Dr Ruth Ford painstakingly tracked down "Heather", nearly a century after the farmer's wife's letters appeared in the pages of the Weekly Times.

The La Trobe University historian will use a public talk on Thursday to share the private life of Heather, and the community of women who helped each other through isolation, death and the poverty of the Great Depression.

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Dr Ford said the Times began setting aside pages specifically for women to write in during the 1930s.

The idea was to encourage people to write about their lives, their trials and their triumphs amid a backdrop of drought and the worsening Great Depression.

And like today's social media, some women built up a following. Writers like Heather penned hundreds of letters over the decade.

"So it's not Facebook - it's certainly not as quick as Facebook - but it's similar to social media in the sense that people are building these relationships through these pages, and supporting each other through really tough times," Dr Ford said.

Heather's letters are about having nine children, of being born and educated in London and living on a pastoral property.

Dr Ford found Heather particularly compelling because of what she wrote about motherhood, especially when her second youngest child got sick and, eventually, died.

The community of letter-writers - many of whom might never have met Heather - flooded the pages with sympathy and support.

Heather was not the only person who reached out for emotional support following a tragedy like that.

Many mothers of babies and children looked to the letter-writing community in times of loss, Dr Ford said.

Others spoke of infertility.

"Women write really movingly about not being able to conceive. That grief is expressed in the pages," Dr Ford said.

Dr Ford decided to find out more about Heather and began sifting through every letter looking for clues.

It eventually led her to Heather's real identity, Violet Nisbet.

Violet really was a farmer's wife who had been born in England.

But that was not the whole story.

Violet had left out a few things that would have attracted stigma in 1930s Australia.

That included that she had come out to Australia with a child and that her first husband had deserted her after a miscarriage.

Violet had taken a job as a housekeeper for a William Nisbet, who had had six children with a wife who had died in childbirth.

"So the story that she does not reveal in the pages is that she has a blended family, with one child she migrated with, six step children and two more from her marriage to William," Dr Ford said.

"This story of desertion and divorce are not mentioned in the letters because they are not socially acceptable things at this time.

"I suppose it is a bit like social media today. The selves that people present are one aspect and there are always other stories behind that, things they are not 'meant' to say about themselves."

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Dr Ford said many women got "pen-friends" through the Weekly's women's pages.

Would Violet have been less guarded about some aspects of her life in one-on-one letters with a pen friend?

Dr Ford cannot say.

"I haven't found anyone who had a grandmother or a great-aunt who had a stash of letters in a shoebox, yet," she said.

Dr Ford will present the free public lecture Testaments in mothering: letter-writing, support and community in 1930s rural Australia on Thursday from 5.30pm to 6.30pm at the Bendigo Library.

The talk will also be presented on Zoom.

Click here for more information.

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