The Australian Women's Register

Freda Glynn spent her early childhood in and around Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. She was one of forty children to be evacuated from Alice Springs during World War Two following Japanese advances into the Pacific, particularly the bombing of Darwin and Katherine. With her mother and sister, she travelled via Melbourne to a Church Missionary Society evacuee camp in the Blue Mountains.

In 1980, with John Macumba and Philip Batty, Freda Glynn co-founded the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association Group of Companies (CAAMA). CAAMA incorporates Imparja, the first Aboriginal commercial television station, which commenced broadcasting in 1988 in Alice Springs and was chaired by Glynn for a time. Imparja was responsible for broadcasting Urrpeye, an Aboriginal current affairs program. Freda Glynn also established the first licensed Aboriginal radio station, Radio 8KIN FM, broadcasting in regional languages. In 2002, she played Grandma Nina in the short film Shit Skin, a drama about a young man who takes his grandmother back to the place of her childhood so that she can reconnect with her surviving family. In May of that year, Glynn received the Award for Contribution to Indigenous Media at the Third Tudawali Indigenous Film and Video Awards held at the Sydney Opera House.

Glynn was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia, in the Australia Day Honours list in 1991, for service to broadcasting and to the Aboriginal community.