The Australian Women's Register

Jessie Webb became the first female teacher at the University of Melbourne when she joined the History Department. A prominent figure in women’s organisations she was a founding member of the Catalysts, the Lyceum Club, the Victorian Women Graduates Association, and the Women’s College. Webb, who completed two major overseas trips, is permanently commemorated in the name of the History Department Library at the University of Melbourne.

Captain Kay Parker was one of the six army nurses and eleven civilians who were taken to Japan as Prisoners of War from Rabaul on 23rd January 1942.

Cecilia Downing was a leading figure in the Victorian women’s movement in the early twentieth century, spreading her activities and influence over an enormous range of organisations. The daughter of Isaac and Mary (née Morgan) Hopkins, Downing was born in London and came to Australia in 1858. She obtained her Teaching Certificate from the Training Institution in Carlton and taught at Portarlington before marrying John Downing in 1885. The couple returned to Melbourne in 1901. Although she had seven children, Cecilia became heavily involved in women’s groups and welfare work. She was one of Victoria’s first child probation officers (1907) and was an officer bearer with both the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and the Australian Women’s National League. From the 1920s, she devoted her energies to the Housewives Association (having become one of its earliest members in 1917) and served as its federal president from 1940-45 and Victorian president from 1938 until her death in 1952. On 8 June 1950 Cecilia Downing was appointed a Member of the British Empire for social welfare services in Victoria.

Before joining the Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force (WAAAF) in 1942, Catherine Frost (née Sommers) was a full time ballet student. She worked part time in the family cycle business as well as competing in track cycle racing and being a member of the New South Wales Flying Club. With the WAAAF she was a fabric worker. Following World War II Frost became a member of a number of community services including the Prince Henry Little Bay Hospital, the Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital, Camperdown and the Asthma Children’s Foundation, Sutherland. On 26 January 1997 Catherine Frost was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia and she received the Australian Sports Medal on 30 August 2000.

A stenographer with the Department of Motor Transport, Eileen Price (née Lee) enjoyed dancing, surfing and roller skating before joining the Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force (WAAAF) on 6 June 1942. As a teleprinter operator, Aircraftwoman Lee was stationed at the Eastern Area Headquarters and the RAAF Station Canberra. After her discharge on 29 October 1945 she married Garnet George McLeod Price. The pair moved to Papua New Guinea when Garnet Price accepted a position as engineer with Guinea Air Traders.

Eileen Price returned to Sydney when she became pregnant, but her husband was killed in an aircraft accident and she raised their daughter, Catherine McLeod Price, with the help of her mother and by taking teaching positions with the Department of Technical Education.

After serving with the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAAF) during the Second World War, Elizabeth Backhouse worked as a scriptwriter with Korda Films in England. Backhouse returned to Australia in 1951. She was a writer of novels, children’s stories, plays, filmscripts, a ballet and a musical.

Frances Desailly was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire on 8 June 1939 for her services to charities. The daughter of an early pioneer of Victoria, Dr Daniel Curdie, she married Dr Julian Gilbert Desailly on 4 May 1904 and had one daughter. A member of a number of welfare societies, she was president of the Ladies’ Benevolent Society and vice-president of the Girls’ Employment Movement. Awarded life membership of the Camperdown Red Cross, Camperdown Mothers’ Club and the District Hospital Auxiliary, she was also a member of the Charles Dickens Society and the Alexandra Club.

Margaret Berry’s distinguished career in the Australian armed forces began in October 1941. She was one of the original officers of the Australian Women’s Army Service (AWAS) and was in charge of the first AWZS training school at Mt Lofty. Other posts included being Assistant Controller with the Tasmanian Line of Command Area, the Second Australian Army and the 4th Military District.

