Auld, Elizabeth (1901 - 1998)

Elizabeth Auld was born into a South Australian family that pioneered winegrowing in that state. As a child, she claimed that she wanted to be a spy: she spent her fifty year career working as a journalist for the Murdoch press instead.

She left school (St Peter's Collegiate Girls' School) in 1918 and with the encouragement of her godfather, Lionel Gee, she began work on The Register. Within a year, she had joined the reporting staff off that paper. With the help of Sir Trent De Crespigny, a leading physician, she compiled and edited one of the first medical columns in Australian journalism.

From Adelaide, Auld moved to Melbourne, and had a stint on Fleet Street when the Second World War ended. She returned from London to Melbourne, where she worked on the Woman's Day.

In 1952 she went to Woomera, the only woman journalist to get to the Rocket Range at this time. The article she wrote on this was published on the front page of the London Daily Mail. She later worked on the Martin Collins column of The Australian, and retired in 1974. At age 94 she published a children's detective novel.

• Auld, Tom (a.k.a.)