The Australian Women's Register

Elizabeth Broderick AO was Australia’s longest-serving Sex Discrimination Commissioner, from 2007 to 2015. She was also Commissioner responsible for Age Discrimination from 2007 to 2011.

A former head of legal technology at law firm Blake Dawson Waldron (now Ashurst), where she practised for nearly two decades, she became the firm’s first part-time partner and later served as a member of its board. In 2001 she was named Telstra NSW Business Woman of the Year; she also received the Centenary Medal.

As Commissioner, Broderick instigated the, ‘Male Champions of Change’ strategy, to help advance gender equality in Australia. It has since been replicated across the country and achieved international prominence, thanks in part to Broderick’s subsequent appointment as Global Co-Chair of the Women’s Empowerment Principles Leadership Group, a joint initiative of the UN Global Compact and UN Women.

On behalf of the Commission, Broderick also conducted the first independent Review into the Treatment of Women in the Australian Defence Force. Broderick was named overall winner of the Australian Financial Review and Westpac 2014 ‘100 Women of Influence Awards’ in acknowledgement of her achievements while in office.

Broderick is Principal of Elizabeth Broderick & Co., Senior Advisor to the Australian Federal Police Commissioner on cultural change and Special Advisor to the Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and the Executive Director of UN Women on Private Sector Engagement. She serves on a number of boards and continues to advocate for societal change. In 2016 Broderick was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia. She was also named 2016 New South Wales Australian of the Year. She has honorary degrees from the University of New South Wales and The University of Sydney, and the University of Technology Sydney.

Elizabeth Broderick was interviewed by Kim Rubenstein for the Trailblazing Women and the Law Oral History Project. For details of the interview see the National Library of Australia CATALOGUE RECORD.

Jane Connors has had a distinguished academic career in which she has dedicated her scholarship and work as an international law practitioner to the betterment of United Nations (UN) treaty mechanisms and the rights of women and children.

After studying law and arts at the Australian National University in Canberra, she taught at the Canberra College of Advanced Education (now University of Canberra) before travelling to England, United Kingdom. There, she taught at the Universities of Nottingham and Lancaster, and at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.

Drawn to the UN, in 1996 Connors was appointed Chief, Women’s Rights Section in the Division for the Advancement of Women in the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, UN. In 2009 she became Chief, Special Procedures Branch of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights; she was also later Director of the Research and Right to Development Division. Connors retired from the UN in March 2015.

Her commitment to international human rights continues with her role as International Advocacy Director Law and Policy for Amnesty International based in Geneva, Switzerland. She regularly teaches at universities around the globe, including at the London School of Economics where she is Visiting Professor in Practice.

Jane Connors was interviewed by Kim Rubenstein for the Trailblazing Women and the Law Oral History Project. For details of the interview see the National Library of Australia CATALOGUE RECORD.

A graduate of the University of Western Australia Faculty of Law, The Honourable Judy Eckert was the first woman to serve as president of the Law Society of Western Australia (1995-6). She was admitted as a legal practitioner in 1981 after completing her articles with Northmore, Hale, Davey and Leake (now Minter Ellison). In 1986, only four years after her admission, she became that firm’s first female partner.

In 1991, Eckert joined the WA Crown Solicitors Office, where she practised for eleven years and where she conducted a major review of the WA Legal Aid Commission. She joined the WA bar in 2002, the year she was also made a Life Member of the Law Society of Western Australia. In 2005 she was appointed a Judge of the District Court of Western Australia as a prelude to her appointment as Deputy President of the State Administrative Tribunal (SAT), sitting in the Human Rights stream. Regarded as one of Western Australia’s top legal minds, Eckert had a significant role to play in drafting the SAT legislation package which, at the time, was the largest piece of legislation ever to pass the WA parliament.

In 2011, ill health led to Eckert’s early retirement. In 2012, she was honoured at Women Lawyers Western Australia’s annual dinner for her contributions to advancing the status of women in the Western Australian legal profession.

Her Honour has three children and a husband who, she says, made it possible for her to pursue her legal career as far as she did. ‘I certainly would not have been able to become president of the law society if my husband hadn’t stayed home with the kids,’ she observed in 2004. Work/life balance issues are not ‘women’s issues’, she insisted: ‘they are management issues’.

Judy Eckert was interviewed by Nikki Henningham in the Trailblazing Women and the Law Oral History Project. For details of the interview see the National Library of Australia CATALOGUE RECORD.

