The Australian Women's Register

Ruth Don was the first Senior Mistress of a Queensland high school, as well as the first female Principal of the Domestic Science High School and of Brisbane’s Office Training College. She also became the Queensland Teachers Union’s first female president. Ruth was founding president of the Forum Club in Brisbane.

Lyla Daphne Elliott joined the Australian Labor Party in 1955, and was a member of the Legislative Council in Western Australia from 1971 until 1986.

Margaret Ogg is best known for her extensive political, social and feminist activities. Additionally she was a poet, writer and an accomplished musician, playing viola in the family quartet, as well as holding membership with the Musical Association. A staunch monarchist and anti-socialist, Ogg actively toured outback townships in Queensland promoting women’s suffrage, and encouraging pioneer women to become involved in state and national affairs. As founder, co-founder and member of many Queensland women’s organisations, she was consistently at the forefront of political and social campaigns to secure reforms for the Queensland’s women and children. Ogg remained an active member of the Brisbane political and cultural scene up until her death.

Mary was known for her selfless work in the Brisbane community. She was a member of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and became founding secretary of the Brisbane Benevolent Society, which helped people in distress following the disastrous floods in south-east Queensland in 1893. She was honorary secretary (vice-president 1912-28) of the committee of Lady Musgrave Lodge, a home for nurses and single female immigrants. As Queensland representative for the Travellers’ Aid Society, she maintained contact with the British Women’s Emigration League. She served on the ladies’ management committee of the Hospital for Sick Children in 1894 – 1924.

Mary was president of the Young Women’s Christian Association of Brisbane (1902-12), honorary president to 1921, then honorary life president. She was vice-president of the Queensland division of the British (Australian) Red Cross Society during World War I and in 1921 patroness of St David’s Welsh Society of Queensland—Sir Samuel had been founding patron in 1918. Other organizations to which she contributed her intelligence and energy were the National Council of Women, the Brisbane City Mission, the Queensland auxiliary of the London Missionary Society, the British and Foreign Bible Society, the Queensland Women’s Electoral League, the Protestant Federation, the United Sudan Mission and the Charity Organisation Society. In 1911 she was appointed a lady of grace of the Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem and was invested at Government House, Brisbane.

Kate Cable was the longest serving postmistress in Australia. On 1 July 1927 she was appointed postmistress at Macrossan, on the Flinders Highway, west of Townsville, earning 15/- per week.

Kate outlived the official history records of the postal service of Queensland. Her 59 years service at the Macrossan post office officially ended when the exchange went automatic on 31 March 1986; however Kate continued to maintain her links with Australia Post and the district, acting as Community Mail Agent for the collection and distribution of mail. Her duties as a postmistress involved sorting incoming and outgoing mail, banking, money orders and operating the old cordless pyramid switchboard.

Estelle Thomson was a member of the Queensland Naturalists’ Club, contributing flowers, paintings and drawings to the club’s annual wildflower show. She published Flowers of Our Bush (1929), a guide to Queensland wildflowers, which described and illustrated coastal species. From 1929 to the 1930s Estelle ran a weekly ‘Wildflowers’ column in the Brisbane Courier, illustrated by her own line drawings. This was followed by her column ‘Nature’s Ways’ in the Telegraph which she maintained until 1950.

Additionally, Thomson lectured at women’s clubs and schools, illustrating her lectures with delicately hand-coloured lantern slides. During the 1940s Estelle gave a series of children’s talks on wildflowers on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and produced a series of paintings of poisonous plants for the University of Queensland’s Medical School. She deposited specimens in the Queensland Herbarium, including some collected on the Granite Belt and at Caloundra. Estelle was also an expert on Queensland birds.

The Lyceum Club Brisbane, founded in 1919, was directly modelled on the London Lyceum Club. It is a club for women interested in the arts, science, contemporary issues and the pursuit of lifelong learning. The club is apolitical and non-sectarian. Membership of the club is open to women who have university, conservatorium or other tertiary qualifications of a standard approved by the Management Committee; have published original work in literature, science, art or music; or have given important public service

Writing in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Rosa Praed covered many genres in her extensive bibliography, including books for children as well as adults. Rosa Murray-Prior began writing in her teens, contributing résumés and stories to the family’s handwritten Marroon Magazine. She married Englishman Arthur Campbell Bulkley Praed, and four years later Rosa and her husband returned to England, where she continued to write. Praed revisited Australia only once, however she continued to rework her memories, and published her autobiography My Australian Girlhood in 1902. Other biographical work included Australian Life; Black and White (1885). She maintained contacts with relations and friends in Australia until her death. Writing as Mrs Campbell Praed, she produced more than forty-five books over the next four decades, approximately half of which deal with Australian material.

