saved enough for a return passage, via England, in 1902 to Australia, where they took up farming near Casterton, Victoria.

[2] Her four vice-presidents who founded the society were Gilmore, Pattie Fotheringhame, Isobel Gullett and Mary Liddell and the aim was to encourage other women writers.

After the war, Gilmore published volumes of memoirs and reminiscences of colonial Australia and the literary giants of 1890s Sydney, thus contributing much material to the mythologising of that period.

Dame Mary Gilmore died in 1962, aged 97, and was accorded the first state funeral for a writer since the death of Henry Lawson in 1922.

[citation needed] Dobell's 1957 portrait of Dame Mary Gilmore[7] was a finalist in that year's Archibald Prize, and can be seen in the Art Gallery of NSW.

Gilmore's image appears on the third series Australian $10 note (since 2017), along with an illustration inspired by "No Foe Shall Gather Our Harvest" and, as part of the copy-protection microprint, the text of the poem itself.

[citation needed] She was the great-great aunt of politician and later prime minister Scott Morrison, who in 2012, on the 50th anniversary of her death, delivered a tribute to her in federal parliament.