Tracy Fantin is a Cairns based barrister and mediator who practises in planning and environment, administrative, employment and discrimination, succession and commercial law. She has worked on important coronial inquests and has experience working with Indigenous organisations and in native title.

Born and raised near Cairns, Fantin completed her education at Gordonvale State High School in 1982. Keen to undertake a combined Arts/Law degree, she moved to Canberra and graduated BA LLB (Hons) from ANU in 1987. She was admitted to practice as a solicitor in NSW in 1988 and practised in Sydney and London before returning to Cairns in 1994 where she became a partner and then consultant with local firm, Morrow Petersen Solicitors. She was called to the Bar in 2005. Fantin served as a sessional member of the Queensland Anti-Discrimination Tribunal for six years (2003-2009) and the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal for two years (2009-2011). She was a council member of the Bar Association of Queensland in 2014-2015 and is a member of the Australian Bar Association Diversity and Equality Committee.

Fantin has a history of involvement with community and advocacy organisations. She has served as a board member of Australian Women Lawyers (2004-2007), Women Lawyers Association of Queensland (2004-2007), Arts Law Centre of Queensland (1996-2001), Cairns Community Legal Centre and local arts organisations, and is a longstanding member of the Queensland Environmental Law Association and the Environmental Defender’s Office of Northern Queensland.

In 2016, Tracy Fantin was named the WLAQ Regional Woman Lawyer of the Year, in recognition of her promotion of women in the legal profession and her contribution to community organisations.

Tracy Fantin was interviewed by Nikki Henningham in the Trailblazing Women and the Law Oral History Project. For details of the interview see the National Library of Australia CATALOGUE RECORD.

Erika Feller has had an eminent career in international law, humanitarian protection and diplomacy. When she was appointed Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in 2006, she became the highest ranked Australian working in the United Nations at that time. In the ensuing years she undertook protection oversight missions to the large majority of the major refugee emergencies of recent years. She has been an ardent spokesperson for millions of vulnerable people throughout the world. Appointed a Fellow of the Australian Institute of International Affairs in 2013, in 2014 Feller was also named as Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow at her alma mater, the University of Melbourne.

In June 2021, Feller was awarded an AO for distinguished service to the international community, to the recognition and protection of human rights, and to refugee law.

Erika Feller was interviewed by Kim Rubenstein for the Trailblazing Women and the Law Oral History Project. For details of the interview see the National Library of Australia CATALOGUE RECORD.

Norma Clare Ford was interviewed by Kim Rubenstein in the Trailblazing Women and the Law Oral History Project. For details of the interview see the National Library of Australia CATALOGUE RECORD.

Admitted to practice in NSW in the early 1980s and having developed a strong reputation in personal injury law, Sally Gearin was recruited specifically to Darwin by the Northern Territory Attorney General’s Department in 1986.

Rising through the ranks to become a senior litigation solicitor, she was called to the Bar in late 1989 by the then Head of William Forster Chambers, Trevor Riley QC, later to become Chief Justice Trevor Riley.

Relishing the opportunity to back herself, and openly lesbian since 1978, Sally became the first woman to go to the Bar in the Northern Territory. She developed a vibrant practice and remained there for 20 years until her retirement in 2010. Having won more than 90% of her cases at trial, she was satisfied she had justified the faith of those colleagues who supported her early in her career.

Always active in pro bono, she worked with others to establish the first women’s refuge in Darwin in 1988 and helped establish community legal services and refugee advocacy in the 1990s. In 1992 she was awarded a fellowship to travel to the USA with Judy Harrison, another woman lawyer, to research responses to domestic violence. Their subsequent book and recommendations were a blueprint for policy responses in the mid 1990s both in the Territory and nationwide.

Sally currently (in 2016) sits as a part time legal member of a number of Tribunals in the Northern Territory.

Sally Gearin was interviewed by Nikki Henningham in the Trailblazing Women and the Law Oral History Project. For details of the interview see the National Library of Australia CATALOGUE RECORD.

After ten years as a partner at Norton Rose Fulbright, and four years prior to that at Bennett & Co., Jenni Hill is now (2016) a partner at the Perth office of international law firm, Clifford Chance. She is a litigation specialist, representing clients in the energy and resources sectors, and advising on corporate and shareholder disputes and investigations.

