The Australian Women's Register

Helen Morgan is a senior research fellow at the University of Melbourne’s eScholarship Research Centre. A historian with archival and editing qualifications, she has worked as information architect and exhibition designer on the Australian Women’s Archives Project since its inception in 2000, and is co-editor of the Australian Women’s Register. Her MA thesis in art history was on the Australian artist Thea Proctor. She is a director and board member of Her Place Women’s Museum Australia.

Grace Amelia Perry studied medicine at the University of Sydney. She had a home-based medical practice at Five Dock and served as an honorary physician at the Renwick Hospital for Infants and as an honorary paediatrician at the Fairfield District and South Sydney Women’s hospitals.

As a child, Grace had written poetry and three collections were published by Consolidated Press Ltd. She began writing poetry again in 1961 and the following year she joined the Poetry Society of Australia.

Grace was editor of Poetry Magazine from 1962-1964. After being expelled from the poetry society in 1964, she established a new Magazine Poetry Australia, which she edited until her death.

Perry won a medal at the New South Wales premier’s literary awards in 1985 and was appointed AM the next year. After failing to receive funding for two projects and feeling abandoned by her supporter, Grace committed suicide at her Berrima home on 3 July 1987.

Doreen Rosenthal is a national and international leader in research on adolescent development. This led to innovative and sustained research on adolescent sexuality and sexual health at a time when the HIV/AIDS epidemic had become a significant problem for public health. She served as a member of the Committee for Gender Studies at the University of Melbourne from 1986. She was made an Officer of the Order of Australia , is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and is on the Victorian Honour Roll of Women. Doreen is an Honorary Life Member, Victorian AIDS Council.

Betty Feith is a teacher and volunteer whose work inside and outside the classroom has reflected her ideals of a peaceful, just and inclusive society, and her abiding Christian faith. Betty was a co-founder of the Volunteer Graduate Scheme for Indonesia, a programme established in the early 1950s that pioneered the concept of international volunteering as it is understood today. Betty herself worked in Indonesia in a volunteer capacity during the mid-1950s and again in the 1990s, both times with her husband, political scientist Herb Feith. Betty has taught at schools and tertiary institutions in Melbourne and Indonesia, and the Asian Studies and Indonesian history courses she taught in Melbourne during the 1960s and 1970s were among the first of their kind in Victoria. Betty has had a lifetime involvement in church and other service, including for the Christian World Service (renamed Act for Peace), the Division of Social Justice (Victoria) in the Uniting Church of Australia, and other ecumenical organisations.

Ailsa Thomson Zainuddin is a writer and academic who taught at the Faculty of Education at Monash University, specialising in the history of education. Her undergraduate courses at Monash on the history of education in Southeast Asia and the history of education for girls and women, were among the first of their kind in Australia. Her published writing in these fields includes the text-book, A Short History of Indonesia. Ailsa has maintained a close and enduring association with Indonesia, the country where her husband Zainu’ddin was born and raised, and where she herself lived and worked during the 1950s. Ailsa was awarded a PhD for They Dreamt Of A School, the centenary history of Methodist Ladies’ College, Kew; the school she herself attended.

Jane Macartney was a well-respected and much-loved member of both Irish and Victorian society during the nineteenth century. She dedicated much of her time to working with the sick and poor and was involved in the establishment of an Orphan Asylum, the Carlton Refuge, the Melbourne Home and the Lying-In Hospital.

Jane was the wife of Hussey Burgh Macartney, the Dean of Melbourne from 1852 until his death in 1894.

Caroline Williams experienced a ‘pioneering rural life’ on the Mornington Peninsula around the turn of the nineteenth century.

Mary Ann Cannard was one of very few returned WW1 nurses granted a block of land to farm under the Soldier Settlement Scheme.

Ruth Fincher is a distinguished geographer who has worked in Canada, the United States of America and Australia. As a feminist, she was a member of the Committee for Gender Studies at the University of Melbourne from 1986. In 2002 she was elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and created Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 2014.

Jean Kerr was the first woman in Australia to graduate in accountancy and the first to hold a full-time lectureship in Accounting.

