Although she had been overseas once before (for her honeymoon with her husband, tennis great Harry Hopman), her 1938 trip with the Australian women's tennis team clearly meant a lot to Nell Hopman.
At the time, overseas travel was expensive and difficult and the funds to do so were usually reserved for male athletes, so it is perhaps not surprising that the opportunity was highly valued by Nell. She compiled photos taken by her, by her teammates and by press photographers into a beautiful leather-bound album, and gave each photograph a hand-written caption. The album gives an insight into the experience of being a young woman, but in particular being a top female athlete in the 1930s.
The album has been acquired by Tennis Australia, and will be preserved as part of its heritage collections. It is likely that this is the first of several albums documenting the tour because it only covers the tour up to the point the team went to Paris. If further albums emerged relating to the tour, they would be of strong interest for acquisition also.