The Australian Women's Register

Although the battle for woman suffrage began later in Australia than it did in Britain or the United States, success was achieved earlier. Concerted campaigns for woman suffrage in Australia date from the early 1880s and were supported by organisations and individuals representing a wide array of political and ideological platforms. In some ways, these campaigns signalled the start of women’s participation in the Australian political process. Although linked to and inspired by the international campaigns and context of the time, the Australian suffrage movement had its own distinctive, regional characteristics. Matters of race and class, of geographical proximity to Asia and the need to build a healthy white nation at the turn of the century, combined with universal concerns about justice and the rights of the individual to create a uniquely Australian movement.

The International Tracing and Refugee Services department of the Australian Red Cross endeavours to locate, reunite and support families separated by war, conflict and disaster. As such, the department services one of the most longstanding activities of the International Red Cross Movement, that of restoring family links between victims of armed conflict. In Australia, an important predecessor of the department, The Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau, was founded at the beginning of World War 1 by Australian Red Cross Commissioners Vera Deakin and Winifred Johnstone. The Bureau was established in 1915 to help trace wounded and missing men and provide information about them to their families.

The Australian Junior Red Cross was founded in New South Wales in August 1918 by Mrs Eleanor MacKinnon, initially with the aim of involving children in the support of recuperating soldiers who were using existing Red Cross facilities, and then extending to concern about the needs of the children of soldiers. Over the years, the Junior Movement’s aims have evolved to focus on the development of an humanitarian ethos amongst young people, through education programs, and activities that encourage active citizenship and community participation.

Australia’s largest provider of first aid services was the initiative of a woman. In 1914, Lady Helen Munro Ferguson appealed to women and men with first aid and nursing training to enrol in voluntary first aid detachments. The service has steadily developed to become not only an important dispenser of first aid, but a major provider of first aid training. Women have played an important leadership role in the service since its inception.

The Australian Red Cross has given special emphasis to Disaster and Emergency Services as part of the larger role of the Red Cross in caring for victims of natural disasters, conflict and human tragedies. The Australian Red Cross took up this role as a philanthropic organisation already able to operate within the armed forces and within State disaster plans. In the main, disaster and emergency services have largely been a State-based function of the Australian Red Cross, with national coordination developing over time. Their disaster preparation and response strongly involves local branches and communities, with women providing much of the ground support and assistance, such as catering and registration, and increasingly management for the Australian Red Cross.

As the International Committee of the Red Cross has been the ‘guardian’ of the Geneva Conventions on armed warfare, International Humanitarian Law is the basis of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. As a result, Australian Red Cross national Presidents and other leading women, such as Philadelphia Robertson, have been prominent in this field and in international conferences of the Red Cross and Red Crescent movement.

International development programs and aid are a core function of the national office of the Australian Red Cross. Funds were initially donated to the Red Cross Society in the nation affected by disaster, as in the Japanese earthquake of 1923. From the 1970s, the national office of the Australian Red Cross has directly appealed for, and received, funds to assist in major international operations. The Australian Red Cross Field Force of overseas workers provided relief in the field during World War II into the 1970s. In many respects, these were the forerunners of Australian Red Cross delegates, who provide specialist skills for international programs, development and assignments by Red Cross Societies. Some of these delegates come under the International Committee of the Red Cross, others under the Federation, and some under the Australian Red Cross, depending upon the project. In 2004, the International Department of Australian Red Cross had specific desks for the areas, such as the Asia-Pacific, which serve as contact points for development programs. The Australian Red Cross’s Strategy 2005 aimed to provide high quality international humanitarian assistance and development programs in partnership with governments, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, and vulnerable communities.

Community services were recognised in the first national Constitution of the Australian branch of the British Red Cross Society.

