Betty Olive Osborn

In 1951, when still at high school, Osborn visited The Argus offices in Melbourne to enquire about starting a career in journalism and was advised to complete her studies and to continue working on her typing and short-hand skills. Osborn did so and by the following year was working at the offices as a secretary for the Weekend Magazine and began working on articles for them.^[1]

While employed as a secretary she published a report about those living at the Dudley Flats, which housed a large homeless population and how, to survive they often scavenged from the tip. In this article she took her own photographs using her mother's box brownie camera.^[1]

Osborn was later discouraged from becoming a journalist and enrolled in a bachelor of laws at the University of Melbourne but soon accepted a cadetship on the social pages with The Argus and instead remained at the university as a part-time arts student.^[1] As a cadet Osborn was expected to 'dress the part' and wear a hat, gloves and appropriate evening wear when attending events. During this period she worked under Gladys Hain, the editor, and Freda Irving who took her under her wing.^[3]

In 1955 Osborne won the Montague Grover Prize for cadet journalists offered by the Australian Journalists’ Association and she was the third woman to in this prize.^[4] After the completion of her cadetship, she was transferred to the general staff.^[3]

Starting from 1956 Osborn was appointed as a gallery reporter at the Victorian Legislative Assembly and Osborn later remembered that:

There was not one woman in the Victorian Legislative Assembly that year and the only woman I recall coming into the press gallery was Rose Kinson from the Sun

— Betty Osborn, via The Australian Women's Register

Later in 1956 Osborn also covered the 1956 Melbourne Olympics and spent a lot of time at the Olympic Village but, just six weeks after the end of the games The Argus closed.^[5][6][7] Osborne then briefly worked as a journalist for The Sun News-Pictorial but soon returned to university full-time.^[1]

Osborn later married Bruce Osborn and they moved together the Bacchus Marsh where they had four children together; Robyn, Diana, Cathy and Philip. While there she became devoted to local history and published: A History of Holy Trinity, Bacchus Marsh (1971)^[8] and The Bacchus Story: A History of Captain W.H. Bacchus and his Son (1973).^[9][1]

In 1973 the family moved to Maryborough, Queensland where she began work again as a journalist as edited the Wimmera-Mallee edition of the Country Bulletin and worked as a columnist for the Maryborough Advertiser. She was also a member of the local historical society and, alongside Treanear DuBourg, published Maryborough: A Social History 1854-1904 (1985)^[10] which she followed up with its sequel Against the Odds: Maryborough 1905-1961 (1995).^[11][1]

Osborn died 10 December 2020.^[12]