The Australian Women's Register

The Australian Opals is the Australian National Women’s Basketball Team.

In the 1950s Dorothy Green wrote to a friend, ‘I am now rising forty two and looking back on my life, I find have spent the greater proportion of it doing things I didn’t want to do at all.’ Nearly thirty years later she felt ‘nothing has changed’. Yet during the course of her long life, Dorothy Green produced poetry, literary criticism and journalism and taught and shaped the lives of many students. With a Bachelor of Arts in English, French and Philosophy and an Master of Arts with Honours in English, she worked as a journalist in New South Wales and Queensland, was the principal of a girls’ private school, before moving in to tertiary education, holding positions at Monash University in Melbourne and the Australian National University and Australian Defence Forces Academy in Canberra. Married to Henry Green, journalist, librarian and literary historian, with whom she had two children, she was also politically active, especially later in her life, when she was a founding member of Writers Against Nuclear Arms and an ardent environmentalist. She wrote a study of the work of Henry Handel Richardson as well as updating her husband’s History of Australian Literature and publishing several books of poetry and numerous works of literary criticism.

Betty Wilson was the first test cricketer, male or female, to complete the match double of 100 runs and ten wickets in a test match.

As a teenager, Bev Francis was an accomplished shot-putter in track and field. She began powerlifting, winning six world titles from 1980 to 1985 and earning the accolade of “Strongest Woman in History”. In 1983 Francis was invited to attend the Caesar’s World Cup in Las Vegas, representing the ‘muscular extreme’ and sparking a debate within the bodybuilding community on ‘how much muscle is too much?’

At the contest Francis met IFBB judge and powerlifter Steve Weinberger, whom she later married. She relocated to Weinberger’s Long Island abode and entered her first IFBB Ms. Olympia contest in 1986, where she was placed 10th. The next year, she won the IFBB Women’s World Pro Championships and was third in that year’s IFBB Ms. Olympia. She was third again in 1988 and 1989, and runner-up in 1990. In the 1991 contest she presented the most muscular female physique ever seen and finished, controversially, as runner-up to Lenda Murray. Once again, Francis’ extreme muscular form sparked debate and led to an attempt to overhaul procedure.

Today Francis and Weinberger live in Syosset, Long Island, as co-owners of Bev Francis Gold’s Gym.

In 1938 Jess Sams won a nationwide fishing contest for heaviest catch with a 330lb striped marlin.

The Hockeyroos are one of Australia’s most successful sporting teams. Their three gold medals from the past four Olympic Games, two World Cups, six Champions Trophies and two Commonwealth Games golds highlights the team’s outstanding run of success. The Hockeyroos have been crowned Australia’s Team of the Year five times and were unanimously awarded the Best Australian Team at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games.

Tanya Harding has won a medal at every Olympic softball tournament since the sport made its debut in 1996. She is one of only three Australian women to win medals at four Olympic Games, the other two being teammates Melanie Roche and Natalie Ward. Harding is regarded as one of the greatest pitchers ever to represent Australia, and has played an important role in some of the team’s most exciting games.

Lauren Jackson is widely regarded as Australia’s greatest female basketball player ever. She has led the nation’s team, the Opals, to three silver medals at successive Olympic Games in Sydney (2000), Athens (2004) and Beijing (2008) and a much cherished bronze in London in 2012. She was chosen to carry flag for the Australian Olympic team in London in 2012, which was, she says, ‘the proudest moment of my sporting career’.

Ronda Kimble was a netball player who advanced through the ranks to become an All Australian netball umpire. She has been involved in the game of netball for nearly forty years, as a player, coach, umpire, administrator and archivist.

Over the course of her swimming career, despite recurrent illness and injury, Petria Thomas won 3 Olympic Gold Medals, 3 World Championships, 9 Commonwealth Games Gold Medals, 13 Australian Championships, and 3 Pan Pacific Gold Medals. Her tally of eight Olympic medals (three gold, four silver, one bronze) is the best ever for an Australian woman, equal with Dawn Fraser and Susie O’Neill. Thomas was inducted into the Australian Institute of Sport Swimming Hall of Fame in 1996, and was crowned the AIS Athlete of the Year in 2001 and 2002. She currently resides in Belconnen, Canberra, with her husband Julian Jones.