Operated by Australian Red Cross Victoria since 1993 and funded by the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, the Asylum Seeker Assistance Scheme provides services to asylum seekers who have cleared immigration and remain lawfully in the community while their application for refugee status is being processed.
In Victoria, caseworkers work with asylum seekers in the community providing the following support:
• Crisis intervention and needs assessment
• Administration of some emergency relief and financial assistance
• Access to health care and pharmaceutical programs
• Referral to other agencies (legal, medical, specialist counselling, social, education, material-aid, housing)
General casework support and advocacy

Many community programs grew from the hospital services – Volunteer Motor Corps (now Transport Services), Home Hospitals, Rest Homes and Amelioration – of World War I. From 1927, the Red Cross Auxiliaries became a chief peace-time activity of the Victorian Division. In World War II, remedial activities became known as Rehabilitation, and a Welfare Committee arose. Welfare then became associated with Social Work, which mainly focused on soldiers until the 1970s, when it turned to disadvantaged groups. In the 1980s, Hospital and Community Services encompassed many of these activities. In 1995, this area became more specialised, becoming Community Programs in 2002.

In the 1920s, the Victorian Division increasingly moved into civil emergencies, such as bush fire relief, floods and the influenza epidemic, using pre-existing services such as the Volunteer Motor Corps. Having served in World War I, plans were also made for the Voluntary Aid Detachments to come under the Australian Defence Department in the event of war or national emergency. Around 1928, the Victorian Council appointed a specific Sub-Committee for emergency and relief work, and bushfire assistance was given to Tasmania. In the Depression, the Victorian Division assisted in State Relief, and branches offered support. The Division’s emergency response is planned in advance and co-ordinated with the Victorian authorities, particularly the State Emergency Service.

First aid training, a core activity of Australian Red Cross, is largely a State activity. In World War I, Australian women were encouraged to enrol people with first aid certificates in Voluntary Aid Detachments. By the 1960s, Victoria had an education program in the area, which was covered, in the 1980s, by Health and Safety Education. Emergency first aid is included in Emergency Services. In 2004, accredited first aid courses were provided at an individual and industry level, with specialised training including critical incident simulations, and Red Cross continuing to sell First Aid kits.

Fundraising was initially the main function of the Victorian branch, with appeals launched by the President and undertaken through Committees and branches. Initially, funds were administered by the Australian Branch. Their Central Depot became the first collection and distribution point, although Victoria was also empowered to appoint a depot for contributions. Fundraising has gradually become more specialised, with Committees focused on the hallmark Red Cross Calling, the Murray Marathon since 1969, and a Desperate & Dateless ball for over ten years. Retail has expanded from Card & Gift Shops, to ‘Been Around Before’ stores and merchandise campaigns, while corporate sponsors, are emphasised and bequests, foundations and trusts have expanded.

The Tracing and Refugee Services Department endeavour to locate, reunite and support families separated by war, conflict and disaster. In Australia, it is related to the Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau of 1915, focused largely on war service personnel until it was found useful in post-World War II migration. In 1994, Tracing and Refugees became a core service for expansion, including a Volunteer Settlement Support Group and the Young Refugees Project. The service now includes family Tracing and Red Cross Messages, Health and welfare Reports from family overseas, Family Re-union, the Maribyrnong Immigration Detention Program and urgent Disaster inquiries.

The Victorian Junior Red Cross began under a Central Committee in 1921-1922, following the New South Wales Division in 1918. Between the two world wars, the Junior Red Cross was a major part of the peacetime programme of the Victorian Red Cross. In World War II, the Victorian Division’s Junior Red Cross restructured, sponsored by local Red Cross branches, companies and Links of Service. From the 1950s, Junior Circles again formed in schools. In the 1970s, its overall name became Red Cross Youth. In the 1990s, it expanded programs as Youth and Education Services (YES), becoming Youth and Multicultural Affairs in 2003.