Committed to promoting equality of opportunity in the legal profession, Hill was a joint winner of the Western Australian Women Lawyers Association Woman Lawyer of the Year award in 2011. When at Norton Rose Fulbright, she chaired a Workplace Flexibility focus group. She is on the board of CEOs for Gender Equity, an initiative of the Western Australian Equal Opportunity Commission launched in 2014 to promote gender equity in the corporate sector. A woman who is ‘astute at picking her battles’ and developing strategies ‘for the long term’, she intends to change discriminatory corporate cultures by asserting influence from within.

Jenni Hill was interviewed by Nikki Henningham in the Trailblazing Women and the Law Oral History Project. For details of the interview see the National Library of Australia CATALOGUE RECORD.

Emeritus Professor Mary Hiscock was the first full-time female academic appointed to the Faculty of Law at the University of Melbourne. In 1972 Hiscock again made history when she became the Faculty’s first female reader. She was a pioneer of the study of comparative Asian Law, introducing Asian legal systems to students at the University of Melbourne for the very first time. Hiscock was later Chair of Law at Queensland’s Bond University, where she taught Contract and International Trade Law and was also Associate Dean (Research and Graduate Studies) from 1994 to 1997. She has been an expert adviser to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and a consultant to the Asian Development Bank; in addition, she has been a delegate to the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL). A member of the Australian Academy of Law, Hiscock is currently Emeritus Professor of Law at Bond University.

Mary Hiscock was interviewed by Kim Rubenstein for the Trailblazing Women and the Law Oral History Project. For details of the interview see the National Library of Australia CATALOGUE RECORD.

Rebecca Irwin holds the position of Senior Manager Government Relations and Public Policy at the global resources company BHP Billiton. An experienced leader and negotiator, she has served in the upper echelons of Australian government, including the Attorney-General’s Department and as a Senior Advisor to the Prime Minister, since graduating with first-class honours in Law from the University of Sydney in 1995. In May 2000, Ms Irwin made history when she became the first Australian woman lawyer to address an international tribunal, in her capacity as counsel for Australia in the Southern Bluefin Tuna Case against Japan. She has been a first assistant secretary in the Department of Immigration and Citizenship and in the Department of Agriculture; she has also been a senior executive working on national security and law enforcement policy with the Australian Federal Police and the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet in Canberra. A former associate to the Hon. Justice Margaret Beazley (later AO) of the Federal Court of Australia, Sydney, Ms Irwin practised as a solicitor at the law firm Mallesons Stephen Jaques. The recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, she has a Master of Laws from Harvard Law School in the United States.

Rebecca Irwin was interviewed by Kim Rubenstein for the Trailblazing Women and the Law Oral History Project. For details of the interview see the National Library of Australia CATALOGUE RECORD.

Rosemary Kayess has devoted her career to the study and promotion of human rights and discrimination law in Australia and internationally. She has made a significant contribution to the disability rights movement. Currently a Visiting Fellow and Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Law at the University of New South Wales, Kayess was appointed to the Australian Government delegation responsible for drafting the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Since 2009 Kayess has been a member of the AusAID Disability Reference Group; in 2010 she was appointed Director of the Human Rights and Disability Project at the University of New South Wales (UNSW). Kayess became Senior Research Fellow at the Social Policy Research Centre at UNSW in 2011.

Rosemary Kayess was interviewed by Kim Rubenstein for the Trailblazing Women and the Law Oral History Project. For details of the interview see the National Library of Australia CATALOGUE RECORD.

Nancy Gordon Smith graduated with a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Sydney in 1959, followed by a Master of Laws degree in 1970. Although admitted to the Bar, she did not practise as a barrister. On 16 August 1964 she was admitted as a solicitor. At the time of her death she held the positions of Senior Solicitor and Deputy Secretary to the Reserve Bank of Australia.

The University of Sydney awards two prizes in Smith’s memory. The Nancy Gordon Smith Postgraduate Prize may be awarded annually on the recommendation of the Board of Postgraduate Studies of the Faculty of Law, University of Sydney, to the most proficient candidate for the degree of Master of Laws by coursework.

The Hon. Justice Susan Kenny was the first woman ever to be appointed to the Court of Appeal, Supreme Court of Victoria. Since 1998, she has been a judge of the Federal Court of Australia. Kenny is also a Presidential Member of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. An outstanding student who was educated at the Universities of Melbourne and Oxford, Kenny was associate for two years to the then justice of the High Court of Australia, the Rt Hon. Ninian Stephen. Soon after returning to the Bar, she took silk. It was while serving as a part-time commissioner for the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission that a judicial career beckoned. For many years, Kenny has worked with various administrative bodies which are concerned with judicial reform and education.

