Helen Frances (Nell) Malone

Place: Stannifer

Born: 1881

Biography:

Helen Frances (Nell) Malone was born to Irish immigrants Mathew and Margaret Malone at a miners' camp in Stannifer, on the Northern Tablelands of New South Wales, on 20 December 1881. One of ten children, she grew up at Fletcher Vale, near Charters Towers in Queensland, on a property her father had bought with his brother. In this environment, she developed a nonchalant approach to danger: in Childhood at Brindabella , Miles Franklin includes an anecdote from “a Queensland girl friend” who had “told [Franklin] that she was so fond of her carpet snake that when she found it coiled on a flourbag in its residential quarters she would stroke it in passing as one does a cat.” Malone worked as a governess but became frustrated by the limited opportunities available for women in northern Queensland. She left for the United States in July 1914, armed with an inheritance of more than £1000 from her uncle and a letter of introduction to Miles Franklin from a mutual acquaintance. On 4 September, as the first world war loomed over Europe, she called on Franklin at her Chicago office, bringing flowers. This was the beginning of a friendship that would endure over more than forty years.