Initially, major cities were represented on Victoria’s Provisional Committee for the Red Cross, and branches sprung up across the State. Branches reported to the Victorian Division, and Annual Reports. As many began to disband in peacetime, branches were reviewed in the mid-1920s. In World War II, they were boosted when Philadelphia Robertson became Director of Branches, with other prominent appointments following, and a greater regional focus in the 1960s. By the late 1990s, branches, and six administration zones, came under Services and Membership. In 2003, development of Membership and Volunteers warranted a separate section. Branches have been particularly active in local fundraising and community services.

The experience of Greek-Australians is an integral part of Australian History. Since first arriving in the late 1810s, Greeks have made significant contributions to the nation’s cultural diversity and prosperity. Today, descendants of the earliest arrivals, immigrants, and their Australian-born children inhabit vital communities throughout the country, the inheritors of a vigorous Greek culture secured through the determined efforts of their forebears.

Although there was some Latvian migration to Australia in the aftermath of the abortive 1905 revolution against Tsarist Russia, the most significant wave of Latvian emigrants arrived after the second world war. During the war Latvia was under Soviet occupation and the Latvian people were subjected to oppression and mass deportations. By 1945, 156,000 Latvians had escaped to western Europe. They were among the 12 million war refugees awaiting resettlement in Displaced Persons camps. Approximately 20,000 Latvians arrived in Australia between November 27, 1947, and the end of 1952.

Ukraine is located on the northern coast of the Black Sea in south-eastern Europe. The area of present-day Ukraine was populated only by Scythian nomads until the 6th century AD, when Slavic people begin to settle in the area. An organised political entity, known as Rus, evolved around Kyiv. (Russia, which later evolved around the principality of Moscow, did not yet exist).

In the fifteenth century Ukraine became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and then of the Polish-Lithuanian ‘Commonwealth’ (Rzeczpospolita), until the eastern half of the country was finally annexed by Muscovy in the seventeenth century. With the annexation of the Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth by Russia in 1795, the whole of Ukraine came under Russia’s rule until 1918.

Ukrainians managed to establish an independent Ukrainian state in 1918, but it could not withstand simultaneous attacks by Poland from the west and Russia from the east. Ultimately the fighting ended in the partition of Ukraine between Poland and the USSR. Ukrainians suffered greatly under Stalin’s repression during the inter-war period. An artificially-induced famine, in which Ukrainians estimate about six million
people died, was used by Stalin to forcibly implement the collectivisation of agriculture in Ukraine. Ukraine remained occupied by the USSR until 1991, when the latter was dismantled.

It is believed that prior to World War I up to 5,000 Ukrainian workers had settled in Australia. Ukraine was a major area of conflict in World War II and many Ukrainians fled to Western Europe, where they were interned as Displaced Persons (DPs). The first Ukrainians began arriving from the refugee camps in late 1948. They came to Australia on assisted passages which included two-year work contracts with the Commonwealth Government. Among the migrants were priests, lawyers, doctors and engineers, but the vast majority were people from a rural background.

The 1947 census did not list Ukraine as a birthplace, but the 1954 Census recorded 14,757 Ukraine-born. After that the number of migrants from the Soviet Ukraine was negligible, apart from some Ukrainian Jews. There was also limited migration of Ukrainians from communities in Poland and
Yugoslavia. Migration from Ukraine has only been significant since independence in 1991. The 1996 Census recorded 13,460 Ukraine-born people resident in Australia (up from 9,051 at the 1991 Census). Most live in Victoria and New South Wales.

The first contact between Poland-born people and Australia occurred in 1696, when several citizens of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth were included in the crew of Captain Willem Vlamingh’s Dutch expedition which explored the Western Australian coast. The first Polish settler in Australia was a convict who arrived in 1803 and became a successful wheat farmer in Tasmania.

Later arrivals included a group of Poland born people who established a community in South Australia which grew to about 400 people by the 1880s. Some Poles joined the goldrush to Australia in the 1850s. The 1921 Australian Census recorded 1,780 Poland born residents and by the 1933 Census their number had almost doubled.