Susan Kenny was interviewed by Kim Rubenstein for the Trailblazing Women and the Law Oral History Project. For details of the interview see the National Library of Australia CATALOGUE RECORD.

Patricia Smithurst Schlosshan was the daughter of Cyril Smithurst, a respected pharmacist in Gunnedah, north-eastern New South Wales, and his wife, Eileen. She attended St Mary’s College, Gunnedah and the University of Sydney, receiving a Sporting Blue in athletics for 1955 and graduating with a Bachelor of Laws degree in 1956. Although admitted to the New South Wales Bar, she did not practise as a barrister. Smithurst married American lawyer Dr Bodo Schlosshan whom she had met in London in 1956 and together they lived in Paris and New York before settling in Frankfurt am Main and raising a family of six. In 1967, Smithurst received a Master of Arts from Cornell University for her dissertation entitled ‘Heinrich Boll’s Concept of Reality, 1949-1960’.

Koula Kossiavelos is a magistrate of the Magistrates Court of South Australia. She has made a significant contribution to the Greek community, including as member of a long-standing steering committee which succeeded after ten years in establishing a Chair of modern Greek studies at Flinders University. She was a legal advisor and National President of the Pan-Arcadian Federation of Australia and an Australian delegate at the International Conference of Council of Hellenes Abroad. A former barrister and solicitor, she served articles with the firm Johnston, Withers, McCusker & Co before joining Martirovs, Kadis & Metanomski where she became a partner. Later establishing herself as a sole practitioner, she practised in a wide range of civil cases, including personal injury claims, family law, criminal-injuries compensation claims, civil litigation, industrial law and defamation. She continues to support community legal organisations and to promote a multicultural society.

Koula Kossiavelos was interviewed by Kim Rubenstein for the Trailblazing Women and the Law Oral History Project. For details of the interview see the National Library of Australia CATALOGUE RECORD.

Sally Joseph was one of the first solicitors to work at the Aboriginal Legal Service in Redfern, Sydney. She graduated from the University of Sydney with a Bachelor of Laws degree in 1967, the same year in which she was appointed to the Commission of the Peace for the State of New South Wales. Although admitted to the New South Wales Bar, Joseph did not practise as a barrister, instead working briefly at the Commonwealth Crown Solicitor’s Office before being admitted as a solicitor on 11 February 1972. She practised at the Aboriginal Legal Service and later in the eastern Sydney suburb of Vaucluse.

Marie Sexton (nee Kinsella) co-drafted the constitution of the Women Lawyers’ Association of New South Wales and was the organisation’s first honorary secretary. The eldest of five children of Edward Parnell (Ted) Kinsella and his Belgian wife, Marie Louise Josephine Graff, the then Kinsella matriculated from Fort Street Girls’ High School and went on to earn three qualifications from the University of Sydney: a Bachelor of Arts in 1943; a Diploma in Education in 1944; and a Bachelor of Laws in 1949. (It was during a year-long stint as teaching assistant at Inverell High School in northern New South Wales that Kinsella decided that teaching was not for her, had her last day on 29 January 1945 and thence turned her sights to the study of law). She began working as an associate to her father, then Mr Justice Kinsella of the Industrial Commission of New South Wales. On 18 January 1950, Mr Justice Kinsella was elevated to the Supreme Court of New South Wales; Kinsella became clerk associate to her father and clerk of arraigns. Although admitted to the New South Wales Bar on 11 February 1949, Kinsella did not practise at the Bar. She later worked in the Department of Territories, Sydney, and the Attorney-General’s Department in Canberra, producing the respected Annotated Constitution. Kinsella retired in 1980.

Dorothy Jean Kitching (formerly Shearer, nee Asher) was an experienced public servant who served three terms as legislative draftsman for The Administration of Norfolk Island: the first was in 1984; the second in 1993; and the third in 2001. For a time she also carried out the role of deputy clerk for the Island. In the 1970s she had been a legal officer in the Office of the Legislative Draftsman, Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. After resigning her initial post in Norfolk Island in 1987, she became assistant legislative counsel at the Australian Law Reform Commission in Sydney. She later worked in the Office of Parliamentary Counsel in Darwin. A 1946 law graduate of the University of Sydney, Kitching was admitted to the New South Wales Bar but remained on the list of non-practising barristers throughout her life.