Educated in Liverpool, England, Mary Agnew moved to Queensland in late 1890 to join the Queensland Department of Public Instruction, taking the position of Kindergarten Instructor. Agnew was given the task of raising the standard of education for young children. Applying the methods of Friedrich Frobel, Agnew introduced a syllabus based on the importance of education through activity and play, stressing that young children could not spend long periods of time each day engaged in intellectual learning. Influencing departmental policy on infant and kindergarten work, it was only in the last years of her career that her revolutionary work in pre-school education began to be implemented.

Immigrating to Australia in 1856 to begin her career as a teacher, Margaret Berry was soon appointed to the position of headmistress and teacher trainer at Brisbane National School in 1860. She later moved to the Brisbane Girls’ Normal School, where she became the first headmistress, serving there for forty-three years. Taking a stand for female teachers and students in Queensland, Berry was the only female teacher to give evidence to the Royal Commission into Education in 1874. She also campaigned for the equal pay of female teachers, as well as stressing her faith in the ability of senior girls to undertake advanced scientific subjects.  Late in her career, she became an official examiner of female teachers.

Berry always expected the highest standards from her pupils and above all, she wanted her them to maintain a cultured mind and charming personality.

One of the oldest women’s clubs in Queensland, the Brisbane Women’s Club was formed in 1908 under the sponsorship of the Queensland Women’s Electoral League. Originally called the Women’s Progressive Club, the name was changed to the Brisbane Women’s Club in May 1912. Ardent feminist and women’s rights campaigner Margaret Ogg was one of the 59 founding members.

The objectives of the club were to provide a social centre for women workers in the cause of reform and to encourage free discussion on subjects of public importance, including social, political and municipal matters. The club lobbied the Brisbane City Council and the State Government for the betterment of the community. In an effort to improve the life of rural women, the club was instrumental in the establishment of the Queensland Country Women’s Association in 1922 and the Bush Book Club in 1921. The Brisbane Women’s Club celebrated its centenary in 2008 and continues to provide a social and cultural centre with a philanthropic charter.

Eleanor Constance Greenham was the first native-born Queensland woman to graduate in medicine. The first student to be enrolled at Ipswich Girls Grammar School in 1892, she excelled academically, graduating from the University of Sydney in 1901. Later that year she began work as a resident medical officer at Lady Bowen Hospital in Brisbane, before leaving to work in a private practice in 1903. Paving the way for other Queensland women in the field of medicine, the Queensland Medical Women’s Society elected Greenham to honorary membership in 1945, as well as being made an honorary member of the British Medical Association (Queensland Branch) in 1953 for fifty years of uninterrupted membership.

Henrietta Willmore received no formal musical training, but overcame this to emerge as a proficient pianist, much in demand in musical circles. As an accompanist or soloist in numerous concerts, she introduced a widening repertoire of classical music, frequently in collaboration with her friend Richard Thomas Jefferies. Her long teaching career began in 1867 through economic necessity when her husband’s attempt to establish a printery ended in insolvency. Henrietta became music mistress at Mrs Thomas’s Academy for Young Ladies. She pioneered organ recitals and organ-based concerts in Brisbane. She toured South Africa in 1896. Her final appearances were chamber music recitals in Brisbane in 1911 with members of the Jefferies family and her protégé Percy Brier.

Willmore believed in women’s political rights and responsibilities; serving on the executive of several women’s organizations. The Willmore Discussion Club was formed in 1931 in her honour. She was awarded the Medal de la Reine Elisabeth, a medal instituted on 15 September 1915 and awarded to both Belgians and non-Belgians for services to Belgium and its citizens as a consequence of the 1914-1918 war. It was awarded particularly for relief of the suffering of the civilian population and the sick and wounded.

Mary Marguerite Leneen Forde was admitted as a solicitor in Queensland in 1970, one of only six women in her graduating class. After a distinguished legal career, she was appointed Governor of Queensland a position she held from 1992 until 1997. When she was appointed, she was only the second woman to hold the position of governor of an Australian state and the first to take on the role in Queensland. In 1998 Forde was appointed to Chair the Commission of Inquiry into Abuse of Children in Queensland Institutions. Her report was handed down in May 1999.

Go to ‘Details’ below to read an essay written by Leneen Forde for the Trailblazing Women and the Law Project.

The Women’s Theatre Group was active in Adelaide from 1975 to 1989. The group wrote, produced, directed, scored, performed and built the stage for their productions. They performed cabaret and theatrical works. All-women productions were a first in Adelaide. The women worked through a collective. They won the Adelaide Festival Centre best production award for ‘Redheads Revenge’ in 1978.

