Lady spy, gentleman explorer: The life of Herbert Dyce Murphy : the most extraordinary Australian you've never heard of by Rossiter, Heather - USED

A history of the 1911 Antarctic expedition.A story of the real-life inspiration for ’s .An intriguing look at the ‘female’ subject of one of Australia’s most famous paintings.Herbert Dyce Murphy was born in 1879 to a wealthy Melbourne family. Rejecting his father’s traditional plans for him, he signed on to a wool clipper as a teenage apprentice, and ended up on whaling ships in the Arctic. It was then on to Oxford University in the UK, where he so convincingly played a woman on stage that British Intelligence recruited him to spy, in drag, in pre-WWI Europe.In 1911 Murphy sailed with the Mawson expedition to the Antarctic; a trip of terrible hardships which claimed lives.