Onlookers stopped in the street to take in an unusual sight. A photographer was clambering up the chimneystack of a Sydney brewery to get the winning shot … while wearing high heels.
It was 1938 and this was the first freelance assignment Adelie Hurley was given for Pix newspaper. She’d been turned down for plenty of other jobs, the gigs inevitably going to her male peers. But little did the men who doubted her then – or in the decades to follow – know that Adelie was made of far tougher stuff than they’d given her credit for. As the first female photojournalist, and one of only three to work in Australia in the years after World War II, the hurdles and stereotypes she faced only strengthened her desire for success in the male-dominated newspaper world.
“With determination, talent and