Other productions included ‘Christobel in Paris’ 1975, ‘Caroline Chisel Show’ 1976, International Women’s Day Concert and ‘Chores 1’ in 1977, ‘Chores 2’ and ‘I want I want’ 1979, ‘Out of the Frying Pan’ 1980,’ Onward to Glory’ 1982, ‘Margin to Mainstream’ and ‘Women and Work Women and Paid Work’ 1984, ‘Sybils Xmas Concert ‘1985, and 1989 ‘Is this Seat Taken?’, this last show explored relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous women. The group included the Women in Education Theatre Group and the Feminist Theatre Group.

The Adelaide Women’s Liberation Movement Archive was established in 1984 by a concerned group of women who wanted to preserve the history of what was called the second wave of feminism. With the aid of the Community Employment Program and the feminist community, memorabilia was collected along with the papers of a variety of groups and individuals. The material was collected from late 1969 through to 2008.

Women For Survival was a national feminist peace coalition. It was formed in 1983, as an umbrella organisation to bring together the various feminist peace groups around Australia in order to coordinate the Pine Gap Women’s Peace Camp planned for November that year. The two week vigil in November 1983 at Pine Gap, just outside of Alice Springs, sought to demonstrate support for the women of the peace camps at Greenham Common (United Kingdom) and Comiso (Italy), and to bring to public attention the secrecy of the US Base and Australia’s vulnerability as a nuclear target. It maintained a philosophy of collectivity, consensus and collaboration, using non-violent direct action and creativity in its approach to protest.

WFS published a newsletter – Survival News – and held national conferences. Another national protest was organized the following year at Cockburn Sound in Western Australia – the Sound Women’s Peace Camp in December 1984. Local actions by branches coincided with the peace camps, and continued in their involvement in protests against Salisbury Defence Centre (South Australia), Roxy Downs (South Australia), Lucas Heights (New South Wales), and the hosting of United States nuclear-capable warships. Women For Survival was part of an international women’s peace movement at the end of the Cold War with the formidable threat of nuclear war.

Born in New South Wales in 1942, Elizabeth (Biff Ward) was an active protester and a key member of the Women for Survival anti-nuclear group. She was instrumental in the organisation and running of the Pine Gap Peace Camp in 1983. Biff lived in Adelaide from 1984 to 1996, and in that time was the first Equal Opportunity Officer at the South Australian Institute of Technology and also worked as a workplace trainer with Trish Fairley and Peter Lee. She published the book Father-Daughter Rape in 1984 and Three’s Company in 1992.

In Adelaide she was associated with Friendly Street Poets, publishing Three’s Company. Currently she is organising tours in Vietnam. Biff is a proud member of the Vietnam Veteran’s Federation.

The Adelaide Women’s Liberation Movement began at the University of Adelaide in 1968, inspired by the women who were active in Young Labor, and the anti-Vietnam war campaign. These women questioned their role in these organisations and vented their frustration about these male dominated groups.

Anna Yeatman, Anne Summers and Julie Ellis are credited with starting the feminist newsletters Sisterhood and Body Political. By late 1969 they produced Liberation, the Adelaide Women’s Liberation Newsletter which replaced Sisterhood.

Their first protest was against the Miss Fresher competition, which brought media focus to the expression of their feminist ideals for women’s liberation. Public meetings where called and the broader community involvement brought about the establishment of the Women’s Liberation Movement housed at Bloor House situated in Bloor Court off Currie Street, in Adelaide. They provided an environment where ideas for supporting women’s rights were fostered.

The Group wrote a Women’s manifesto which was published in Liberation newsletter in June 1971. The Adelaide Women’s Liberation Group took part in the first Women’s Liberation Conference in Melbourne in 1970.

The Women’s Liberation Movement in Adelaide was the catalyst for the establishment of the Women’s Health Centre at Hindmarsh, The Rape Crisis Centre, Women’s Studies Resource Centre, Abortion Action Campaign, St Peters Women’s Community Centre, Women’s Health Centres at Christies Beach and Elizabeth. They lobbied for Women’s Studies to be part of tertiary education, women’s representation in parliament, a Working Women’s Centre to protect women’s working rights, the Women’s Peace Movement. Bloor House provided a space for women to express their personal political ideas and to get feedback and support. The Women’s Liberation Movement moved from Bloor House to Eden St in Adelaide and then to Mary St, Hindmarsh were it was closed in 1989.