Helen Knox (nee Upton) became a barrister after having worked as a journalist for more than two decades. She was educated by the Sisters of Mercy, Boorowa, in south-western New South Wales before winning a bursary to attend Our Lady of Mercy College in Goulburn. In 1927, she was enrolled in the Teachers’ College in the grounds of the University of Sydney; by 1931 she had graduated with an Arts degree. In 1937 Knox was appointed to a position on the staff of the ‘Sun’ newspaper in Sydney; she remained with the paper throughout the Second World War. Returning to the University in 1944, she undertook a Bachelor of Laws degree and graduated in 1950. By now she was writing for Consolidated Press. Knox was admitted to the New South Wales Bar on 12 February 1960 and for a time shared chambers with Cecily Backhouse (later QC and judge of the NSW District Court). Her practice was chiefly in divorce.

Mary Helen Elizabeth Lidden (previously Appleby, nee Coleman) deserves credit for helping to increase the public’s knowledge and understanding of the law through a series of articles she wrote in the 1970s for The Australian Women’s Weekly, published under the name M.E. Lidden.

Mary Coleman, as she was then, graduated from the University of Sydney with a Bachelor of Arts in 1944. Admitted to the New South Wales Bar on 1 December 1950, the following month she was awarded the degree of Bachelor of Laws. By this time she was a widow – her husband, John Ambrose Mitchell Appleby, a student-at-law, had died on 28 April 1946 – and mother of a five-year-old daughter, Victoria.

She did not practise at the Bar and on 24 November 1967 she was admitted as a solicitor; she worked at a number of firms in Sydney. In 1976 she was appointed a legal officer in the Department of Labour and Industry where she remained until 25 August 1978. Lidden was author of a book on wills and probate and co-author of another on conveyancing. She also wrote a novel and a number of self-help books.

Kathleen McGarry was the fourth woman to be admitted to the New South Wales Bar. The third and youngest child of Patrick McGarry, a former member of the Legislative Assembly of Murrumbidgee in south-western New South Wales, and Mary McGarry (nee Myres), McGarry lived at Ardenclutha in Hunter’s Hill on Sydney’s North Shore and was educated by the Sisters of Charity at St Vincent’s College, Potts Point. She continued to be associated with the College after she had left, particularly through the Ex-Students’ Dramatic Society. At the University of Sydney she spent time at Sancta Sophia College and was a member of the University’s Catholic Women’s Society. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1928 and a Bachelor of Laws in 1935. On 6 March 1936 McGarry became the first Catholic woman to be admitted to the New South Wales Bar. She did not practise, however, and after an early stint at the Parliamentary Draftsman’s Office, appears to have abandoned the law and turned her attentions to the arts, producing plays and skits for the theatre and radio. McGarry had been an early student of the Independent Theatre School of Dramatic Art and impressed audiences with her prowess on the stage. She earned a number of prizes for her artistic abilities, including second prize in the Catholic broadcasting station 2SM’s ‘Search for Talent’ competition in 1935. As a member of the Catholic Women’s Association, with which she was deeply involved, she learned Braille and applied her knowledge to translate the Roman Missal. She was said to be fluent in French and German.

Hilda Maude Maddocks, the sixth woman to be admitted to the New South Wales Bar, was educated at Fort Street Girls’ High School and the University of Sydney, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Laws in 1939 and was a student in the Faculty of Economics. When war broke out, she became honorary treasurer of the Law School Comforts Fund. At the time of her admission to the New South Wales Bar on 26 May 1939, she was employed in the legal branch of the Department of Road Transport & Tramways where her father, Sydney Aubrey Maddocks, himself a law graduate of the University of Sydney and formerly on the list of non-practising barristers at the New South Wales Bar, had been commissioner. Five years later, having joined the Commonwealth Crown Solicitor’s Office, she was admitted as a solicitor, on 26 May 1944. On 1 February 1962, Hilda Maude (now Catalano) was appointed legal officer, Crown Solicitor’s Office, Department of the Attorney-General and of Justice; her designation was altered to solicitor on 1 September 1962. She retired on 7 August 1973.

