The Australian Women's Register

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.

Margaret Michaelis was a professional photographer who specialised in documentary photography, portraiture and dance photography. She trained in Vienna before living in Prague, Berlin and then Spain, associating with anarchic and other left-wing groups. Many of Michaelis’ European photographs documented everyday life in order to encourage progressive social critique. Michaelis fled Europe on the cusp of WW2 and eventually made her home in Sydney, Australia. Her photography in Australia was mainly studio portraiture, with a clientele of Jewish émigrés and members of the art community. Michaelis made use of natural light and natural poses in order to explore the psychological states of her subjects.

Emily O’Shannessy was a professional portrait photographer during the mid to late nineteenth century in Melbourne. In 1864 she went into partnership with Henry Johnstone, regarded as Melbourne’s best photographer of the time. The Johnstone and O’Shannessy Studio emphasised realism rather than artistic manipulation. Their commissions ranged from inexpensive ‘cartes-de-visite’ portraits to large-scale photographs, including one of Australia’s first Prime Minister, Edmund Barton. The studio specialised in coloured, plain, and mezzotint portraits. O’Shannessey’s ‘Cartes-de-visite’ photographs took the form of albumen prints mounted on cards.

Alice Mills was a top-ranking commercial photographer working in Melbourne at the turn of the twentieth century. Her studio was considered one of the best in Australia for portraiture, which took an unusual and painterly approach to tinting, capturing the sitter’s colour scheme in watercolour before applying it as a tint. Her photographs were mainly gelatin silver prints.

Doris McKellar was an amateur photographer based in Melbourne, whose photographs documented university life and the social activities of a wealthy professional family in Melbourne in the first half of the twentieth century. Using a Kodak No.3A Folding Pocket camera, she captured many aspects of life at the University of Melbourne. The University of Melbourne holds McKellar’s archive.

Ruth Hollick was a well-connected and award-winning society photographer based in Melbourne, whose work was exhibited throughout Australia and internationally. Hollick’s career spanned 70 years, and she is recognised as one of Australia’s most successful professional photographers. Hollick’s clientele included the Baillieus, the McCaugheys and the Hams. Hollick was also renowned for her portraits of children and fashion photography.

Mina Moore was a successful photographer who worked initially in New Zealand and then in Sydney and Melbourne. Together with her sister the she specialised in portraits of prominent people and artists, including society/celebrity portraits, with some wedding and children’s portraits. Mina Moore later set up her own studio in Melbourne and utilised unconventional backdrops, such as untreated hessian.

Ester Baylis was a prize-winning Pictorialist photographer and an active member of the Adelaide Camera Club. Baylis’ focus was primarily architectural photography, having previously trained in architecture. Baylis initially used a Box Brownie camera, and with prize money purchased a Thornton Pickard enlarger and an Adams Minex camera. Baylis was the first woman photographer to be included in an Australian public collection.

The Supreme Court of Victoria is the superior court in the State. As such, it hears among the most serious criminal, and complex civil, cases in the state, as well as some appeals from Victorian courts and tribunals. It comprises two divisions, namely the Trial Division and the Court of Appeal. The Supreme Court sat for the first time on 10 February 1852.

Established in 1994, the Court of Appeal – one of the two divisions of the Supreme Court of Victoria (the other being the Trial Division) – determines whether a trial was conducted fairly, and whether the law was correctly applied. A bench, usually comprising three judges, hears criminal or civil cases decided in the County Court or Supreme Court Trial Division, and some appeals from the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal. Currently 12 judges serve on the Court of Appeal.

The County Court of Victoria is the intermediate court in the Victorian court hierarchy and the principal trial court in the State. County Courts were established in 1852 by the County Courts Act, which was amended in 1957 to create one County Court in, and for, the State of Victoria.

Dominica Whelan was a Judge of the Federal Circuit Court, former Commissioner of Fair Work Australia, and former industrial officer, with lifelong commitments to feminism, labour law and equitable access to justice.

Formed in 1993, the Women Barristers’ Association (WBA) is open to all members of the Victorian Bar to join. The Hon. Marilyn Warren AC, Chief Justice of Victoria, is the current patron of the WBA. The WBA’s aims are to:

• Provide a professional and social network for women barristers;
• Promote awareness, discussion and resolution of issues which particularly affect women;
• Identify, highlight and eradicate discrimination against women in law and in the legal system;
• Advance equality for women across the legal profession generally.

Eileen Stuart was admitted to the Victorian Bar (Bar roll no. 1403) in 1977.

Lesbia Venner Harford (1891-1927), poet, was born on 9 April 1891 at Brighton, Melbourne, daughter of Edmund Joseph Keogh, a well-to-do financial agent, and his wife Helen Beatrice, née Moore, both born in Victoria. Her mother was related to the earl of Drogheda. About 1900 the Keoghs fell on hard times and in an effort to retrieve the family fortunes Edmund went to Western Australia, where he eventually took up farming.