Marg Hypatia was a key member of the women’s only anti-nuclear group, Feminists Against Nuclear Energy (FANG), and was a media contact for the group.

Robin Eagle has been active in the South Australian Women’s Movement since 1976 and a lesbian feminist activist in Victoria before then. Born in Hopetoun, Victoria, she joined the Women’s Liberation Movement in Victoria in 1975. A dedicated community worker, she helped establish and run many community groups. She is on the Board of Management for the Women’s Studies Resource Centre in Adelaide, South Australia 1999-2013. Robin has published a book of poetry.

Upon the outbreak of World War 1 in 1914, Annie Wheeler, a widow from central Queensland living in London, took it upon herself to improve the lines of communication between Queensland soldiers abroad and their loved ones Back home. Taking up residence near the Australian Army Headquarters and the Anzac Buffet in London, she endeavoured to contact all soldiers from central Queensland, be they injured, on leave or at the trenches. By keeping a detailed index card on each soldier, she corresponded with servicemen on the battlefield, forwarded packages and mail, whilst also providing comfort to those in hospital. Becoming known as the ‘Mother of Queensland’, by 1918 she provided reliable correspondence for over 2300 soldiers. Each fortnight Mrs Wheeler sent home detailed letters which were published in the Capricornian and the Morning Bulletin.

The Returned Sailors and Soldiers Imperial League of Australia made her an associate member in 1920. In the same year, she was presented with an O.B.E.

After her death, a memorial plaque was erected at Mt Thompson Memorial Gardens in Brisbane, Queensland.

Esma Banner worked in Europe for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) as an employment officer (c. 1945-50) and a welfare officer in a displaced persons camp (c. 1950-51).

Women Against Nuclear Energy (WANE) was formed as a result of a growing feminist concern about, and a desire for action on, uranium and nuclear power issues. WANE’s objectives included educating and activating women as citizens rather than as mothers and carers. The exclusion of males was felt to better enable this, providing women with an environment free from the constraints of sexism that were felt to be inherent in the hierarchical structure of other anti-nuclear groups.

WANE aimed to work with women’s groups in unions against uranium. The group also supported investigation into finding alternative energy sources. WANE believed the implications of a solar future were inherent in feminist theory (for example, people before profits). WANE maintained strong links to Campaign Against Nuclear Energy (CANE) and helped organise Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament (WAND).

Women’s Action Against Global Violence (WAAGV) was formed in Sydney in the early 1980s, as an organisation that aimed to support “women and children of all races and cultures in their struggle against violence and oppression”. WAAGV was distinctly anti-nuclear, citing the nuclear arms race and its direct link to uranium mining, as well as the desecration of Australian Aboriginal land, the endangerment of workers’ health and environmental instability as the basis for the group’s opposition to uranium mining.

WAAGV organised and supported numerous protests and events, including the Pine Gap Peace Camp, 1983, an all women’s peace camp at Lucas Heights, women’s only dances and a ‘Die-In’, a peaceful action that was intended as a symbolic representation of nuclear attack. The group felt that it was necessary to retain a women only composition as it provided an environment where women could speak out, enabling a correction of a gender imbalance that was identified within the decision making process in other groups.

They had strong links to other women’s peace groups including Feminist Anti-Nuclear Group (FANG) and Women Against Nuclear Energy (WANE) in Adelaide.

Connie was born in Coventry, England in 1925 to a working class family. She migrated to Whyalla, South Australia with her husband, Bill and their son.

Connie became active in the Anti-War Movement during the Vietnam War, when her son was a teenager, a newspaper announcement regarding conscription being the trigger.

This involvement lead to her joining the Women’s Liberation Movement, where she was part of the core group that established the Women’s Liberation Centre at Bloor Court, Adelaide and a counselling service as part of the centre. She also helped set up the first Women’s Shelter in Adelaide and the Christies Beach Shelter, in suburban Adelaide.

Connie was a member of the Tuesday Afternoon Group, a group of older women interested in women’s issues. She was a poet and writer with the Adelaide based, Friendly Street Poets from its inception and has been published in many of the Friendly Street Poet anthologies, as well as in journals, magazines, and newspapers. She also published two collections with Friendly Street Poets, Other Ways of Looking c1988) and Earthdweller. Ugly as a Boxer’s Glove was also published about Connie’s life, as a text spoken by Connie and edited by Marg McHugh.

Briony Monahan was a founding member of the Feminist Anti-Nuclear Group (FANG) who travelled to Greenham Common and the peace camp at Comiso, Sicily. Briony was also involved in FANG’s peace camp at Smithfield, South Australia, and corresponded with the group while overseas.