Following World War II, many Polish refugees came to Australia and during the period between 1947 and 1954, the Poland born population increased from 6,573 to 56,594 people. Many refugees worked under a two-year contract in unskilled jobs and continued in similar work for a period after their contracts ended. There was further emigration from Poland to Australia after the Polish government relaxed its emigration laws with almost 15,000 Poland born people coming to Australia between the years 1957 and 1966. By the 1966 Census, the Poland-born population had reached 61,641 people.

In the early 1980s there was further Polish emigration from Poland to Australia. The emergence of the Solidarity trade union movement and the declaration of martial law in Poland at the end of 1981 coincided with a further relaxation of Polish emigration laws. During the period 1980-91 Australia granted permanent entry to more than 25,000 Poland-born settlers, many arriving as refugees. The Poland-born population of Australia peaked at 68,496 at the 1991 Census. Since then the improvement in living conditions in Poland, as well as more stringent migration criteria, have significantly reduced the levels of Polish migration to Australia from the high levels of 1981-85.

There is a long history of contact between Holland and Australia. In early 1606, William Jansz of Amsterdam, captain of the Duyfken (Little Dove) landed on Cape York Peninsula. A number of Dutch ships sank off the Western Australian coast in the 1600s and survivors reportedly established relationships with local Aborigines. By 1644, Abel Tasman had completed a partial circumnavigation of Australia which revealed, for the first time, the size of the continent. The resulting incomplete map of New Holland was not superseded until the arrival of Captain Cook in 1770.

During the 1850s gold rushes Dutch merchant ships continued to visit Australia but immigration of the Netherlands-born remained negligible. Until 1947, when the Census recorded 2,174 Netherlands born, the number of people arriving from the Netherlands were offset by a large proportion of departures of Netherlands-born from Australia. This trend has continued to the present day, apart from a period of high migration during the 1950s and 1960s.

After the Second World War, many Dutch people suffered severe economic and social dislocation in Holland. With an already high population density, a relatively small land area and the highest birth rate in Europe, the Netherlands faced a severe housing crisis and rising unemployment, due mainly to the mechanisation of agriculture. Dutch authorities actively supported emigration as a partial solution to the problem of overcrowding.

Meanwhile, immigration policy change meant that Australia was looking for acceptable migrants from non-British sources. The hard working rural Dutch, with their linguistic and cultural affinities with the Australian population, were seen to be ideal immigrants. Both the Australian and Netherlands Governments contributed to the cost of passage, while the Australian Government accepted the responsibility for assisting settlement. As a result, during the 1950s Australia was the destination of 30 per cent of Dutch emigrants and the Netherlands-born became numerically the second largest non-British group. Their numbers peaked in 1961 at 102,134.

In the nineteenth century Italians priests performed missionary work in Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory and the Italian linguist Raffaello Carboni played a significant role in the Eureka Stockade revolt of 1854. Small Italian communities catered to miners on the goldfields of Victoria and Western Australia. In 1885 a group of some 300 migrants from northern Italy established a traditional Italian community called ‘New Italy’ in northern New South Wales (NSW). Italian fishermen also established communities along the south coast of NSW, Port Pirie and Fremantle. During this period Italian labourers arrived in Queensland to work on the cane fields. By the late 1930s, one third of all Australia’s Italian migrants lived in the cane-growing regions of Queensland. Italians also became involved in market gardens, comprising about 40 per cent of Queensland’s
market gardeners.

In 1947 the population of the Italy-born was 33,632 persons and by 1971 the number had increased to 289,476 persons. Most of the Italian migrants came from Sicily, Calabria and Veneto and settled in metropolitan areas. Italy experienced economic buoyancy after 1971, and this prompted many Italians to leave Australia and return to Italy. This led to a decline in the size of the Italian population in Australia. The 1996 Census recorded a drop in the number of Italy-born persons to 238,216.

Lithuanians came in large numbers to Australia in the late 1940s and early 1950s as part of the wave of refugees from the Soviet-occupied Baltic states.