Upon leaving the AWAS in 1947 with the rank of major, Berry travelled to Britain and joined the Women’s Royal Army Corps (WRAC). Commissioned with the rank of captain, she is thought to be the only Australian woman to have achieved this. Her experiences in the WRAC included:

• company command in Northern Ireland,
• commanding officer in Kent,
• promotion to lieutenant-colonel with a posting to Egypt where she commanded a WRAC battalion of 400 women,
• service as adviser to the Commander-in-Chief on matters relating to women,
• a tour of duty to Cyprus, including the 1956 transfer of the WRAC to Cyprus.

Margaret Berry returned to Australia in 1958 and devoted much of her time to caring for her mother and then her brother. She died in the same North Adelaide street she was born in, in September 2000.

Her family remembers her as ‘an incredibly worldly woman, always up to date yet timeless.’

Following her education in Sydney, Berlin and Paris, Ruby Board devoted her time to social welfare issues. She became a Member of the Board of the Rachael Forster Hospital and for a period was President of the National Council of Women of New South Wales. During World War II, Board was president of the Women’s Voluntary National Register, a member of the executive of the Australian Comforts Fund and Defence Director of the Women’s Auxiliary National Service.

Official War Artist during World War II, Stella Bowen received early art training in Adelaide under Margaret Preston. In 1914 she sailed for Europe to study at the Slade School, London, where she was taught by Walter Sickert. Bowen travelled extensively on the Continent and her circle of artistic and literary figures include Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein and Ford Madox Ford. Bowen lived with the novelist Ford for nine years and they had a daughter, Julia. Her chief interests were portraits and she was a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy. Also Bowen exhibited in America. In 1943 Bowen was offered a commission as an official war artist. Working mainly in Britain she illustrated the actions of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) as well as the lives of the returned prisoners of war. Following the war she had hoped to return to Australia, for the first time since she left, but died in London of cancer on 30 October 1947.

The author of the Billabong series of books, Mary Grant Bruce began writing poetry and short stories at the age of seven. Later she became editor of her school magazine. After completing her matriculation Bruce moved to Melbourne where she worked as an editor and wrote weekly stories for the Leader children’s page. Her first book A Little Bush Maid, originally a serial, was published in 1910. Between 1910 and 1942 she published 37 children’s novels. During her career Bruce was a contributor to Blackwood’s Magazine, Morning Post, Daily Mail, Windsor Magazine, Cassell’s Magazine, Strand, Argus, Age, Herald (Melbourne), Australasian, Leader, Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney Mail, Lone Hand Auckland Weekly Press, Woman’s World, West Australian and the British Australasian. During World War II Bruce worked for the AIF Women’s Association, sold her autograph at charity auctions for the war effort and broadcast a series of talks for the Department of Information.

The daughter of South Australian landscape painter Sir Hans Heysen, Nora Heysen was the first woman to win the Archibald portrait prize (1938) and the first women to be appointed as an Australian war artist on 12 October 1943. During her service Heysen completed over 170 works of art. Following the war she travelled to England and in January 1953 married Dr Robert Black, who was to become the Head of Tropical Medicine at the University of Sydney. On 26 January 1998 Nora Heysen was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for her service to art as a painter of portraits and still life subjects.

During World War II Elsie Byth was an executive and/or committee member of a number of organisations. President of the National Council of Women of Australia in 1944 and the National Council of Women of Queensland (1940-1945). She was vice-president of the Australian Comforts Fund in 1940 and the Women’s Voluntary National Register; member of the management committee for the Queensland Patriotic Fund; member of the War Saving committee and the War Accommodation committee. Married to solicitor George Leonard Byth (Len) in 1917, they had four children. Her hobbies included music, flowers and fine needlework.

