A teenage girl from the Hunter Valley coalfields was so desperate to be a part of Australia's war effort that she cut her hair, dressed as a soldier and stowed away on a troopship.

The exploits of Maud Butler, a resourceful 16-year-old waitress with a sense of adventure, are being researched by historian Professor Victoria Haskins.

As part of her study, Professor Haskins is researching Maud's expedition, which she says runs several chapters.

Here, Professor Haskins writes about Maud's initial run-in with authorities.

Maud was only 16 years old when she first tried to get to the front — and if it had not been for her boots she might have made it.

The girl from Kurri Kurri, in rural New South Wales, climbed on board a troopship waiting at the Woolloomooloo docks in Sydney at night, disguised as a soldier, and was discovered two days later out at sea.

Her story caused quite a sensation at the time.

Described as "a clear-skinned, rosy-cheeked, bright-eyed type of healthy country girl" by reporters, Maud gave a lively interview a few days after her return to Melbourne on Christmas Day, 1915.

She told them that she "had a terrible desire to help in some way, but I was only a girl... I decided to do something for myself".

Maud explained how she had got hold of an Australian Imperial Force (AIF) uniform in bits and pieces and had her portrait taken in it.

On the day before she stowed away she went down to Woolloomooloo Bay to see a transport there and met an officer, telling him she had friends on the ship.

"I made up my mind to see him again, but as a soldier next time," she said.

She went straight to the barber's and had her hair cut short, then headed back the next evening through the Domain to where the ship, Suevic, was lying at the wharf, a sentry on guard.

"Well, I said to myself, 'here goes for up the line'. It was a hand-over-hand job, and I didn't think the boats were so tall. I got up after a struggle and crawled to a lifeboat," she told reporters from the Farmer and Settler.

'Wretched black boots' gave Maud away

The ship left that night, heaving through the rollers between North and South Head, with Maud tucked up tightly inside the small lifeboat swinging at the davits.

Maud Butler (tipping hat), pictured prior to her transfer to the Blue Funnel liner Achilles to return to Australia. ( Australian War Memorial: Donated by G.Carroll )

The next day she crept out of her hiding place and mingled with the soldiers playing cards, and no-one suspected a thing.

With no place for her at the mess, and nothing to eat but some lollies she had brought with her, she made up her mind to raid the kitchen the next night.

But the following day she was discovered by a suspicious officer, who asked for her identification disk.

"It was these wretched black boots," Maud said.

"That was the trouble all through. I bought the tunic and breeches from a soldier and the putties in George Street and the cap in Bathurst Street.

"But I could get no regulation tan boots that I could wear. I tried everywhere, but it was of no use. So I had to chance it.

"I could kick these boots round the room for vexation."

The officer had not actually worked out she was female, though, and was prepared to let the stowaway continue on to the front with them.

But when Maud was told she would have to pass a doctor's examination, she confessed.

The captain told her he would have her put on a passing passenger liner back home as soon as he could.

"Then I cried for the first time; it was hard luck, wasn't it, now?" she said.

"The captain was a jolly fellow. He asked me why I didn't get tan boots, and that made me cry more."

According to Maud, the captain had told her that "if the secret could have been kept" he would have let her stay on.

"But it was all over the ship in a minute, and there must have been 500 snapshots taken of me," she said.

Ship-to-ship transfer

Maud next had the rare experience of being "trans-shipped" at sea — going down the side of the troopship on a ladder to get into a small rowboat under escort to take her up to the other vessel.

"I had a great joke going up the ship's side," she told the reporters.

"We were nearly at the top when I said to the officer above me, 'You don't speak [like that] to the girl you took for a walk up George Street!' He nearly fell off with the shock."

There were not a lot of opportunities for young women like Maud in those days.

The reporters had assumed Maud wanted to join her older brother in Egypt, but he had not yet enlisted at that point.

She told them that she had hoped to get to the front as a nurse, and had come down to Sydney from Kurri Kurri "because I would never learn to be a nurse there".

In Sydney she had tried to join the Red Cross, without success. No doubt Maud could have become involved in the organisation's charitable activities at home, but they were not going to send her overseas.

There were already hundreds of young women, both trained nurses and Red Cross voluntary aides, waiting to get the front. Some even paid their own way.

That was not an option for Maud — the daughter of a coal miner who raised his four children alone — who now supported herself by waitressing.

Maud was not disheartened, however. She told the reporters that she intended to go to Sydney that night, and "find some way of learning the work and joining the Red Cross service".

"It is a pity if they cannot find a way for me to be of some service to the poor wounded men," she said.

"I learned first aid and was reckoned very good at it. I shall be at the front yet, you'll see."

Impact of war on Australian women

Prof Haskins is the recipient of a grant from the Arts NSW Centenary of Anzac Commemoration History Fellowship to explore the impact of the war on Australian women.

"The way I am approaching it is to reconstruct as much as possible the personal stories of individual women, like Maud Butler, whose stories can shed light on what it was like for women during the war from various backgrounds," she said.

"I thought her story worth exploring further for the insights it provides into all sorts of aspects of women's experiences of WWI.

"The Red Cross and nursing, the exclusion of women from actual fighting, issues around recruitment, soldiers' drinking, and more."