While most Philippines-born settlement in Australia is comparatively recent, contact between indigenous Australians and Filipino sailors in the north of the continent extends back well before Europeans arrived. Early census data shows that some of the sojourners stayed for good: there were approximately 700 Philippines-born persons in Australia at the turn of the century, mainly in Western Australia and Queensland.

The Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 led to the introduction of policies excluding non-Europeans from entry to Australia (colloquially known as the ‘White Australia Policy’). This resulted in a significant decrease in the number of Philippines-born settlers in Australia. The number of Filipinos was down to 141 at the time of the 1947 Australian Census, and it was not until the 1950s that the population began to increase.

Significant numbers of Filipino students were allowed entry to Australia under the Colombo Plan and many chose to stay after graduation. An immigration policy reform in 1966 allowed well-qualified non-Europeans to immigrate to Australia. The Filipino population approximately doubled between every Census (every 5 years) to 1991, making it one of the fastest growing overseas-born populations in Australia.

The final repudiation of the ‘White Australia Policy’ and the declaration of martial law in the Philippines in 1972 led to rapid growth in the Philippines-born population in Australia over the next two decades. During the 1970s, many Filipino women migrated as spouses of Australian residents. Since then, most of the Philippines-born settlers have been sponsored by a family member.

Most Filipino migration occurred during the 1980s, peaking in 1987-1988. In the 1990s, settler arrivals began to decline and the growth in the Philippines-born population slowed. The 1991 Census recorded 73,673 living in Australia.

Most Australians of Estonian origin came here because of upheavals that occurred between 1940-50. During this time something like one in five Estonians was deported or forced to flee as a direct result of the Nazi and Soviet occupations and the associated military campaigns. Most Estonians in Australia were part of, or descended from, that group that fled westward.

The first Estonian Displaced Persons arrived on the ship the General Stuart Heintzelmann in 1947. This boatload, of whom 142 were Estonian, had been carefully chosen to show Australians that Baltic Displaced People were blond, blue-eyed and thoroughly assimilable. Young and well educated, they were determined to do well in Australia but equally determined to preserve their culture. They made a conscious effort to do so and established the Estonian Archives in 1952.

Prior to the mass migration period that directly followed the second world war, very few Estonian migrants to Australia lived outside New South Wales. Their numbers were sufficient enough, however, to form organisations and provide community support to the post-war Displaced Person community that grew after 1947. After this time, significant communities grew up in Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. Most of this scattered but well organised population came about as the result of a burst of immigration between 1947 and 1952, with a small number arriving until 1958, but very few after that time.

Netball is said to be the largest participant sport for girls and women in Australia, with four hundred thousand players registered with the All Australia Netball Association by the late 1990s, and an estimated further three hundred and fifty thousand not registered. It was a foundation sport of the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra in 1981. Ian Jobling and Pamela Barham suggest that the popularity of netball among women can be attributed to its versatility (it can be played on all surfaces at all age and skill levels), and its organisation by women for women.

The game of hockey was brought to Australia by British Naval officers stationed around the country in the late 1800s. By 1900, according to Hockey Australia, the game was being played in private girls’ schools. Being a non-contact team sport, it was considered ideal for women. The first women’s hockey association was formed in New South Wales in 1908. Two years later, women’s clubs from Tasmania, Victoria and South Australia were competing alongside clubs from New South Wales at an interstate tournament at Rushcutter’s Bay, and from this tournament came the establishment of the Australian Women’s Hockey Association in July 1910 – fifteen years before the Australian Hockey Association (AHA) was formed in 1925. State hockey associations for men had been formed in South Australia, 1903; Victoria and New South Wales, 1906; Western Australia, 1908; and Queensland, 1920s. This division in the administration of men’s and women’s hockey continued in subsequent years. The Australian Women’s Hockey Association affiliated with the All England Women’s Hockey Association, and joined the International Federation of Women’s Hockey (IFWH) in 1927.