Muriel Heagney worked tirelessly for the labour movement in various capacities during her long life. Her major commitment, however, was to achieve equal pay for women workers. Born into a labour family, she joined the Richmond branch of the Political Labour Council (later the Australian Labor Party – ALP) in 1906, and was a delegate to the Women’s Central Organising Committee in 1909. Other positions she held included: membership of the Victorian central executive of the Australian Labor Party from 1926-1927; secretary of the Women’s Central Organising Committee; and ex officio member of the party’s central executive in 1955. She was a founding member of the Council of Action for Equal Pay which was established in Sydney in 1937 under the auspices of the New South Wales branch of the Federated Clerks’ Union and was secretary for most of its existence. It disbanded in 1948. She returned to Victoria in 1950 and continued to maintain her union and political interests into the 1960s. Her publications include Are women taking men’s jobs?, (1935), Equal pay for the sexes, (1948), Arbitration at the crossroads, (1954). She died in poverty in St Kilda in May 1974.

Glen Tomasetti was born in Melbourne, Australia. An academically and musically gifted woman, she was well-known throughout the Australian folk music circuit, working on commercial television and cutting eleven albums in the 1960s. A left-leaning environmentalist and feminist, Glen was vehemently opposed to the Vietnam War and was a member of the Save Our Sons Movement in Victoria. In 1967 she made headlines when she was subpoenaed to court for withholding one-sixth of her income tax on the grounds that this was the exact proportion used by the Holt government to finance the war in Vietnam.

She became a hero of the feminist movement in 1969 when she adapted the words to an old shearing gang ballad, ‘All among the wool boys’. Glen’s version ‘Don’t be too Polite, Girls’ was written to support the 1969 case for equal pay that was being heard by the high court.

Glen Tomasetti had three children and believed that motherhood was the emotional core of her life. She has been described as “a woman of singular passion that found focus in motherhood, friendship, art, the environment and justice for the oppressed. Her creativity was multifaceted. She was a historian, poet, novelist and actor. She was formidably intelligent and her god had bestowed on her extraordinary physical beauty.”

Gwyneth Dow was appointed as a Lecturer in the Education Faculty at the University of Melbourne in 1958, a Senior Lecturer in 1963 and Reader in 1970. She was an inaugural member of the Steering Committee of the Curriculum Advisory Board in Victoria, and fostered pilot schemes to introduce curriculum and organisational changes in secondary schools. She published several reports relating to these schemes. She introduced a Diploma of Education Course “Systems of Education” and was instrumental in introducing an alternative Diploma of Education Course, Course B, which concentrated on method and practical teaching in the first year. Gwyneth Dow, a descendant of the early colonial Terry family, began researching the family history in 1965 after writing an article on Samuel and Rosetta for the Australian Dictionary of Biography.

Irene Pye enlisted in the Australian Women’s Army Service (AWAS) on 8 September 1943. Following basic training she worked in a number of administrative positions and was posted with the 3rd Psychology unit at the time of her discharge on 11 February 1947. A member of the Australian Women’s Army Service Association ( Victoria.) Inc., since its inception, she attends functions and reunions.

Mary Goddé grew up on a farm in Western Victoria and put her experience driving tractors to good use when she joined he Australian Women’s Army Service on 8 September 1943. After her marriage in 1947, she moved to Myrtleford, in north-eastern Victoria, where she played a significant role in the Catholic Women’s League.

Prior to joining the Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force (WAAAF) in August 1941, Margery Campbell was secretary for the Overseas League in Brisbane and a Voluntary Aid Detachment member. A former Squadron Officer, during her World War II service she was posted as a staff officer with the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Maintenance Group Headquarters in Sydney. Later she was staff officer attached to the Forward Echelon of the RAAF and a personal representative of the Director of WAAAF, Group Officer Clare Stevenson. In March 1944 she married Patrick Campbell of the Australian Imperial Force and was posted with the 5th Maintenance Group Headquarters at her discharge on 8 November 1944.

Dorothy Munro (née Otter) worked as a secretary in the New South Wales Valuer Generals Department before enrolling in the Women’s Royal Australian Naval Service (WRANS) on 12 May 1943. During her service she was a secretary at the Fairmile Training School and had postings at both HMAS Penguin and HMAS Rushcutter. She achieved the rank of Petty Officer before being discharged on 31 January 1946.

