Sue Vanderkelen, a patron of Montsalvat, contributed funds towards the buildings, including the stone tower (known as Sue’s Tower) that links the first two buildings at Montsalvat; Lily’s cottage and Justus’ painting studio. She was also a writer, poet and produced many drawings and paintings during her time at Montsalvat.

Sue was known for her skills in traditional French cooking and spent most weekends at Montsalvat cooking for the artists and builders.

Together with journalist Beth Thwaites, in 1952 she founded Brides of Bacchus; an all women’s dining club which sought to change attitudes about how men and women enjoyed food. Dining at the time was seen to be more for men only and the Brides of Bacchus sought to bring women into this male-dominated sphere.

In the 1930s, Myra Skipper’s home in the centre of Melbourne where she lived with her husband Matcham, became an impromptu salon where bohemian Melbourne went after the pubs shut. After one too many riotous gatherings, (it didn’t help that they lived at the rear of the Russell Street Police Station,) the police force evicted them and Myra and Matcham fled to Montsalvat in Eltham.

Myra contributed to the construction of Montsalvat’s buildings, including assisting with the install of the stained-glass windows of the Montsalvat chapel. But she was most well known for her unique talent with silver and enamelled jewellery.

The extraordinary Dr Lily Jörgensen was the first woman anaesthetist at St Vincent’s Hospital, Melbourne in 1929.

Lily completed a science course at the University of Queensland in 1919. Her scores qualified her for medicine at the University of Sydney. Instead, she moved to Melbourne so she could simultaneously study medicine at the University of Melbourne, and art at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School.

Lily was the first financial backer of the Montsalvat artists colony. Without her, Montsalvat would not exist.

She was passionate about psychoanalysis and the work of Carl Jung and practiced psychology on the grounds of Montsalvat. To many members of the colony, Lily provided a listening ear and words of wisdom.

Helen Skipper was responsible for the day to day running of Montsalvat, and steered the colony though the difficult war years. For a short time she ran a bookshop and a plant nursery. She had a passion for animals, particularly ponies, horses, cattle and dogs and established a pony stud at Montsalvat. Despite her many responsibilities, she managed to produce a collection of exquisite small paintings.

Helen Lempriere (a niece of Dame Nellie Melba) was one of Montsalvat’s builders and carved many of the stone architectural features you can see on the larger buildings.

She became an accomplished painter with an international reputation, rare for an Australian women artist in the 1950s-70s.

After her death, she was named for theprestigious Helen Lempriere National Sculpture Prize.

Sonia Skipper was a bit of a superstar. At Montsalvat, she built with mudbrick, mudstone, pisé de terre (rammed earth,) limestone and bluestone. She mastered wood and stone carving; many of the corbels and crenellations at Montsalvat were created by her. You can see her carved faces of Montsalvat’s founders inside the bluestone chapel.

Navigating sexism in the building industry, she served as Alistair Knox’s first foreman on his building projects. Although Knox is famous for his mudbrick buildings in Victoria, particularly around Eltham, he was originally a bank teller. When he started his career as a builder, he had no practical knowledge of building. He relied upon Sonia’s experience to manage the hands-on building work.

Heather George was a commercial photographer known for her industrial, fashion and outback photography, as well as a designer and painter. As a photographer, Heather documented the urban development of Sydney and Melbourne, providing a record of Australia’s changing urban landscape in the 1950s and 60s.

She was the first woman to be on the council of the Artists’ Society of Canberra. She also practised as a commercial artist designing in the then-emerging field of neon signs for businesses and theatres.

Lesley Sinclair was the original lifeblood of painting education at Montsalvat. Many Melbourne painters would have been taught by her, either at Montsalvat or in the St James Building in Melbourne.

She studied art at the National Gallery School in Melbourne in the 1920s, and lithography at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. She became a member of the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors, but rarely exhibited her work during her life.

Betty Roland was the hilarious, scandalous, poisoned-pen wielder of Montsalvat.

Roland’s artistic temperament, liberal social views and left-wing political stance, meant she was a part of male-dominated bohemian cultures and radical art theatre movements in Sydney and Melbourne in the 1930s and 40s. She was tough, insightful and a fearsome critic.

Her body of work comprises three volumes of autobiography, one of which chronicles her time living at Montsalvat, a travel memoir, four children’s books, four romance novels, newspaper and magazine articles, as well as film and comic book scripts.

She wrote radio dramas for the Australian Broadcasting Commission and commercial radio stations, including most of the popular soap opera A Woman Scorned (1951), which later inspired the 1983 television miniseries Return to Eden. She authored the comic strip ‘The Conways’ for the Sydney Morning Herald.

She was a founding member (1963) of the Australian Society of Authors.