The Australian Women's Register

Dilys Budd, the daughter of Mary Winter and an unnamed father, was placed in foster care in infancy and at the age of five was sent to the Catholic orphanage, Nazareth House, Cardiff. In 1947 she volunteered to migrate to Australia, arriving  in Fremantle with a group of other child migrants on the ship Asturias in September 1947. She was placed in St Joseph’s Girls Orphanage, Subiaco, run by the Sisters of Mercy, where she remained until she was 16 and sent out to work. She remained under the supervision of the Catholic Welfare authorities in Perth until she was 21.

Elsa was a famous soprano and was well-known in Australia, Europe and America. She gave herself the professional name Elsa Stralia in honour of her country of birth, Australia.

Hilda Dow (nee Grey) was the daughter of police magistrate Charles Grey, and sister of Royal Melbourne Hospital Lady Superintendent Helene Grey, OBE. Hilda Grey became a student of the Victorian College of Pharmacy in 1919. In 1929, she was working at Poynton’s pharmacy in Morwell, when she purchased the pharmacy at Chiltern in Victoria. She was elected to the Pharmaceutical Society of Victoria as a member in 1930 Hilda apprenticed her husband, Roy Dow, and the two ran the pharmacy in Chiltern until 1968, when they closed the doors. In 1988 Mrs Dow donated the pharmacy, which had been operating on the site since 1859, intact to the National Trust, and it is now a museum. Hilda Dow was a foundation member of the North East branch of the National Trust, a member of the hospital committee and board, of the Infant Welfare Centre and the Red Cross, and a member and office bearer of the Chiltern Branch of the County Women’s Association.

Margaret Annie Bignell was the seventh daughter of William and Elizabeth Blyth, of Hobart. She became Victoria’s first registered female pharmacist, and one of the first women pharmacists to conduct her own business in the state, carrying on her husband’s pharmacy in Lygon Street, Carlton, after his death in 1897. She was known for apprenticing women, and was an activist for the recognition of women pharmacists. Two of her daughters entered the profession. She was a subscribing member of the Pharmaceutical Society of Victoria, and a founding member of the Women Pharmacists’ Association, formed in 1905 to promote the interests of women pharmacists.

Kathleen O’Connor was born in New Zealand in 1876 to Charles Yelverton O’Connor and his wife Susan Laetitia. She was educated at Marsden School, Wellington, then taught privately after 1891, when the family moved to Perth, Western Australia, in order for her father to take up a post as a government civil engineer. Kathleen O’Connor then studied art at Perth Technical College, and later in London and Paris, where she relocated in 1910. There she attended night classes and immersed herself fully in the artistic and cultural milieu that Paris offered, attending galleries and lectures, and writing about her experiences for Perth newspapers.

O’Connor began exhibiting extensively – in the Salons d’ Automne (1911-32), des Independants, and de la Société des Artistes Français. She moved to London in 1914 and exhibited with the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers in 1915 and the National Portrait Society in 1916, before returning to Paris. In the early 1920s she began working in the decorative arts and fashion, as well as interior design and fabric painting. In 1926 she returned to Australia, working briefly for David Jones and Grace Brothers department stores, producing hand-painted plates and fabrics. After a solo exhibition in Perth, O’Connor returned to France in 1927. She kept working, and exhibiting regularly – in 1934 at la Société Internationale des Femmes Peintres et Sculpteurs, and Exposition des Femmes Artistes d’Europe, Musée du Jeu de Paume and Galéries J. Allard in 1937. She left Paris in 1940 just as the Germans were arriving, and spent the remainder of World War II in Britain.

Returning to Paris after the War, she found her Paris studio expropriated. After exhibiting in Nice in 1948, she returned to Fremantle with 200 pictures, which were impounded, subject to 20% import tax. She was forced to destroy 150 pictures and pay the tax on the rest, despite being an Australian citizen and not liable. She exhibited in 1948 at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, and at Perth’s Claude Hotchin Gallery in 1949 and 1950. After another trip to Paris, she settled reluctantly in Western Australia in 1955. O’Connor won the Western Australian section of the Perth Prize Competition in 1958 and the B.P. prize, Commonwealth Games art competition in 1962, and the Art Gallery of Western Australia held a retrospective in 1967. O’Connor died in Perth in 1968. Since she had refused to be buried there, her ashes were scattered in the sea.

Lyn Johnson, in partnership with her husband Rob, was a dairy farmer in Gippsland in Victoria. Together they planned and led study tours for dairy farmers to the USA, Canada, the UK and Europe, starting the Tarago River Cheese Company on their return. The successful organisation and activism of American rural women inspired. Lyn’s own active commitment to the movement, and to women at the grass roots level in particular. Her work to have women’s role in agriculture acknowledged, and their voice heard, has included involvement in the organisation of the First International Women in Agriculture Conference, and the Women on Farms Gatherings.

The Knickers Fund was  a philanthropic fund initiated and ultimately administered by the Central Victorian Women in Agriculture Inc. from 1998 to 2006. The fund aimed to give ‘women in tragedy a glimpse of humour and of caring’, from farm women to farm women, to enable them to buy the small, and otherwise impossible, comforts which helped them face the demands of a particularly challenging time, such as economic crisis, or the aftermath of floods after drought.  

The Central Victorian Women in Agriculture group was formed in the aftermath of the First International Women in Agriculture Conference.  Many of its original members had helped to organise the conference, and the organisation aimed to support women of Central Victoria to achieve the goals highlighted by the conference:   to establish a supportive network, stimulate women to recognise and value their skills and abilities, to give women the chance to gain confidence and make a difference in their industry and community, to encourage and provide knowledge and practical skills, and to strengthen Australian agriculture through strong partnerships. The organisation was successful in its aims, its members going on to positions on industry boards, as representatives of state and national organisations, and in local government , and it was wound up in 2006. 

Joy Chambers was born in the Strathbogie ranges, into a faming family, and married a central Victorian farmer. After her retirement from teaching, and acting on her belief that the important role women played in agriculture should be recognised and encouraged, she took an active role in what became known collectively as the Women in Agriculture movement. She became a member of FarmAdvance, and was on the steering committee of the 1994 First International Women in Agriculture conference, working on publicity. After the conference, Joy was a founding member of the Central Victorian Women in Agriculture Group (CVWiA). She organised the workshops for the 1997 Bendigo Women on Farms Gathering, which the CVWiA organised, and instigated the Knickers Fund, which the group administered. Joy was active in the anti-GM (genetically modified foods) lobby, and the broadacre family farm has been granted organic accreditation.. 

After an early career in teaching, Laurene Dietrich moved into the area of community development, working on a number of projects which reflected her commitment to social justice and equity, particularly in regard to rural women. She was the first equal opportunity officer at the Bendigo campus of La Trobe University, and was employed to work on the organisation of the First International Women in Agriculture Conference