The Australian Women's Register

Gracia Baylor, daughter of Herbert David Parry-Okeden, a grazier and businessman and Hilary May Webster, was born in Brisbane, and educated in Victoria and Tasmania as well as Brisbane as a result of her father serving in the Royal Australian Air Force during World War Two.

At the National Gallery Art School in Melbourne she completed a Diploma of Fine Arts and subsequently trained as a secondary school teacher. In 1950 she married John du Frocq Freeman. She worked at Mercer House, a training college for teachers in independent schools, from 1951-57 and at Hamilton College from 1957-59. She married again in 1959, to Richard Patrick Baylor, a Solicitor, with whom she had four children, three boys and a girl. She became a law clerk in her husband’s firm in Healesville

Her interest in politics was sparked when she recognised the need for a kindergarten in the town of Healesville. She served as a Healesville Shire Councillor from 1966-78 and ultimately became the first woman president of the Shire of Healesville from 1977-78. This also made her the first female Shire president in the state of Victoria. During her time in parliament she assisted in the establishment of the Queen Victoria Women’s Centre.

Over the course of her career, Gracia Baylor initiated the council approved baby capsule program which all new parents use to safely carry their infants in cars for the first few months. ‘Before this program, babies were just placed in the back of the car in a bassinet and if there was an accident, they didn’t have a hope,’ she says. Baylor was also instrumental in getting mammograms approved for the Medicare register and she saved the only remaining tower of the Queen Victoria Memorial Hospital for women which is now a centre for Women’s Health.

Baylor has been an active member of the National Council of Women at the national and state level, serving as president of the National Council of Women of Victoria from 1990-93 and of the National Council of Women Australia from 1997-2000.