The Australian Women's Register

Born in Hungary in 1921, Gisella Scheinberg survived the holocaust, making several escapes from concentration camps as she did. She married and, shortly after, came to Australia in 1948.

She was a hardworking businesswoman who eventually created some independent wealth. In 1969 she opened the successful Holdsworth Galleries in Woollahra, which she ran for 28 years. She made her mark in the art world both as a shrewd businesswoman and a great supporter of struggling young artists. She would often take artists to attend doctors’ appointments and when AIDS was the scourge of many artists, she offered practical and emotional support.

On Australia Day 1985 Gisella was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) ‘for service to the arts’.

Anne Catherine Whittle was born in Eastwood, New South Wales, to parents George and Jean (Duff). She attended Sydney Girls’ High School and Armidale Teachers College. In 1939 she married Roger Von Bertouch and, after moving to Tasmania, they both taught, and Anne also studied art at Hobart Technical College. The pair moved to Myall Lakes in 1951, followed by Newcastle, where Anne founded the Von Bertouch Galleries in 1963.

Anne was awarded honorary masters degrees by both Newcastle and New England universities. In the Queen’s Birthday Honours of 1979, Anne was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) ‘for service to the visual arts’ and in 2001 she was awarded the Centenary Medal ‘for service to the community’. The following year, Newcastle University awarded her an honorary doctorate of letters for service to both the arts and the community.

Anne Von Bertouch was also recognized in Newcastle as a Freeman of the City.

Joan Kingsley-Strack was, for a time, secretary of the Aboriginal Citizenship Committee. She joined the Aborigines Progressive Association (APA) and alongside its leaders Pearl Gibbs and Bill Ferguson, called for the abolition of the Aborigines Protection Board.

Joan was also an artist, specialising in china painting.

Vera Dwyer was the daughter of journalist George Lovell Dwyer and his wife Margaret Jafe (Shield). She was born in Hobart, Tasmania, on 23 February, 1889.

From a young age she contributed regularly to the Australian Town and Country Journal. Her first book, With Beating Wings, was written when she was in her teens and was sponsored by author Ethel Turner.

In the 1930s Vera contributed articles to The Sydney Morning Herald and was a member of the Fellowship of Australian writers. Vera’s published works included children’s books, as well as adult fiction.

Vera married Captain Warwick Coldham Fussell at St Leonards, New South Wales, in 1915. They divorced in 1925.

The National Women’s Art Exhibition was held in 1995. 146 galleries, museums and libraries around Australia participated in the event, holding simultaneous exhibitions of work by female artists. The exhibitions, which focused on women’s relationship to the landscape, were held to commemorate the 20th anniversary of International Women’s Year.

The National Women’s Art Exhibition was the ‘brain-child’ of Professor Joan Kerr, who also used the event to launch her book Heritage: the national women’s art book in Canberra.

Lynette Therese Day was the recipient of over 50 Australian literary awards and produced a number of published works, including The spirit of a Scot: an anthology of the poetry of Lynette Therese Day.

Plant biochemist Adele Millerd was one of Australia’s first female Fulbright Scholars.

Brenda Walker is a novelist, critic, essayist and editor. She has taught at the University of Western Australia since 1984 and is currently a Professor within the School of English and Cultural Studies.

Anthropologist Nonie Sharp is an honorary research fellow in the Anthropology Program of the School of Social Sciences, La Trobe University. For many years she has worked with northern Australia’s coastal indigenous people and is an authority on communities of the Torres Strait Islands.

After obtaining her PhD from La Trobe University in 1995, Nonie went on to teach sociology and anthropology. Additionally, a five-year Australian Research Fellowship enabled her to travel to the Pacific islands, parts of coastal Europe, Canada and the United States, and write a book about people and their relationship to the sea. The book is titled Saltwater people: the waves of memory.

Ruth Helfgott was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1929. With the increased threat to Jewish people in Germany, Ruth’s father moved the family to Sydney in 1938. Here Ruth received formal dance training from Madame Getrud Bodenwieser. She danced briefly with the Borovansky Ballet and then joined Ballet Rambert during its Australian tour of 1947-1949. She left Australia with Ballet Rambert when the company returned to England.

In England, Ruth trained under Russian ballerina Vera Volkova before joining the Roland Petit company in Paris and then, after studies with Victor Gsovsky, the Marquis de Cuevas company.

Ruth returned to Australia in the early 1950s and joined the National Theatre Ballet. In 1953 she married Peter Frank and the following year she opened a ballet school in Northbridge and formed the Yongala Ballet.

