User:Macenzie77/sandbox

Marie Louise Hamilton Mack (10 October 1870 – 23 November 1935) was an Australian poet, journalist and novelist. She is most known for her writings and her involvement in World War I in 1914 as the first woman war correspondent in Belgium.

Returning to Australia[edit source]

Returning to Australia in 1916, Mack gave a series of lectures about her war experiences. She frequently wrote for The Sydney Morning Herald, the Bulletin and other newspapers and magazines. On a visit to New Zealand in 1920, Mack and two others went missing for three days while mountain climbing in the Tararua Range, Otaki. When found, she was suffering from hunger and mountain sickness. While back in Australia, in 1917-1918 she used her lectures on her war experiences to raise money for the Australian Red Cross Society.

War correspondent[edit source]

In 1914 when war broke out Louise Mack was in Belgium where she continued to work as the first woman war correspondent for the Evening News and the London Daily Mail. Her eye-witness account of the German invasion of Antwerp and her adventures—A Woman's Experiences in the Great War—was published in 1915.

She was not only the first woman to be a war correspondent but she was also the first Australian to study the Germans this closely during this time. She was under shell-fire for thirty-six hours in Antwerp, and at one point went right through German lines to the city of Brussels. This fearless pursuit earned her great fame in Australia and gathered many audiences in Australian theaters, streets, and anywhere Mack was willing to tell her courageous story.