The Australian Women's Register

Debbie Flintoff-King was a hard-working, determined athlete who became an Olympic champion in the gruelling 400 meters hurdles event. She won Commonwealth Gold in 1982 and 1986, spent an intense season competing in Europe in 1987, but is best remembered for her last-stride victory in Seoul in 1988.

Nancy Reardon was a gifted Tasmanian athlete who excelled in rowing and netball.

Marie Bjelke-Petersen is best known as a writer, but as a young woman she enjoyed playing sport and was, it has been argued, instrumental in introducing the sport of netball to Tasmania.

She migrated with her family to Hobart, Tasmania in 1891, where her brother, Hans Christian, established the Bjelke-Peterson Physical Culture school in 1892. Marie joined as instructor in charge of the women’s section; she also taught the subject in schools. It was during that time, it is suggested, that the Bjelke-Petersen’s learned about a new game called basketball that was being played in the United States. Marie introduced drills designed for the game in to the Physical Culture program that she taught in the schools.

Unfortunately, injuries prevented her from continuing with her teaching career much past 1910. At this point, she picked up her career as a writer. She published her first novel The Captive Singer, in 1917 to much acclaim; it sold 100,000 copies in English and 40,000 in Danish. In 1935 she won the King’s Jubilee medal for services to literature.

In recent years, Bjelke-Petersen has become a gay and lesbian icon. She lived in an intimate relationship with Silvia Mills, who she met in 1898, and who, it is argued, The Captive Singer was about, for thirty years.

Rosalie Parkes’ was a pioneer of netball in Tasmania and, after a twenty-five year involvement in the sport became an institution. She first represented Tasmania in 1939 at a carnival in Adelaide and became the first Tasmanian to tour with an Australian representative team when she travelled to New Zealand in 1948.

Between 1948 and 1960 she coached the Tasmanian Open Team and was made a life member of the Southern Tasmanian Netball Association in 1955. During her twenty-five year involvement with the sport. She served as President of the Southern Tasmanian Netball Association and liaison officer for the Tasmanian Netball Association. In order to honour her achievements and services to the sport in the region, the Creek Road Netball Pavilion was named after her. (The Building is now demolished.)

Rosalie never married, but she did have a partner, Owen Clarke, who died prematurely. Rosalie also died prematurely – she and her brother Frank, died in a house fire in 1994.

Cara Honeychurch is a tenpin bowler who won the World Cup in 1996, the same year she was awarded the title of Bowler of the Year. In 1998, at Kuala Lumpar, she won three gold medals in the sport.

In 1999 she travelled to the United States, where the sport gets national TV coverage and where over 80 tournaments a year are played. In her first year as a professional, Honeychurch headed the season’s averages and was second on the money earning lists. During this season, she bowled two perfect games, one of them on live TV, and in so doing earned herself a $50,000 bonus. In October 1999 she was voted Bowler of the Month by the American bowling media. In 2000, she won the Professional Women’s Bowling Association (United States) Rookie of the Year award.

In October 2006, after a three year break from competition, she won the United States Bowling Congress Women’s Challenge, defeating the 2005 World Ranking Masters champion, Clara Guerrero, in the final.

Margaret Holt was World Champion in Tae Kwon Do in 1994. During the week of competition, she won three gold medals in an open competition that included men.

In 1992, she dressed as a man in order to compete in the knock-out Karate Championships, only revealing her true identity after she had won the title.

Norma Kirkby was 105 years old when she died. With her husband, Gordon, she built up the Success Poll Hereford Stud and Reno Poll Merino Stud. She supported numerous charitable organisations in the Moree district for over fifty years.

Being Seen and Heard: Migrant Women Organising in Australia, a documentary history’ in an on-line exhibition that aims to make accessible to a broad audience, information about the records of Australian women of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds that are held in Australian repositories and private hands. Funding to support the research that produced the exhibition was provided by the National Archives of Australia, through the Ian Maclean Award

Ellen Koshland is the founder and president of the Education Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation that seeks to stimulate new thinking about public education in Australia and fund innovative student projects in public schools.

