This photo is why I love women.

This photo is why I don’t fear growing older.

This photo is one of the reasons I’m a feminist.

media_camera Merle Thornton (L) and Frances Whiting (R) at the Regatta Hotel. (Pic: Supplied)

Here I am (on the right), clearly delighted to be standing beside Merle Thornton at a recent lunch to celebrate the 50-year anniversary of the day she did something remarkable.

On March 31, 1965, Merle and her best friend Rosalie Bogner strolled into the public bar of Brisbane’s iconic Regatta Hotel and asked for a drink.

What happened next would become the stuff of legend, because 50 years ago, when Merle and Rosalie stood at the bar politely requesting a beer, they were told no.

No, because they were women.

No, because 50 years ago it was illegal in Queensland for hotels to serve women in public bars of hotels, or any other area not designated as the “Ladies Lounge’’ (if they had one), where they would presumably all politely sip their shandies and talk about apricot chicken.

But Merle and Rosalie didn’t want to sit in the Ladies Lounge, they wanted to sit where they damn well pleased, and so when the somewhat flustered bartender said no, he could not, and would not serve them, Merle and Rosalie did not beat a quiet, blushing retreat to The Ladies Lounge.

Instead, they calmly produced some chains and padlocks, placed them around their ankles, and chained themselves to the bar’s foot rail. They refused to budge.

As you do.

As you do when you’re a smart woman with fire in your belly and a mischievous glint in your eye, and you’ve had it up to here of being kept out of places and conversations because you might turn up in a dress to enter them.

So Merle and Rosalie stood their ground when the bartender said “no”, and the hotel management was called in.

They stood their ground when the boys in blue (and in those days it was ALL BOYS in blue) turned up and threatened to arrest them.

They stood their ground not because they particularly wanted to have a beer in the public bar — for Merle and Rosalie it was never about, of course, alcohol consumption.

media_camera Merle Thornton (R) and Rosalie Bogner chained to the bar of Regatta Hotel in Brisbane, Queensland in 1965 in protest against segregated drinking.

Instead it was about something far more insidious.

“It was about women being excluded from participating in public and social life”, says now 85-year-old Merle, then and now an academic and activist.

It was about women being stopped from joining in.

The protest, and the publicity that went with it, led to the formation of the Brisbane activist group Equal Opportunities for Women, widely credited for its part in overturning the so-called “marriage bar’’ within the Commonwealth Public Service.

It seems unthinkable now, but at that time women in the public service were required to resign when they got married.

A lot of things seem unthinkable now, and if wasn’t for women like Merle, and the men who supported them, these things would still be so.

When I joined RendezView one of the questions asked was whether or not I considered myself a feminist. My answer was that I was concerned the debate had become all about what feminism looked like, as opposed to what it felt like.

I said it felt like freedom.

Freedom to choose, to get an education, to drive a car, to receive a fair wage — and to enjoy a frosty beer on a hot Queensland day with the woman who helped make it possible to do so, at the bar named in her honour.

To me, that day, enjoying a beer and a laugh with Merle, along with some robust debate, it felt like an older woman and a younger one standing with their arms around each other with warmth and strength, shoulder to shoulder.

Originally published as Two friends walk into a bar. This isn’t a joke