In more refined and gentle times, a motorist wouldn't dream of filling up their own tank.

That's what service station attendants were for — along with checking the oil, the tyre pressure and cleaning the windscreen.

Ladies, in particular, did not pump petrol: their own or anyone else's.

Unless, as Michelle Toft from the National Motor Museum explains, they were a determined, pioneering woman named Alice Anderson.

"She was the first woman to open and run her own garage in Australia," Ms Toft said.

"In 1919 she opened her garage in Kew, which is a suburb of Melbourne, and she only employed women."

The original building is long gone, but the National Motor Museum has rebuilt a faithful version of Ms Anderson's garage in its exhibition hall at Birdwood.

Going places: Chauffeur trips were one of many services Ms Anderson's garage offered. ( Supplied: National Motor Museum )

"She's a pretty cool character and I don't think you can have a history of Australian motoring without her being a part of it," Ms Toft said.

Ms Anderson was born into a wealthy family in 1897. Her father Joshua Anderson, however, was not a good manager of money.

Ms Toft said the family was reduced, in a manner of speaking, to living in their bush holiday home.

"This is where Alice developed her hands-on skills. She learnt how to shoot, hunt for rabbits, fish, ride a horse and all those sorts of things," she said.

Mystery surrounds origins of garage

It's not difficult to see why such a unconventional person would be drawn to the motorcar.

Today we've become so used to the freedom of four wheels, we take it for granted.

Or, alternatively, we've become disillusioned with spending mind-numbing hours stuck in traffic.

Either way, back in an era when people routinely lived their entire lives in small, defined areas, the car shone brightly with possibilities rather than problems.

But just how Ms Anderson turned that possibility into a reality remains a bit of mystery.

The Kew garage was built to her design but, after years of searching, historian and writer Loretta Smith still has not found the money trail.

Kew Garage in Melbourne was opened in 1919 but vanished long ago. ( Supplied: National Motor Museum )

"Banks did not lend to women in those days … unbelievably that didn't come until the 1980s, so there would have had to be a male in background but Alice never let on who that might have been," Ms Smith said.

"One story has it that the builder said there was a shortage of bricks, only to be told by Alice she already had enough bricks in her backyard … she was ahead of everybody."

Perhaps the most unfamiliar thing to modern sensibilities is what Ms Anderson's garage would do for its customers: it truly put the word service into service station.

"They'd wash the cars, they do the repairs, they had storage space for cars, they'd do chauffeur trips, they'd teach people how to drive," Michelle Toft said.

"Alice offered almost an apprenticeship to women, where they could come and learn about cars and shadow her staff."

LGBTQI hero or proto-feminist?

Ms Toft said the garage owner was quite an inventor too, delighting customers on her chauffeured tours with a device called the radi-waiter.

"It was a flask that had coffee in it and it used the radiator to keep the drink warm … so when they stopped for their picnic, the coffee or the cocoa or whatever they were drinking would still be warm."

Alice Anderson (R) with a companion. ( Supplied: National Motor Museum )

There was really just one thing this remarkable woman didn't do: a husband. Ms Anderson never married.

"There's a letter she wrote to her mother who must have been badgering her, you know, 'when are you going to get a man?' and in the letter she wrote back 'I don't have time to get a man'," Ms Toft said.

"There were stories going around that she was a lesbian. She certainly had friends that were lesbians.

"Most of those stories were started by surrounding garages that were competing with her."

That's one thing that hasn't changed: there's nothing quite like a good scandal to clip a competitor's wings.

Michelle Toft said Ms Anderson was fully aware of the rumours about her and did nothing to discourage them.

"There's a famous photo of her when she was on a chauffeur trip and she's holding the hand of another girl. Alice's sister wrote on the back of the photo 'Alice pretending to be the boyfriend of someone she took on a trip'.

"No-one knows for sure … there's no recorded evidence of her ever denying the rumours and that's a positive thing because … it means she wasn't ashamed."

Whether Ms Anderson should be claimed now as an early feminist or LGBQTI hero is, according to Ms Smith, not straightforward.

"She was complicated. For example, Alice bought into the nationalist fervour of the day. She would have gone to war, while a lot of feminists in those days were very much against war," Ms Smith said.

"We have to be careful not to overlay her with modern ideas of feminism and identity."

There is no doubt, however, Ms Anderson lived her life as she pleased, doing what she loved best.

Sadly she didn't get to do that for long. Alice Anderson died in 1926, when she was 29 years old.

Curator Michelle Toft in front of the 'Alice's Garage' exhibition. ( ABC News: Simon Royal )

Ms Toft said the circumstances of her death caused just as much gossip and conjecture as her life.

"She went out the back of the garage to clean one of the guns she'd taken on a trip and, the story goes, accidentally shot herself in the head," Ms Toft said.

"Her family claimed it was definitely an accident, but there were other versions that it was because of all these stories about her sexuality."