Jenny Scott from the State Library of South Australia presents a Talking History Lecture on her research into two Adelaide women. In the early 1920s two women were photographed at Martindale Hall, the home of Rosina Forsyth Tennant and her husband, William Tennant Mortlock. The grainy little snapshot found its way into the collection of the State Library of South Australia and was simply described as “Mabel Doswell and her friend Rita at Martindale Hall”. The simplest descriptions can hide a story and the often euphemistically used term ‘friend’ piqued Jenny’s interest leading her on a quest to learn who were Mabel and Rita and what was their connection with Martindale Hall and the Mortlock family. In the stories of these two little known women she has begun to piece together a story of friendships between women in South Australia during the first half of the 20th Century. This is an extended and updated version of a paper presented at the Australian Homosexual Histories conference in Adelaide in November 2015. Recorded 11 October 2016