Eliza Reilly: becoming a ‘badass’ woman

When Eliza Reilly, 30, turned her webseries Sheilas in to a book she was forced to confront her inner ‘good girl’.

Eliza Reilly: ‘If you’re the author of Sheilas: Badass Women of Australian History and you don’t do the Sheilas thing, then you’re a hypocrite’ Picture: Kate Williams Photography

Sydney writer and performer Eliza Reilly, 30, is the author of Sheilas: Badass Women of Australian History. She enjoys getting lost in the bush.

Speaking of “badass women”, your efforts to write trailblazing women back in to Australian history could also put you in this category. But you didn’t see yourself as much of a rebel growing up …I write about being a “good girl” in the book. I feel like I suffer a lot from that particular debilitation. I really wish that I had these Sheilas when I was growing up. Writing about them has made me often reach for the braver or harder choice. I think to myself, “Well, Eliza, if you’re the author of Sheilas: Badass Women of Australian History and you don’t do the Sheilas thing, then you’re a hypocrite!” If Merle Thornton chained herself to a pub to fight for my right to have a beer I can probably go out in the world and live my life in the way that I would like to a little bit more.

Merle, one of the women you write about, now in her 90s, chained herself to a bar in Brisbane in 1965 to protest the law excluding women from Queensland public bars. Tell me you had a beer with her as part of your research.
No, I didn’t. That would be a definite dream of mine. But I promise you, every time I blow the froth off a cold one at the end of a very hard working week with my girlfriends in my local pub I definitely take a sip in Merle’s honour!
She did read the script for her episode of the original [Sheilas] web series. Me and my sister Hannah were very forthright that we would not be publishing that episode if we did not have her blessing.

You and Hannah wrote, directed and starred in the series Growing Up Gracefully on ABC TV before making the Sheilas web series. What was her reaction when you wanted to turn it into a book?
Oh my God! She’s like, “Yes, more Sheilas.” Actually, she’s reading it as we speak. I can’t wait to talk to her about it and I can’t wait to hear what she thinks about all the new Sheilas that are in there as well. The book is very different from the web series, but it has the same sort of flavour.

You’ve spoken about Australian history being a bit of a “sausage party”. To what extent, with the exception of your book, of course, would you say this is still the case?
There are so many things that have, unfortunately, been retained from the 1880s onwards from how women are portrayed in the media to how they’re written about. Unfortunately, a lot of women either didn’t get the literal ink space on the page, or they were using their husband’s name, or they were written about in a way that feels a little bit unhelpful to what they were trying to achieve. I can totally see that [now], even in Grace Tame’s experience with trying to navigate the media and her own life … [With the book] I just wanted to add to our cultural tapestry a little bit more. The boys will always be around. There will always be 11 Ned Kelly films. I’m not wanting to take away from that at all. I’m just wanting to give more and allow more people their own little something to sprinkle over their lives and inspire them. Because not everyone connects to Ned Kelly.

When you were deep in the writing process, you took these incredibly long walks of sometimes 50km in the bush around Sydney. Why?
It is super important to be able to step away from your work. For me that’s connection with the bush and being completely isolated. This isn’t a fast, 45-minute sprint – I go for hours. There’s something you leave on the track that you don’t take back to your computer the next day. It’s hard to describe, but it’s like chewing gum for your brain. You can really stretch out whatever you’re mulling over.

Can you share a favourite walking spot?
The walk that was really important to me and will sometimes make me feel really emotional and very humbled is just the ocean walk from North Bondi to South Coogee. You walk past where Sheilas Mina Wylie and Fanny Durack actually trained in the pools (Wylie’s Baths). That ocean walk is just so humbling, especially on a stormy day. I would recommend walking or running out any of your lovely demons on that walk.

Sheilas: Badass Women of Australian History is published by Pan Macmillan (208pp, $34.99).