Lesbia was born with a congenital heart defect which restricted her activity throughout her life. Nettie Palmer remembered her at a children’s party as ‘a dark-eyed little girl who sat quite still, looking on’. She was educated at Clifton, the Brigidine convent at Glen Iris, and Mary’s Mount, the Loreto convent at Ballarat, but she rebelled against the family’s staunch Catholicism: in 1915 she conducted services for Frederick Sinclaire’s Fellowship group.

In 1912 she enrolled in law at the University of Melbourne, paying her way by coaching or taking art classes in schools. She graduated LL.B. In December 1916 in the same class as (Sir) Robert Menzies. During her undergraduate years she had become embroiled in the anti-war and anti-conscription agitation, forming a close friendship with Guido Baracchi (son of Pietro Baracchi) who claimed later that ‘she above all’ helped him to find his way ‘right into the revolutionary working class movement’.

On graduation she chose what she considered to be a life of greater social purpose and went to work in a clothing factory. Much of her poetry belongs to this phase of her life and she shows a growing solidarity with her fellow workers and an antagonism towards those whom she saw as exploiters. She became involved in union politics and like her brother Esmond (later a Melbourne medical scientist) joined the Industrial Workers of the World. She went to Sydney where she lived with I.W.W. Friends and worked, when strong enough, in a clothing factory or as a university coach. On 23 November 1920 in Sydney she married the artist Patrick John O’Flaghartie Fingal Harford, a fellow I.W.W. Member and clicker in his father’s boot factory: they moved to Melbourne where he worked with William Frater in Brooks Robinson & Co. Ltd and was a founder of the Post-Impressionist movement in Melbourne.

For many years Lesbia had suffered from tuberculosis. She tried to complete her legal qualifications but died in hospital on 5 July 1927. She was buried in Boroondara cemetery.

Lesbia transcribed her poems into notebooks in beautiful script; she sang many of her lyrics to tunes of her own composing. Some she showed to friends or enclosed in letters. She was first published in the May 1921 issue of Birth, the journal of the Melbourne Literary Club, and then in its 1921 annual. She provoked much interest at the time and Percival Serle included some of her poems in An Australasian Anthology (Sydney, 1927). In her review of the anthology, Nettie Palmer singled out Lesbia’s poetry for special praise, and in September and October 1927 published four of her poems in tribute to her. Lesbia mistrusted publishers, explaining that she was ‘in no hurry to be read’. In 1941 a collection edited by Nettie Palmer was published with Commonwealth Literary Fund assistance. No complete collection exists. On her death her father took custody of her notebooks and they were lost when his shack was destroyed by fire.

Rosemary Balmford was the first woman judge appointed to the Supreme Court of Victoria.

A leading family lawyer in Melbourne, Mary Cameron was the principal in the firm Stedman Cameron. Mary Cameron’s father was strongly against higher education. He considered universities a “hotbed of communism”, and she had to argue long and hard before he made the grudging concession that if she were to go to university it must be to study “something useful”.

When she entered law school at the University of Melbourne in 1935, she was one of only five females studying with 95 males. On graduation in 1938 she was incensed to learn that the academic responsible for finding employment opportunities was asking the females if they also typed. She organised a protest and the academic backed down.

Mary Cameron, who was born in Ballarat on September 27, 1917, began her career with Rylah and Anderson, one of the most highly regarded law firms in Melbourne.

She quickly learnt that the law was pretty much a boys’ club and when many male lawyers were called up for World War II she seized the opportunity for advancement.

She never described herself as a feminist or any sort of equal-opportunity activist, although she lived and worked through times of significant upheaval and advances in the workplace. She never spoke publicly about the prejudice she encountered as a young female lawyer but proved her mettle in the courtroom.

In 1955, she was elected president of the Women Lawyers’ Association.

A formidable counsel who could have progressed to the bar, Cameron chose to remain a solicitor because it enabled her to have a longer and more intimate association with her clients.

After eight years at Rylah Anderson and a short stint at another firm, she struck out on her own. In her first year she grossed £25 which – minus work expenses – was just enough to get by.

In 1952 she advertised for the creation of a partnership, signing the advertisement simply ”Lochiel”. It was answered by Colin Steadman, who was taken aback to discover that Lochiel was a woman. But their partnership prospered and Steadman Cameron became a well-regarded family law firm.

From the start Cameron took on gritty common law cases and her first courtroom victory was for her uncle, who had allegedly walked against a red light. Other relatives came out of the woodwork, all wanting her to fix their grievances – even her father. But when she sent him her advice, her mother, Clara, told her: “He does not agree with your interpretation of the law.”

Her father, John Cameron, had taken the family to Kenya when Mary was seven. Nuns at the Loreto Convent in Nairobi taught her to confront life. Many years later that quality enabled her to cope, with no great alarm, with the fire-bombing of her car and house by the enraged former husband of one of her clients.

In Kenya she also learnt Swahili.

In her latter years she could no longer drive and had to rely on taxis. But instead of resenting this, she used it as an opportunity for chats in fractured Swahili with African cab drivers.

