Little Figures Long Shadows
Little Figures, Long Shadows is an exhibition of 3D printed busts of 10 historical LGBTIQA+ people with a connection to Ballarat - some were born here, others were raised here, some worked here, and some found their final rest here.
LGBTIQA+ people featured in the exhibition:
Edward de Lacy Evans
Edward de Lacy Evans (c. 1830 – 25 August 1901) is touted as one of Australia’s first well known transgender men. He was married three times, and married his third wife, Julia Mary Marquand in a St Andrew's Kirk Presbyterian Church, on the corner of Sturt and Dawson streets in Ballarat.
Evans gained international attention in 1879 when it was revealed that he was assigned female at birth and was so well known that other trans masculine people were known as an “de Lacy Evans type”.
Andrew George Scott, aka Captain Moonlite
Andrew George Scott, aka Captain Moonlite (5 July 1842 – 20 January 1880) was a gay, Irish-born New Zealand immigrant to Victoria. He worked as a lay reader (a form of preacher in the Anglican church) in Bacchus Marsh before being accused of a bank robbery at Egerton and arrested. He was held in, and escaped from, Ballarat gaol while awaiting trial for it. He was recaptured, found guilty and sentenced to 10 years in Pentridge Prison in Melbourne. There he met the love of his life, James Nesbitt.
After finishing his sentence, he and Nesbitt toured Victoria passionately denouncing the brutal penal system, including a well attended lecture at the Unicorn Hotel in Ballarat. Returning to bushranging, a few months later, Nesbitt died tragically in Scott’s arms after a police shootout. Sentenced to hang, Scott faced the gallows wearing a ring of Nesbitt’s hair, his final wish to rest to be buried in the same grave as Nesbitt.
Harriet Elphinstone-Dick
Harriet Elphinstone-Dick (1852–1902) was a trailblazer in women’s fitness and equality. An accomplished swimming champion and physical fitness teacher from Brighton, she migrated to Melbourne in 1875 with her partner, Alice Moon, determined to create opportunities for women.
Together, they founded Australia’s first women-only gymnasium—a revolutionary step toward empowering women through strength and health. From 1880 to at least 1884, Harriet and Alice travelled weekly to Ballarat, to run gymnastics classes for women and girls.
Alice Moon
Alice Moon (1855 - 1894) migrated from England to Australia with her partner, Harriet Elphinstone-Dick, and helped start the first women’s only gymnasium in the country.
From 1880 onwards, Moon accompanied Elphinstone-Dick up up to Ballarat every Wednesday to assist with women and girls gymnastics classes.
James Nesbitt
James Nesbitt (27 August 1858 – 17 November 1879) was both a fearless bushranger and passionate advocate for justice. He met and fell in love with George ‘Captain Moonlite’ Scott while both were serving time in Pentridge Prison in Melbourne. Nesbitt’s criminal record shows he was twice caught bringing a cup of tea to Scott - both times he was sentenced to a day in solitary confinement for the act.
When Scott was released from gaol, he and Nesbitt toured around Victoria on a speaking tour against the prison system. When they booked their Ballarat leg of the tour, there was much controversy regarding the venues and they ended up speaking upstairs at the Unicorn Hotel on Sturt St to a large crowd.
Months later, Scott and Nesbitt went back to bushranging, and during a shootout with police, Nesbitt was shot and died in Scott’s arms. Scott went to the gallows wearing a ring of Nesbitt’s hair.
Adela Dora Ohlfsen-Bagge
Adela Dora Ohlfsen-Bagge (22 August 1869 – 7 February 1948), known professionally as Dora Ohlfsen, was an Australian sculptor, and art medallist. Ohlfsen was born and raised in Ballarat, and lived and worked most of her life in Italy.
Her first prominent work was a bronze medallion, The Awakening of Australian Art (1907), which won an award at the 1908 Franco-British Exhibition in London and was purchased for the Petit Palais in Paris. Another of her other notable works was the Anzac Medal (1916), created to raise funds for Australians and New Zealanders who fought in the Gallipoli campaign. Copies of this medal are held in various institutions around Australia including the Museum of Victoria and the War Memorial in Canberra.
Around 1890 she met the love of her life, Hélène (or Elena) de Kuegelgen, a Russian countess. They lived together until their death in 1948.
Ethel May (Monte) Punshon
Ethel May (Monte) Punshon (8 November 1882 – 4 April 1989) was an Australian artist and teacher who was born and raised in Ballarat.
Punshon was known for her kindness to interned Japanese during the second world war and which she honoured by the Japanese government.
Her later years were nothing short of remarkable: after turning 100, Punshon came out publicly as a lesbian, proudly proclaiming herself “the world’s oldest lesbian”, she joined MENSA, penned her autobiography, and served as an ambassador for Expo 88.
Punshon’s newspaper scrapbooks of LGBTIQA+ people and women living and working in traditionally male roles are held by the Australian Queer Archives.
Lesbia Venner Harford
Lesbia Venner Harford (née Keogh, 9 April 1891 – 5 July 1927) was an Australian poet, novelist and political activist. Harford was educated at the Sacré Cœur School at "Clifton", Malvern, Victoria; Mary's Mount school at Ballarat, Victoria; and the University of Melbourne, where she graduated LL.B. in 1916. She was one of the university's few women students and one of its few opponents of Australia's part in the First World War.
She agitated for the rights of workers, supporting a group of union workers who were imprisoned for treason and other crimes.
Harford advocated free love in human relations.
She herself formed lifelong parallel attachments to both men and women, most notably to Katie Lush, philosophy tutor at Ormond College, and married Patrick John (Pat) Harford in 1920.
Aileen Palmer
Aileen Palmer (6 April 1915 – 21 December 1988) was a British Australian poet and diarist. She worked as an interpreter during the Spanish Civil War for a mobile hospital and later risked her life in an ambulance unit in London during The Blitz.
She had relationships with a number of women over her life, and mused in her writings that she had been ‘born in the wrong body’ and wished ‘she had been born a boy’.
Sadly, Palmer was institutionalized a number of times over her life, and by 1988 she was living in the Ballarat Lakeside Hospital. Palmer passed away in December of that year and she is buried in the Ballarat Cemetery.
Rebecca Norton
Rebecca Norton (1940-2017) was a trail breaking mining engineer and trans woman who was born and lived in Ballarat, she studied engineering at the Ballarat School of Mines.
Norton transitioned in the 1970s, becoming one of Victoria’s first gender reassignment patients in 1975, and groundbreakingly for the time, worked in the same industry before and after her transition. Norton’s career took her from the mining industry in Mount Isa to a range of jobs in remote parts of Australia and the world.
In 2012, Norton moved into the Kirralee Nursing Home in Ballarat where she passed away, 5 years later. She was privately cremated in Ballarat.