She was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 1957 and Reader in 1968. After retiring at age 60, Jean continued to publish material that achieved worldwide recognition.

The Gippsland Women’s Network (GWN) was incorporated in 2006. It had its beginnings in the 1970s-1980s during a time of rural recession, when farming women in the Gippsland area of Victoria began an active role in lobbying the Australian government for financial support, putting together proposals for ways to better market the products of their region. From those early days, the GWN has broadened its role to encompass a variety of activities aimed at raising the profile of women in the rural sector. This has included developing projects and running seminars and workshops aimed at fostering the establishment of community networks, and empowering rural women to take a more active role in creating a sustainable future for their communities.

Joan Forrest Gardner took up a position at the Department of Bacteriology (now known as the Department of Microbiology and Immunology) at the University of Melbourne in 1953. During her extensive career, she taught and researched in the areas of sterilisation, disinfection and infection control.

Joan established and lectured in advanced training courses for infection-control nurses and the staff of hospital sterilising departments. She also played an important role in the establishment of standards for sterilisers and other related hospital equipment.

She was an Honorary Life Member of what is now the Sterilising Research Advisory Council of Australia. In June 1992 Joan was declared an Officer of the Order of Australia.

Helen Ferber’s lifelong engagement with public affairs and social welfare, both in Australia and Europe, reflected her commitment to the common good. She began her working life in World War II, monitoring and translating enemy radio broadcasts for the Australian Short Wave Listening Post. After the war, her language skills, love of other cultures and strong sense of social justice led her to work with United Nations refugee agencies in Europe.

In 1948, Helen married David Ferber, US Vice Consul in Melbourne, and took up the work of a ‘diplomatic wife’. In the mid 1950s the family returned to Australia and Helen spent much of her time caring for their disabled son. During this period she undertook volunteer work with women’s organisations in Melbourne, and rose rapidly to positions of authority.

In 1965 she took a part-time position with the Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research at the University of Melbourne. Initially employed to interview non-English-speaking households, she soon progressed to writing and editing reports, becoming the editor of the institute’s publications and a respected writer on social policy. Throughout her life she developed and cherished many deep friendships and was both an inspiration and support to other women as they developed their skills and careers.

Mona McLeod was a professional photographer working in Bairnsdale, Victoria, where she ran her own studio. Many of her photographs of local events, including the Black Friday bushfire (1939) were published in local newspapers.

Olga Dougall is known for her portraiture, commercial and magazine work.

Helena Warren was known for her press photography and trompe l’oeil postcard images. She worked in the goldfields district, supplementing the family income with the income of her commercial work. Entirely self-taught, her first camera was an Austral Box quarter-plate camera.

Lilias Lenne specialised in darkroom work. She also photographed weddings, and is said to have been the first photographer to fully document weddings.

Lilian Louisa Pitts (L.L.P.) was a professional photographer working in northern Victoria. L.L.P was known for her thematic photographic albums, her postcards, and for capturing the life of the community in which she lived.

Mabel Arblaster was a professional portrait photographer who worked in Eaglehawk, where she opened a studio.

Madge Massingham was a professional photographer who operated her own studio. During WW2 Massingham became involved in the Women’s Air Training Corps’ photographic section.

Ada Armytage was the daughter of the wealthy pastoralist Charles Henry Armytage who owned Como House during the period 1865-1959. Her photographs document life within the stately house and amongst the social elite of the times.

Elsie Edna Tudor worked as a professional photographer at a variety of photography studios in Melbourne during the 1920s. Tudor used a Folding Pocket Kodak Camera.

Sarah Chinnery was an amateur photographer known for her unique ethnographic photography of the Indigenous peoples of New Guinea, where she lived between 1921-1937. Despite the challenges she faced developing film in the tropics, Chinnery had many of her photographs published in the press, including the New York Times. Later in Australia the focus of Chinnery’s photography shifted to portraits of artists and floral studies.

Dorothy St John was an amateur photographer who was trained by her father, a street photographer. Her photographs record the everyday life in rural Western Australia.