In 1970, The Australian Women’s Weekly published an article entitled ‘The Quiet Millionairess’. It was this same year that Vera Ramaciotti established the Clive and Vera Ramaciotti Foundation in memory of her brother – who died three years previously – and herself, with $6.7 million in proceeds arising from the sale of the Theatre Royal in Sydney, left to the siblings by their father Gustavo. The magazine claimed that Vera was ‘Australia’s least-known millionairess’ and ‘possibly the most private woman in Australia’, adding that she ‘physically shrinks from seeing her name in print’.

Director of WWW Communications Pty Ltd, a social policy and philanthropic consulting company, Marion Webster joined the board of the Melbourne Community Foundation in 1997.

Mary Windeyer was president of the Women’s Suffrage League of New South Wales from 1891-1893, and co-founder of the Ashfield Infants’ Home and the Temporary Aid Society.

Elizabeth Evatt was the first Chief Justice of the Family Court of Australia and the first woman to preside in an Australian Federal Court.

In August 2020, a specialist domestic violence resource was established and named in her honour. The Evatt List, operating in the Federal Circuit Court of Australia across selected registries, will identify high-risk cases, enabling them to be fast-tracked with appropriate security arrangements in place.

Gyzele Osmani fled Kosovo in 1999 with her husband and five small children. Accepting temporary refuge in Australia she was housed in the Bandiana Safe Haven where her youngest daughter received medical treatment for a dislocated hip. Refusing repatriation in March 2000 because the situation in the Presevo Valley was unsafe and her daughter needed further medical treatment, the family was interned for seven months in the Port Hedland Detention Centre before being released to settle in Canberra. Now an Australian citizen, Gyzele is studying Business Administration and her story is the subject of a prize-winning essay and radio program.

Judy Pollock was one of Australia’s best track athletes. She represented Australia internationally in the 1960s and early 1970s, at one time holding the world record in 440 yard and 400 and 800 meter events. She ran third (to Betty Cuthbert) at the 1964 Olympic Games in the inaugural running of the women’s 440 yards. Pregnancy prevented her running at Mexico City in 1968, when she was, arguably, at the peak of her performance.

Pollock’s last tilt at Olympic gold happened in 1976 in Montreal. She was outclassed in the 1500 and didn’t proceed past the heats, but her time over 1000 meters (2.38.80) run just prior to the games, in 2006 remains an Australian record.

Born in Estonia in 1920, Lia Looveer came to Australia with her husband and daughter in 1949, settling in Sydney in 1952. She was an active member of the Estonian community in Sydney and was office manager for the Estonian weekly newspaper Meie Rodo, between 1956-1966.She was Secretary of the Captive Nations Council of New South Wales and Secretary General of the United Council of Migrants from Communist Dominated Europe in Australia in 1968.

Looveer joined the Liberal Party of Australia, New South Wales division, in 1955, and was a member of its Migrant Advisory Committee and of the federal Liberal Party’s Advisory Committee on Ethnic Affairs, 1976-1981, as well as a member of the State Council over the same period. She is a foundation member of the Ethnic Communities’ Council of N.S.W. Looveer was awarded the British Empire Medal in 1978 and received a Heritage Award from the Liberal Party of Australia, N.S.W. Division, in 2002.

In 1959 the U.S. Congress authorised and requested the President of the United States to proclaim the third week in July as Captive Nations Week. The Captive Nations Week Committee was founded in Sydney in 1965 to organise the inaugural, and subsequently annual, commemoration of Captive Nations Week in Australia. In 1971 the Committee changed its names to the Captive Nations Council of New South Wales to reflect, in part, its broadening scope of activities. Foundation member organisations comprised the Byelorussian Association of N.S.W., Central Council of Croatian Associations in Australia, Estonian Society of Sydney, Hungarian Council of N.S.W., Latvian Federation of Australia and New Zealand, Australian Lithuanian Community (Sydney District), Polish Association in N.S.W., Australian Romanian Association, Association of Australian Slovaks, Agency for Free Slovenia and Ukrainian Council of N.S.W.; by 1982 the Afghan Association in Australia and the Vietnamese Volunteer Youth in N.S.W. had become member organisations. In 1988 the Council made a submission to the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs on the War Crimes Amendment Bill, 1987. The work of the Captive Nations Council of New South Wales wound down after the fall of Communism in Central and Eastern Europe.