In the 1960s Ruth choreographed a number of ground breaking ballets for Ballet Australia. The year 1967 saw her perform her own ballet at the Montreal Expo and attend classes at the New York City Ballet and the Martha Graham School of Modern Dance. At this time she also accepted an invitation to work as a guest choreographer at the Batsheva Dance Company in Tel Aviv. Later in 1967 Ruth formed the professional company, The New Dance Theatre, which was renamed Red Opal Dance Theatre in 1989.

Ann Turner completed a Bachelor of Arts in 1950 and a Diploma of Education in 1951, at the University of Sydney. Ann then went on to complete a Master of Education at the Universities of Melbourne and New England, from 1980 to 1987.

Ann taught at primary and secondary schools in Sydney, Adelaide, Melbourne and London, prior to taking up positions as lecturer at both the Hawthorn Institute of Education and the University of Papua New Guinea, from c. 1972 until the 1990s.

Gwen Friend, sister of artist Donald Friend, was a partner with Fifi Banvard in the theatrical company Fifi Banvard Productions. Gwen was responsible for set design, props, lighting, costumes and make-up. The company played a season at the Theatre Royal in Hobart, from July 1950 to March 1951, to great acclaim.

Margaret Dent was a long-serving employee of the National Library of Australia (NLA) (1974-2008). She was employed as the NLA’s Rare Books Librarian from 1975 to 1992, and worked in other such areas as maps, pictures and information services. Margaret also joined the exhibitions team in 1999 to work on the NLA centenary exhibition Treasures from the World’s Great Libraries. She then went on to curate other successful exhibitions and displays within the library.

Before the NLA, Margaret worked at the Fisher Library at The University of Sydney and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Library (London). She worked at the Australian Bureau of Statistics Library, first in Sydney and then in Canberra. Margaret also taught occasional sessions at the Canberra College of TAFE in the 1980s and 1990s, running classes on rare books.

Lady Elizabeth Wilson, wife of Sir Keith Cameron Wilson, was very active in the Adelaide community and involved in many local organisations. She was divisional commandant of the South Australian division of the Red Cross during the Second World War and chairman of the branch from 1969 to 1972. In 1946 Elizabeth was approached to become a member of the board of governors of the Burnside War Memorial Hospital and she remained a member for the duration of her life.

For seven years Elizabeth was president of the Mothers’ and Babies’ Health Association (MBHA), in addition to being chairman of the Saint Peter’s College Mission and a patron of the Cornish Association of South Australia. Elizabeth was a member of the Pan-Pacific South East Asian Women’s Association for a number of decades, and at the time of her oral history interview with Amy McGrath, she was also president of the Association.

In 1946 Elizabeth was appointed an MBE for her work with charities, followed by a CBE in 1959 for her work in social welfare.

For 25 years June Factor was the director of the Australian Children’s Folklore Collection. Between the late 1960s and 2001 she was involved in various school radio broadcasts and children’s programs. June has produced numerous children’s books, including a series of playground rhymes. For many years she was a Senior Lecturer in English at the Institute of Early Childhood Development in Melbourne.

June held presidencies of both the Australian and Victorian Councils for Civil Liberties and served on the executive committee of Liberty Victoria from 1981 to 1996. She was a founding member of the Free Speech Committee in Victoria and from 1991 to 1995 she represented civil liberty interests on the national statutory Privacy Advisory Committee. June was also the president of the Friends of ABC (Vic) and their national spokesperson from 1996 to 1999.

Miriam Strickland Chisholm was born in 1901 to parents Frank Kerr and Jane Adela (Strickland) and she had three siblings. The family lived at the estate ‘Kippilaw’ in Goulburn, where they regularly held ‘picnic races’.

Miriam was an amateur historian, photographer and secretary of the Scottish-Australian Clan Chisholm Society of New South Wales. Her photography was displayed at many small exhibitions throughout the 1930s, particularly at those of the Society of Arts and Crafts. In 1937 Miriam’s photograph titled ‘Ruses Farm’ was purchased by the Mitchell Library, after being on display at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition at the National Art Gallery.

Ann Jackson-Nakano is a historian who specialises in lndigenous history, particularly of the Australian Capital Territory. In 1994 she was awarded a Master of Letters from the Australian National University (ANU) for her thesis The death and resurrection of the Ngunnawal: a living history.

Helen Blackburn developed a passion for aviation whilst living in America during the early 1940s. She gained her commercial licence in 1945 and later became the federal secretary of the Australian Women Pilots’ Association.

Helen’s other passion was shell collecting, which she undertook for a number of institutions. In 1984 she donated her extensive collection to the National Museum of Australia.