Mary Gilmore

These individual and group projects build on your research of Mary Gilmore and encourage a range of creative responses.

The National Portrait Gallery invites you to share your projects online by uploading images, video, audio and text to the Portrait of a Nation: Australian Schools Portrait Project website.

Visit the projects page for more information on how your school can contribute.

Explore the biography and links to find more information about Mary Gilmore.

Use a combination of text and images to create a timeline of Gilmore’s life.

The National Portrait Gallery collection includes paintings photographs, drawings, sculptures, prints, textiles and multimedia portraits.

Experiment with a range of materials to create your own portrait of Mary Gilmore.

Create a short performance about Mary Gilmore.

This could be a play, a song, an interview or a dramatisation of a poem by Gilmore. Make a video of your performance or document your activity in a series of photographs.

Our women shall walk in honour,
Our children shall know no chain,
This land, that is ours forever,
The invader shall strike at in vain.
Anzac!...Tobruk!...and Kokoda!...
Could ever the old blood fail?
No foe shall gather our harvest,
Or sit on our stockyard rail.

These words are from Mary Gilmore’s celebrated poem No Foe Shall Gather our Harvest. The last two lines appear on the $10 note featuring Gilmore.

Compose a speech, poem, story or song based on the life of Mary Gilmore.

The Canberra suburb of Gilmore is named after Dame Mary Gilmore. The streets in Gilmore reflect the suburb theme ‘Journalists, particularly women’.

What do you know about the place names in your area?

Select a town, suburb or street name and write a news article about what you discovered.

Suburbs in Canberra are named after Australia's local and national high achievers, its geography, heritage and history. Each suburb also has a theme by which its streets are named.

Imagine your group has the opportunity to plan a new suburb.

Create a map of your suburb with street names based on your chosen theme.