But her fascination truly began in 2009 while she was working in aged care and one of her clients, Mary, who had dementia, said her mother had been a mechanic and driver at Anderson's Kew garage. Alice Anderson next to her Austin 7 car, during her 1926 trip to Alice Springs. Credit:University of Melbourne archives Smith said meeting Mary was eerie. "It felt like Alice was knocking on my door, challenging me to write her story." She has started a Facebook page, Alice Anderson Garage Girl, to highlight the story of the sassy, exuberant Anderson. And in an as-yet-unpublished book, she challenges the finding that Anderson's death in 1926 was an accident. The coroner at the time ruled that Anderson died while she was cleaning a gun, but Smith said Anderson's family, and relatives of her employees, supplied information that suggest different conclusions.

All-female staff of Alice Anderson's Kew garage in the 1920s. Smith, who suffers from the bone disease osteogenesis imperfecta​, started the book after falling and fracturing her spine in 2009. Alice Anderson on her Get-Out-And-Get-Under. Credit:University of Melbourne archives She says researching and writing about Anderson enthralled her and took her mind off the pain. "The more I looked into it, the more fascinated I was. She was an amazing woman, well ahead of her time and achieved so much in such a short life." She invented a trolley to roll under cars, similar to the one that is now standard in garages around the world, and once drove her "Baby" Austin 7 car to Alice Springs.

Alice Anderson Garage Girl. Credit:University of Melbourne archives Alice Anderson on the wheeled trolley she invented. Credit: Smith discovered that Anderson, born in 1897, was the daughter of Anglo-Irish engineer Joshua Anderson, who with John Monash gained the Victorian usage rights to a kind of reinforced concrete and became well-off building bridges across Victoria. But he lost money with unwise investments and spending. In 1916 while he was running a transport service at Healesville, his staff taught Alice to drive and to pull an engine apart and put it together again. "She was quite small, only 5 foot three (1.6 metres) but very strong and determined and very intelligent," Ms Smith says. In 1917, Alice moved to Caulfield and worked as a clerk, but moonlighted as a chauffeur, using a Hupmobile​ her father had given her.

In 1919, aged just 22, Alice Anderson opened the Kew Garage, which sold petrol, repaired cars, was a driving school and 24-hour chauffeur service. She drove clients, or their cars, as far as Gippsland, Sydney and via ferry to Tasmania. Smith says Anderson should be recognised for her achievements. "She was such an entrepreneur, she was innovative, and didn't let being a woman get in the way of what she wanted to achieve."