Louise Sauvage is a professional athlete and Paralympian who dominated the world of wheelchair track and road racing for well over a decade. Over the course of her career, Sauvage won nine Paralympic gold medals, four Boston Marathons, and was four times the winner of the 800m Wheelchair Exhibition Race at the IAAF World Athletic Championships. She holds world records in the 1500m, 5000m and 4x100m and 4x400m relays. Louise Sauvage was Australian Female Athlete of the Year in 1999, and International Female Wheelchair Athlete of the Year in 1999 and 2000.

Sarah (Fanny) Durack battled local swimming authorities to become the first Australian woman to compete at the Olympic Games. In 1912, at Stockholm, she won the gold medal in the 100 meters freestyle event, beating her compatriot and training partner, Wilhelmina (Mina) Wylie. She went on to break numerous world records until she retired from competitive swimming in 1921.

Nova Peris was the first Aboriginal Australian to win a gold medal at the Olympic Games. She is also one of a very few athletes who have represented their country in two different sports at separate Olympic Games. In 1996 in Atlanta she was a member of the gold medal winning Hockeyroos team. In 2000 at Sydney she made it to the semi finals of the 400 meters track and field event. She is a staunch campaigner for Indigenous rights and reconciliation in Australia.

Nova served in the Australian Senate from November 2013 until May 2016. She was the first Indigenous Australian to serve in Federal Parliament.

The game of hockey was brought to Australia by British Naval officers stationed around the country in the late 1800s. By 1900, according to Hockey Australia, the game was being played in private girls’ schools. Being a non-contact team sport, it was considered ideal for women. The first women’s hockey association was formed in New South Wales in 1908. Two years later, women’s clubs from Tasmania, Victoria and South Australia were competing alongside clubs from New South Wales at an interstate tournament at Rushcutter’s Bay, and from this tournament came the establishment of the Australian Women’s Hockey Association in July 1910 – fifteen years before the Australian Hockey Association (AHA) was formed in 1925. State hockey associations for men had been formed in South Australia, 1903; Victoria and New South Wales, 1906; Western Australia, 1908; and Queensland, 1920s. This division in the administration of men’s and women’s hockey continued in subsequent years. The Australian Women’s Hockey Association affiliated with the All England Women’s Hockey Association, and joined the International Federation of Women’s Hockey (IFWH) in 1927.

Invented in Chicago in 1887 and derived from the game of baseball, softball was introduced to Australia in 1939 when Canadian Gordon Young became director of physical education in New South Wales and promoted the game in schools. The game found its way to Victoria during the Second World War, when U.S. Army Sergeant William Duvernet organised softball as a recreational activity for U.S. nurses stationed there. Another American, Mack Gilley, brought the game to Queensland in 1946.

Tennis Australia began as the Lawn Tennis Association of Australasia in 1904, when it was housed in Sydney, New South Wales. At this time, the Association was affiliated with New Zealand for the purposes of organising the Davis Cup and the Australasian Championships, but the two national bodies separated in 1922. In 1926, the Association moved to Melbourne where it became the Lawn Tennis Association of Australia and was presided over by (Sir) Norman Brookes until 1955. Following a worldwide growth in open tennis in the 1970s and 1980s, the Association became a company in 1984 and was renamed Tennis Australia in 1986.

In 1990, the Australian Bowls Council (now Bowls Australia Inc.), the national administrative body for men’s bowling, was affiliated with 2,225 clubs. The Australian Women’s Bowling Council was parallel, with 2,185 affiliated clubs. By the late 1990s, Australia could boast 43% of the world’s bowling population.

Raised in a small farming community at Moulyinning, the Pearce sisters – May, Jean, Morna and Caroline – came to prominence in women’s hockey in that State from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s. May, Jean and Morna Pearce all went on to captain both State and national teams. Caroline ‘Tib’ Pearce played at State and national levels.

