‘Splendid opportunities’: Women traders in postwar Hong Kong and Australia, 1946–1949
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Author
Dickenson, JDate
2020-04-08Source Title
Australian Journal of Biography and HistoryPublisher
ANU PressUniversity of Melbourne Author/s
Dickenson, JacquelineAffiliation
School of Historical and Philosophical StudiesMetadata
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Journal ArticleCitations
Dickenson, J. (2020). ‘Splendid opportunities’: Women traders in postwar Hong Kong and Australia, 1946–1949. Australian Journal of Biography and History, 3, pp.63-78. https://doi.org/10.22459/ajbh.2020.04.Access Status
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http://doi.org/10.22459/ajbh.2020.04Abstract
In late March 1946, University of Melbourne graduate and long-time Hong Kong
resident Elma Mary Kelly (1895–1974) gave an interview to Melbourne’s Argus
newspaper. Released from Stanley prison camp in August 1945, Kelly had recently
landed in her hometown after a brief sojourn in London. It was her great desire,
Kelly told the reporter, to ‘go back to the East’, where she thought there would
be ‘splendid opportunities, especially for Australians’, who she believed flourished
there because of their ‘poise’ and ‘liking for the life’.2
Kelly travelled on to Sydney
to meet with old friends before returning to Hong Kong in May 1946. On her
return, she embarked on an extraordinary venture. In partnership with her fellow
Stanley internee Dorothy Gordon Jenner (the journalist ‘Andrea’ of Sydney’s Sun
newspaper) and a Sydney friend, Isobel (Belle) Robilliard (1895–1975), Kelly set up
the Austral-China Trading Company, an import–export business.
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