Jean Malor has the distinction of having been the first female student to graduate from the University of Sydney with first-class honours in Law. Although admitted to practise in 1937, Malor rejected going to the New South Wales Bar in favour of a career with the Law Book Company of Australasia Pty Ltd. (This may have been because her brother, Ronald, soon to be killed in the Second World War, was already a promising junior at the Bar). With the outbreak of war, she became honorary secretary of the Law School Comforts Fund. Malor remained at the Law Book Company until she was 60, rising to become senior legal advisor and senior editor and highly regarded for her knowledge and proficiency. In 1973, she was appointed chairwoman of the Commonwealth Computerisation of Legal Data Committee, one of a number of committees and professional organisations to which she gave much of her time and expertise over many years. Retained by Butterworths Pty Ltd in 1977, she was editor responsible for The Australian Current Law Digest and Commonwealth Statutes Annotations. She continued to work until she was in her 80s. On 3 June 1978, Malor’s prodigious legal knowledge and lifelong dedication as an editor were recognised when she was awarded an OBE for her services to the legal profession.

Patricia Audrey (Pat) Moore (formerly Voss, nee Kelly) initially worked as a pharmacist before becoming a highly regarded patent barrister of the New South Wales Bar and a senior member of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. She undertook the Materia Medica course at the University of Sydney and graduated in 1946. As a teaching fellow in pharmacy at the University, for a time the then Miss Patricia Kelly was the only woman on the School’s teaching staff. In 1950 she was president of the Women’s Pharmacy Association, which boasted over 100 members across New South Wales. In 1953 Moore (then as the recently married Mrs John Voss) left for London with her husband, a doctor: he to attend the Royal College of Physicians; she to pursue postgraduate study in pharmacy. She was admitted to the Bar on 4 June 1971 along with friend and fellow pioneer Priscilla Flemming, who became the first woman in private practice at the New South Wales Bar to take silk. She read with Ken Handley, who later took silk and became a judge of the New South Wales Court of Appeal, and she was frequently briefed by Pat Hinch, a well-known woman solicitor. Moore also served as a part-time member of the Social Security Appeals Tribunal.

Stephanie Pape (nee Prouting) worked for nearly a decade in the Public Solicitor’s Office in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, during which time she rose from the position of legal officer to that of deputy public solicitor. The then Prouting graduated from the University of Sydney with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1949, followed by a Bachelor of Laws degree in 1963. Despite being admitted to the New South Wales Bar, she did not practise as a barrister, working first at the Commonwealth Crown Solicitor’s Office before transferring to Port Moresby in 1964. On 26 June 1966, she married Richard Pape, author of Boldness Be My Friend (1953), which was an account of his wartime experiences as a prisoner of war. After returning to Australia, she joined the Attorney-General’s Department in Canberra.

Mary Helene Laurent Bleechmore (nee Williams) graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Sydney in 1938. She then embarked upon a Bachelor of Laws degree which she interrupted to marry Sidney John Bleechmore, a Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical and Electrical) graduate, on 21 December 1940. She graduated in 1941 and was admitted to the New South Wales Bar on 30 May 1941. For a short time she worked in the Office of the Commonwealth Crown Solicitor. Her husband a member of the Permanent Army, Bleechmore accompanied him to the places where he was stationed and worked when she could. After the Second World War, she lived in Japan where the then Lt-Col Sidney Bleechmore, commanding officer of the Royal Engineers (and mentioned in despatches in 1946), was serving with the British Commonwealth Occupation Force (BCOF). Two of the couple’s three children were born in Japan: the birth of their second son, Ralph, on 21 September 1947 in Eta Jima, was significant for being the first birth of an Australian in the BCOF area. Their daughter, Antonia (Toni) Turnbull, born in Kure on 31 March 1950, became a doctor and activist. Their eldest child, John, was a noted defamation specialist at the Victorian Bar.

Dr Klara Rudlow was a refugee who arrived in Australia on 24 September 1938 from Vienna where she had worked as a judge’s associate and journalist. Despite her experience, and being equipped with a Doctor of Laws from the University of Vienna (which she had obtained in 1933), her qualifications were not recognised in New South Wales and her facility with the English language was insufficient for her to obtain articles. It was not until 4 December 1953 that Rudlow, having undertaken the Barristers’ Admission Board course, was finally admitted to the Bar. In the intervening years she had worked as a translator and interpreter (she spoke several languages). Rudlow also broadcast and wrote on cultural and assimilation issues. In 1951 she travelled to Europe under the auspices of the International Refugee Organisation. She had scarce work at the Bar and coached students undertaking the Solicitors’ and Barristers’ Admission Board examinations as a means of augmenting her income. On 13 March 1959, Rudlow was admitted as a solicitor and from 1960 had her own practice. She subsequently lived and worked in Darling Street, Balmain for many years, volunteering for the Balmain Association and even standing for local government, although she was not successful.