Alisa Camplin is Australia’s first female Winter Olympic gold medallist, dual Olympic medallist, World Champion, World Record Holder and two times WC Grand Prix Champion.

In 2017 Camplin was a director on four prominent Australian Boards – including the Australian Sports Commission, Royal Children’s Hospital Foundation, Olympic Winter Institute of Australia and the Collingwood Football Club.

Daphne Pirie was a nationally ranked track and field athlete who captained the Queensland women’s athletics and hockey teams and represented Australia in hockey. She is now a world-ranked Master’s Athlete, winning eight gold medals in international competitions. In 1989 she was awarded an MBE for services to hockey.

Rosina Raisbeck enjoyed a successful career in London and performed on the club circuit across Australia in the 1960s, before joining the Australian Opera in 1971. She was still singing with the company at the age of 72.

Described as ‘one of our greatest and unluckiest’ athletes, Marlene Mathews set a world record of 10.3 seconds for the 100 yard sprint in 1958. Her best times for the 100 metres and 200 metres, set over forty years ago, would have won both titles at the 2005 Australian Athletics Championships were they repeated.

Having missed selection for the 1952 Olympic Games due to a leg injury, Mathews was selected for the 1954 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Canada, only to be forced to withdraw from sprint events due to injury once again. Two years later, she was able to compete at the Olympic Games in Melbourne and won bronze in the 100 metres and 200 metres behind Australia’s Betty Cuthbert and Germany’s Christa Stubnick – though many expected her to win. Disappointingly, Mathews was not selected for the 4x100m relay team that year. The team, comprising Shirley Strickland, Norma Croker, Fleur Mellor and Betty Cuthbert, won gold. At a post-Olympics meeting, Mathews was part of a relay team that broke world records for both the 4×220 yards and 4×200 metres.

In 1957, Mathews set the inaugural world record times for the 440 yards and 400 metres. The following year she set her world record of 10.3 seconds for the 100 yards sprint (breaking the 10.4 second record held jointly by Betty Cuthbert and Marjorie Jackson) and of 23.4 seconds for the 220 yards (breaking Cuthbert’s 23.5 second record). She is reputed to have run a ‘wind-assisted 10.1 seconds’ in the 100 yards at the Australian titles. Mathews went on to win the 100 yards and 220 yards at the British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Wales in 1958. She ran in the relay team that won silver in the 4×110 yards relay. After making the semi-finals in the 100 metres at the Olympic Games in Rome in 1960, Mathews retired from competition and took up an administrative role. She was an Assistant Manager of the Australian Olympic Team at the Olympics in Munich in 1972.

Marlene Mathews became a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 1979 for her services to athletics, and an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 1999. A Trustee of the Sydney Cricket Ground, she is recognised in its Walk of Honour. Mathews was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 1985.

An athletic student, Gwendoline Varley went on to be sports mistress at the Hermitage school in Geelong, Victoria, before moving to Sydney, where she became organizing secretary of the City Girls’ Amateur Sports Association. She inaugurated Girls’ Week as a fundraising initiative, and caught the attention of local radio stations. In 1928, Varley began broadcasting with radio station 2BL and was founding secretary of its Women’s Amateur Sports Association. The wireless was an invaluable tool for the promotion of sports activities for women, and the Association grew rapidly. It was placed under the auspices of the Australian Broadcasting Commission on the establishment of that body in 1932. Varley continued broadcasting for the ABC. In addition, she was involved with the City Girls’ Amateur Sports Association; the New South Wales (NSW) Lawn Tennis Association; the NSW Women’s Hockey Association; the NSW Women’s Basketball Association; and the NSW Women’s Cricket Association.

Varley continued an active involvement in sport by captaining an A-grade tennis team, and – according to the ADB’s Marion Consandine – by swimming, rowing, running, fencing, skating, and playing golf, hockey and croquet. She married Hector Maximus Greig, a widower and father of two sons, in June 1938.