by Whispering Gums

A post in our 2026 series featuring works published in 1946 (or by authors who died in 1946). This post includes a story that was published in The Australian Women’s Weekly on 19 January 1946, and is by Mina Gray.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Some of our writers have taken significant research to uncover even some basic life information, and Mina Gray is one of these. There are no entries for her in any of the usual sources, except AustLit, where the entry was minimal, despite their having several works listed for her. (The entry has been somewhat expanded now, due to our providing some specific life details).

Mina Gray is one of those writers who published across decades, but who received little recognition for this achievement. So, where to start? The journey begins with the listing in our 1920s Stories from the Archives page of a poem by Mina Gray, born circa 1917. Titled “An Australian Morn”, the poem was published in The Sydney Morning Herald on 16 November 1929, making Mina Gray 12 years old, if our circa date is correct. It took some digging but I eventually found, via find-a-grave, a gravestone for her at an Albury cemetery (the Glenmorus Memorial Gardens). It gave her dates as born 8 May 1917, died 8 March 1997. So, this confirmed her birthdate and authenticated her age for that poem.

I’ll come back to that soon. First, a little more about the research journey. Mina Gray appears again in our 1930s A-L Stories from the Archives page, with eight more poems published between 1930 and 1936. Then, in our 1940s page, our archives creator, Elizabeth Lhuede, had not only added over twenty poems, plus, now, some short stories, but also that her married name was Mrs Alfred Leslie Bingham. In our 1950s page, Elizabeth added that she had married Alfred Leslie Bingham in 1954, and that it appeared that she had “previously been engaged to a Captain Anton John Gunnarsson (M.N.) of Sweden in 1943”.

That engagement announcement adds some extra information: it starts, “The Engagement is announced of Mina Phyllis Gray, only daughter of Mr. and Mrs. A. Gray, of England and Arncliffe…” So, it suggests that her parents came to Australia from England, and that Mina was probably living in Arncliffe, Sydney, in 1943. Where Mina was born, we don’t know as we haven’t found a birth notice (yet). She was clearly an only daughter, and possibly an only child, but we can’t assume that. What happened to that war-time engagement we don’t know either, because it appears she didn’t marry Captain Anton. She was buried, as I’ve said, in Albury. When did she go there (which presumably she did)?

It does, however, appear that she stopped writing upon her marriage as I can find nothing published under either her married or maiden name, after 1954. Trove did produce one intriguing article published in The Proserpine Herald on 9 April. It explains that “a visitors’ register at a Whitsunday Island Tourist Resort contains a wealth of information which seldom reaches the public” and that Palm Bay Long Island “has such a book, which contains many interesting comments of the beauty of the area”. It continues:

Two more recent visitors to this resort were Mr. and Mrs. Les. Bingham, of Bondi, New South Wales Mr. Bingham is a freelance journalist, and Mrs Bingham, who writes under maiden name, Mina Gray, has had many articles published in various journals and magazines.

The article then shares a poem Mina Gray wrote about the resort in the visitor’s book, followed by some words from her husband. This poem is the last “published” work of hers we’ve found to date. Was this trip their honeymoon – and this poem her writing swansong? Did they have children? Their gravestones don’t indicate so.

A writer’s life

Mina Gray is a mystery worth investigating further, given the length and breadth of her writing career, and its apparent sudden end. As far as I can tell, she was first published in The Sydney Morning Herald in 1929 as a 12-year old, and had around 10 poems published in that paper between then and 1936, when she would have been 19. Then there appears to be a gap in publication of around 8 years until 1944. During this time the war happened and she had that apparently failed 1943 engagement to Anton Gunnarsson. But, in 1944, she reappears with two short stories in The Australian Women’s Weekly. From here until 1954, when she married and appears to have stopped writing, she had over 40 poems published in The Sydney Morning Herald, and eight or more short stories published, mostly in The Australian Women’s Weekly, but also in The Sun, The World’s News and Western Mail.

Mina Gray warrants a second post, with more analysis of her work, But, if we ever think that a writer’s work tells us something about their lives, the poem “The sane” could be enlightening. It was written in January 1954, the year she was married. It is tempting to think that it was written about herself and that its final lines address Les? A love poem perhaps? The poet writes first person, and speaks of hiding her imaginative life “So that they will not turn suspicious eyes”, but ends with:

Although your face too
Smiles at me behind the hood
Of iron conformity, I know
Your eyes have seen the witches in the wood.
You too disdain
The Sane!

Because Gray died in 1997, her works are still in copyright, so we are including an excerpt, here, with a link to the full (and edited by us) story in Trove. Titled “Glass lady”, it looks on the surface to be a romantic postwar story about a soldier returning to his wife whose life had moved in different directions. While its conclusion is romantic, as would be expected in a women’s magazine of the time, there are hints of something more nuanced and complex in the couple’s developing relationship.

Glass lady

THERE’S someone to see you, Mrs. Kent. He won’t give his name,” announced one of the girls from the outer office.

Jo Kent, sitting behind her paper littered desk with the glass partition in front inscribed: “James Bradfield – Managing Director,” swept back a wisp of hair with a nervous hand and returned to marking an engineering maintenance report. She had told Annette to make some excuse and get rid of the caller, but she wasn’t happy about it.

Rick was due back this week.

Ever since she had known he was coming she had been trying to focus him in her mind. It wasn’t easy after four and a half years to get used to the idea of Rick as a husband again. Especially as she was so certain now it had been a mistake, that whirlwind marriage of theirs.

She thought now: “I married Rick because he took my breath away, because life was just a laugh to him, because he said it would be fun to get married. I married him because women turned to look twice at his six-foot two inches and his blue Viking eyes. He was a prize and I got him.”

They had been married a month before he sailed for England, not to return for four and a half years. In between so much had happened. Way up in “Vallina,” the big, old rambling house that Rick’s great grandfather had built, Bobby had been born because Jo had a romantic notion about Rick’s son being born “at home” like his father.

She had loved “Vallina” with its shining floors and winding staircase. She had gone on loving it until Bobby died quite suddenly when he was two. Then she had locked it all up and come ghostlike back to Sydney to take up the threads of living again.

She got back her old job with Jim Bradfield and it was not so very different even with a war on. The work was a lot heavier and the cocktail parties were held for patriotic purposes, that was all. Gradually there had come inside her a core of hardness and a veneer of brittle gaiety that made her always the centre of attraction at parties.

Continue …  here

Sources

Family Notices, The Sydney Morning Herald, 27 April 1943, p. 6 [Accessed: 27 July 27 2026]
Mina Gray, in AustLit [Last accessed: 4 August 2026]
Mina Gray, “Glass lady“, in The Australian Women’s Weekly, 19 January 1946 [Accessed: 4 August 2026]
Mina Gray, “The sane“, in The Sydney Morning Herald, 23 January 1954, p. 10 [Accessed: 5 August 2026]
“A tribute to Palm Bay“, The Proserpine Guardian, 9 April 1954, p. 4 [Accessed: 27 July 2026]

All other sources are linked in the article.

_______________________________________________________________________________________