The unusual life of Alice Anderson

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Some time ago we reported about a couple of girls working on a wooden wheeled wonder, asking for a bit more information. And that’s what we got. The girls turned out to be a women student mechanics following a course at Central High School in Washington DC and they were identified, too!

More recently, the same picture prompted reader Tony Press to bring the book ‘A spanner in the Works’ under our attention. It’s under titled ‘The extraordinary story of Alice Anderson and Australia' s first all-girl garage’. Tony added: “This fascinating story shows the difficulties for garage girls in the Melbourne suburb of Kew in 1919 (and probably even now).”

Had we heard of the book? Fairness commands we hadn’t even heard of Alice Anderson. This while she is described as an Australian national treasure by the book’s publisher Hachette. But a few mouse clicks ahead we knew more and learned that Andersen was indeed a real wonder woman. On her own, she managed to set up a garage in Kew just outside Melbourne, which was to become Australia’s first motor workshop run entirely by women. And it was a successful one, too. Alice set up courses for women who wanted to learn about cars and came up with an invention named the ‘Radi-waiter’ - a flask that used the radiator to keep drinks warm. What a woman!

It did end in tears though. Shortly after she came back from a cross-country journey to Alice Springs in her Austin Seven in 1926, Alice was fatally shot in the head at the rear of her garage, just 29 years old. Police concluded that Alice's death was an accident since she was supposedly cleaning the gun she’d taken on her trip, but others doubt the accidental bit. Food for a book for sure! Unfortunately, the original Kew premises are long gone, but the National Motor Museum in Birdwood has rebuilt a faithful version of Ms Anderson's garage in its exhibition hall.

Words by Jeroen Booij. Picture Hachette publishers.

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