In London everyone seemed to know Miss L.E. Armstrong. They called her ‘that Australian girl’. The society pages described her as strong, independent, and farsighted. ‘A quick thinker,’ one journalist noted, ‘an inveterate worker . . . [and] a keen lover of her native land.’1

When hostilities began, most Australian women of her age and class settled for Red Cross work at home: knitting socks for soldiers at the front, writing letters of encouragement or raising money for ‘their boys’.

But not Lizzie. Working as a typist, she saved every penny she could and spent it all on a passage to London. The young woman from Sydney volunteered to work in a hospital, trained as a first-class physiotherapist and massaged the limbs of men shattered by war.

Healing soldiers’ bodies was not the only part of Lizzie’s war effort. Convinced all Australians were great travellers, she organised sightseeing tours of the old country – history walks along famous London streets, rambles through the English countryside, motor tours to Devon and picnics on the Thames. ‘The Anzac masseuse’ became the ‘guide, philosopher and friend’2 to a great many lonely Australians, most eager to see all the wonders of Empire, many homesick for the land they’d left behind.

By the end of the war, Miss Armstrong’s work as a masseuse had damaged her hands irreparably. But Lizzie was always a woman with a plan. She returned to Australia on a troopship and contrived to get an interview with Prime Minister Billy Hughes. Hughes spotted her talent and industry instantly. He encouraged her to return to London and offered her an office in Australia House. There, Lizzie Armstrong established the Southern Cross Information Bureau, a travel company run by Australians for Australians.

An Australian firm for Australians: The Southern Cross Information Bureau became part of the Australian Travel Service in the mid 1920s. With branches in Sydney, Melbourne and Paris, as well as Australia House, it was an example of the global reach of the tourism industry. British Australian and New Zealander, 21 June 1928.

The Bureau offered assistance to Australians travelling overseas. In the 1920s, over ten thousand Australians made their way to Britain and the Continent, many on their grand tour of Europe, some on a pilgrimage to a battlefield where a loved one lay buried. Miss Armstrong’s travel bureau catered for the needs of all:

A program is drawn up for the best means of reaching much frequented beauty spots, timetables of road excursions, motor tours for weekends . . . are all to be found there. Theatre tickets are booked, tickets for tours arranged for, advice given on shopping centres, and enquiries of all kinds dealt with.

But the most important service Miss Armstrong offered was a chance to visit the graves of Australia’s war dead. The library at Australia House was:

converted to a Memorial Chamber, in which a card index [was] established giving particulars of every dead Australian soldier, together with maps . . . as complete a set of war literature as possible [and] mural paintings of battle scenes.3

With these details in hand, pilgrims were directed to Miss Armstrong’s office, where battlefield tours for groups, families, and individuals by touring coach, rail, and private motorcar were seamlessly arranged.

The Southern Cross Information Bureau was staffed entirely by Australians, most drawn from the huge expatriate community that had settled on the Strand. In an astute business move, Miss Armstrong also hired ex-AIF and New Zealand Army men as drivers, guides and companions.

However, services such as these didn’t come cheap. A three-day trip to Amiens including a first-class return fare, hotel accommodation, private limousine and officer guide cost 15 guineas (sterling). That would amount to several weeks’ wages for most working men.

Whatever the price, Miss Armstrong provided an essential service. Without her assistance, thousands might never have found a son’s or husband’s grave. On one hand, she was seen as ‘an ambassador for Australia’, and her ‘first rate work’ was one of the ways ‘to keep the motherland and her dominions firmly knitted together’.4 On the other, she was a spirited example of the ‘new woman’ of the interwar period: independent, mobile, enterprising and determined to build a life of her own. And her work is a reminder that then, as today, pilgrimage and tourism often travel together.

A spirited example of the ‘new woman’: A portrait of Lizzie Armstrong. Here, Lizzie adopts the guise of a London socialite but she was also a capable business woman, a skilled masseuse and considered by many an ambassador for Australia. Country Life Stock and Station Journal, 21 March 1924, courtesy National Library of Australia.

An essential service: A wartime photograph of North Beach at Anzac stands above the counter in Australia House, London. Gallipoli was almost impossible to reach in the early 1920s. Note the prominence of other Australian symbols, two kangaroos grazing at either side of the bench. The British Australian and New Zealander, 10 May 1928.

Lizzie never lost her love of travel. Determined to broaden her business, she toured Canada, Africa, New Zealand and all the far-flung corners of the Empire. The war had taken her far from that typist pool in Sydney; ‘that Australian girl’ had made the world her home.

SOURCES AND FURTHER READING: This story draws on contemporary newspaper reports detailing Lizzie’s life and work and a detailed scan of the British Australasian and its successor, the Brisitsh Australian and New Zealander. For further reading on Lizzie Armstrong see Bruce Scates, Return to Gallipoli: Walking the Battlefields of the Great War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). For further reading on women’s movement within the Empire see Angela Woollacott, To Try Her Fortune in London: Australian Women, Colonialism, and Modernity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) and for women’s mobilisation during the Great War see Raelene Frances, ‘Women’s Mobilisation for War’, International Encyclopedia of the First World War (eds) Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keene, Alan Kramer, and Bill Nasson (Berlin: Freie Universität Berlin, 2014).

1 Register, 5 February 1926.

2 Daily News, 17 March, 1920.

3 British Australian and New Zealander, 31 March 1927; Sydney Mail, 24 December 1927.

4 Queenslander, 6 November 1926.