Her father’s adventures probably inspired her own and, with her sister Clare, she travelled to China, Soviet Russia and elsewhere.

Cameron retired as a partner in Steadman Cameron in 1982 but remained a consultant for nearly two decades.

In 2007 she was made a Member of the Order of Australia.

Mary Cameron did not marry. Her sister Clare predeceased her.

Judith Cohen was the first female commissioner of the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission, appointed in 1975.

A graduate of the University of Adelaide, Her Honour Judge Sue Oliver was admitted as a solicitor and barrister of the Supreme Court of South Australia in 1978 and then promptly moved with her (then) husband to Darwin, where she has lived ever since. She was appointed to the Northern Territory Magistrates Court (now called the Northern Territory Local Court) in 2006, after having practised law in a variety of public and private sectors contexts. As managing magistrate of the Northern Territory Youth Justice Court in the Northern Territory, she has a particular interest in and has published widely on matters relating to the complex issues surrounding the management of young offenders.

Since arriving in the N.T., Oliver has also contributed her time and energy to a variety of community and national organisations. These include the Family Planning Association, the YWCA, the International Legal Services Advisory Council, Commissioner for the NT Legal Aid Commission, committee member NT Law Society and Board Member of the Australian Women Lawyers. She is presently a member of the Country Women’s Association in Katherine.

Sue Oliver 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 Sally Walker AM was the first female vice-chancellor and president of Australia’s Deakin University. Prior to holding these appointments, she was senior deputy vice-chancellor at the University of Melbourne, where she was also president of the University’s Academic Board, member of the senior executive, and pro vice-chancellor. Walker established the pioneering Centre for Media, Communications and Information Technology Law (now Centre for Media & Communications Law) at the Melbourne Law School and was its inaugural director. While at the Law School, she was Hearn Professor of Law. Walker was also secretary-general of the Law Council of Australia for a time.

Appointed as a Member of the Order of Australia in 2011, in recognition of her contribution to education, to the law as an academic and to the advancement of women. In 2014 she was inducted onto the Victorian Honour Roll of Women. As a Principal at Deloitte, Walker continues to consult widely on strategic and leadership matters in the higher education sector.

Sally Walker 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.

The Honourable Margaret J. White was, in 1992, the first woman to be appointed to the Supreme Court of Queensland. Prior to coming to the Queensland bench, she enjoyed a distinguished academic career, first in South Australia and then in Queensland after she moved there in 1970. She retired from the bench in 2013.

In between her South Australian and Queensland ‘phases’, White instructed senior naval officers of the Royal Australian Navy in international law and the law of the sea. She was commissioned as Second Officer, thus becoming the first Women’s Royal Australian Navy Reserve officer to be commissioned since the end of World War Two.

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.

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.

Nora Winifred Bonney, daughter of Mr Justice Reginald Schofield Bonney of the New South Wales Supreme Court and Lillian Bonney (nee Butler), attended Abbotsleigh Church of England School for Girls and then studied as an evening student at the University of Sydney where she excelled in History and French. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1945. In 1946, she was secretary of the Kuring-gai branch of the Australian Communist Party. She was admitted to the New South Wales Bar on Friday 8 February 1957 but did not practise as a barrister.

Mary Cass, who has been described as “a brilliant lawyer” who was “fit for high judicial office” , was admitted to the New South Wales Bar on 18 October 1963. Earlier resident at Sancta Sofia College while studying full-time at the University of Sydney, she had graduated with a Bachelor of Laws in 1954. After serving articles with Beswick Heydon & Lochrin, she was admitted as a solicitor on 29 July 1955. She was in practice until being called to the Bar, where she demonstrated skill in all jurisdictions but came to specialise mainly in equity, as well as landlord and tenant. It has been said that she was nicknamed ‘The Winner’ because of the regular victories she achieved for her clients. Right up until her death in 1992, she had chambers at Wardell.

In 1968, Paulette Bisley (nee Parkinson) became the tenth woman to sign the Victorian Bar Roll. Although she spent most of her career pursuing activities outside the legal profession, she credits the legal training and experience she received for helping to ‘shape and define different parts of my life. It made me stronger and helped find my voice that I could use to help others.’

Go to ‘Details’ below to read a reflective essay written by Paulette Bisley for the Trailblazing Women and the Law Project.

Joan Dwyer OAM graduated from the University of Melbourne in 1961, signed the solicitor’s roll in 1963 and came to the bar in 1978. She had a diverse and successful career that included working as a research assistant for Sir Zelman Cowen and, when in London, for solicitors to Queen Elizabeth II.

She was a Senior Member of the AAT (Clth) for 21 years and Chair of the Equal Opportunity Board (Vic).

Joan Dwyer passed away peacefully in September 2019 at the age of 79, after a five-year battle with cancer.

Go to ‘Details’ below to read a reflective essay written by Joan Dwyer for the Trailblazing Women and the Law Project.