Miles Franklin, the nom de plume of Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin, portrays an irrepressible teenage girl, Sybylla Melvyn, growing to womanhood in contemporary rural New South Wales in My Brilliant Career, published in 1901, when Franklin is twenty.

Written while she was still a teenager, as a romance to amuse her friends, Franklin had submitted the manuscript to Henry Lawson, who had contributed a preface and taken it to his own publishers in Edinburgh.

The popularity of the novel in Australia and the perceived closeness of many of the characters to her own family and circumstances as small farmers in New South Wales near Goulburn causes Franklin a great deal of distress and leads her to withdrawing the novel from publication until after her death.

Shortly after the publication of My Brilliant Career, Franklin writes a sequel, My Career Goes Bung, which will not be published until 1946.

The Australian colonies of New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia, after several intercolonial conventions, federate on January 1, 1901 as the Commonwealth of Australia with its capital in Melbourne. (New Zealand had withdrawn from the federation at the last moment.)

Edmund Barton becomes the first Prime Minister of Australia.