During 1946 Dorothy married and did not return to the work force until all three of her children were at school. Before retiring in 1983, she held several secretarial positions including secretary to general managers and department head. Following her discharge from the WRANS, Munro joined the Naval Association of Australia and participated in social activities and memorial services. After her retirement she became a committee member of the WRANS. In 1990 Munro joined the office staff of the Naval Association first as an office assistant, then as assistant State secretary and finally State secretary before retiring in February 2002. In June of 2002 she became president of the Ex-Women’s Royal Naval Service (NSW)

Patricia Dow interrupted her teaching career when she enrolled in the Women’s Royal Australian Naval Service (WRANS) on 29 December 1942.

Rachel Robinson became the General Organising Secretary of the Housewives’ Association (Victorian Division) in 1924. Educated at the Presentation Convent, Launceston, from 1912 to 1915, Robinson was an organiser with the People’s Liberal Party. She held the position of Organiser with the Australian Industries League in 1919-1921. Robinson acted as secretary for a number of candidates at various state and federal elections.

Alice Speedie, the daughter of the Reverend John and Susan (née Long) Burns was treasurer of the Housewives’ Association of Victoria for 20 years. Educated at Clarendon College, Ballarat Victoria and Inglemere College, Adelaide, South Australia, she married Charles Speedie on 10 October 1905. They had three children. A member of the executive to the Children’s Cinema Council of Victoria, Speedie was President of the Australian Women’s National League, Elsternwick branch, between 1939-1943. She later became vice-president of the branch. A delegate to the National Council of Women of Victoria and the Youth Problem of Today committee, Speedie was the President of the Housewives’ Association of Victoria, Elsternwick branch. Aged 76, Alice Speedie died in 1955.

On 31 March 1965 Merle Thornton and Rosalie Bogner chained themselves to the Regatta Hotel bar rail to protest for women’s rights. They wanted to liberate public bars from being men-only. The two protestors were both mothers of two and married to university lecturers. They were refused service, the publican faced a fine of £10-£20 if he served them with liquor, but were bought a beer by sympathetic male patrons. Their action became the starting point for women’s liberation in Brisbane in the late twentieth century. It is now recognised as one of the defining moments of second wave feminism in Australia.

A post-graduate student in Philosophy at the University of Queensland, Thornton went on to establish the Equal Opportunities for Women Association in April 1965. She also introduced the teaching of Women’s Studies in Australia in 1973 and was the special guest of the Queensland Government and speaker at the 70th celebration of International Women’s Day in 1999. Besides her academic writing Thornton also wrote episodes for the television drama series Prisoner and wrote and produced documentaries. Her stage play Playing Mothers and Fathers had a successful season at the Carlton Courthouse Theatre (Victoria) in 1990. Merle Thornton, the mother of actor Sigrid, returned to the Regatta Hotel, that now has a room named after her, for the launch of her first novel After Moonlight in 2004.

Born in Bridgetown, Western Australia, Alice Wheatley was educated at Perth College. She undertook her nursing training at the Fremantle Hospital, Western Australia and the Queen Victoria Hospital, Victoria. In 1941 Wheatley enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force Nursing Service (RAAFNS). On 10 March 1944 she was awarded the Royal Red Cross Medal Second Class for her work in charge of the first nursing party of the RAAFNS in New Guinea. In 1946 Wheatley represented the RAAFNS in the Victory Contingent to England. From 1946 until 1951 she held the position of Matron-in-Chief. On 1 January 1951 Wheatley was appointed an Officer of the British Empire in recognition of her service with the RAAFNS.

For recognition of her nursing service with the Royal Australian Air Force Nursing Service (RAAFNS), Thelma Childs was awarded the Royal Red Cross medal on 14 June 1946. She undertook her nursing training at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney, and upon completion was appointed to the staff. In 1941 she enlisted in the RAAFNS for service not only in Australia but also the United States of America, England, Canada and New Guinea. At the time of her discharge, on 2 November 1945, she held the position of Matron. Four days after her discharge she married Captain F H Childs MC.