The United Council of Migrants from Communist Dominated Europe in Australia was established in Sydney in September 1953. Representatives from various national organisations made up the Council. It sought to co-ordinate the groups’ anti-Communist activities and actions aimed at liberating their respective homelands from Communist control. The Advisory Committee was composed of Australian representatives, including State politicians, Douglas Darby and Eileen Furley, and Federal politician, W. C. Wentworth.

The Joint Baltic Committee was formed by representatives of the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian communities in Sydney in 1952. Estonian-born Lia Looveer was the founding Secretary and served in that position until 2002. In June 1940 the respective homelands of Looveer and her Committee members had been occupied and annexed by Soviet Russia. A year later began the mass deportation of thousands of people from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to remote regions of the U.S.S.R.. The Committee held an annual Commemoration Concert, organised to pay tribute to their compatriots who were deported and suffered under Soviet oppression for more than 50 years. The Committee liaised with Federal and State politicians to campaign for the defence of human rights and fundamental freedoms in, and independence of, the Baltic States. In 1986 the House of Representatives passed the Baltic Resolution which, in part, ‘reinforced Australia’s non-recognition de jure of the incorporation of the Baltic States into the Soviet Union’.

Established in 1979, the Federation of Ethnic Communities Councils of Australia (FECCA) is the peak, national body representing Australians from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. FECCA is a non-political community-based organisation that advocates, lobbies and promotes issues on behalf of its constituency to government, business and the broader community. Apart from its national office professional staff, it is supported by the work of a voluntary Executive Council.

FECCA strives to ensure that the needs and aspirations of Australians from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds are given proper recognition in public policy. The organisation works to promote fairness and responsiveness to its constituency in the delivery and design of Government policies and programs. FECCA promotes Multiculturalism as a core value that defines what it means to be Australian in the 21st century. FECCA works to protect the fundamental rights of all Australians, regardless of cultural, spiritual, gender, linguistic, social, political or other affiliations or connections.

Margaret Jones was Literary Editor for the Herald and worked as a journalist in the London and New York bureaus of John Fairfax Ltd, before becoming Foreign Editor for the Sydney Morning Herald in the 1970s. She reported from North Korea and North Vietnam, and was staff correspondent in Peking, China. Described as a ‘trailblazer for women journalists’, Jones wrote for the Herald newspaper for a total of thirty-three years.

Tory Wicks was a hockey player, coach and administrator whose commitment to the sport extended over fifty years and did not diminish upon her retirement. A fit and reliable player on and off the field (she played full back) she once declared, ‘I know of no better passport around the world than a hockey stick’.

According to her Sport Australia Hall of Fame citation, Evelyn Tazewell was the finest women’s hockey player of her time. She enjoyed a career in the sport as player, coach, umpire and administrator that spanned four decades to the 1960s. Among many important contributions to the sport, she was instrumental in the establishment of the Women’s Memorial Playing Fields at St Mary’s, Adelaide.

Shylie Katharine Rymill was a prominent member of Adelaide Society, a successful charity worker and a more than competent golfer, winning the South Australian Women’s Championship in 1913. She was a state commissioner for the Girl Guides in South Australia between 1938-1950.

Glenda Hiroko Gauci was the first Asian Australian woman appointed as an ambassador in the Australian diplomatic service.

There is a long history of contact between Holland and Australia. In early 1606, William Jansz of Amsterdam, captain of the Duyfken (Little Dove) landed on Cape York Peninsula. A number of Dutch ships sank off the Western Australian coast in the 1600s and survivors reportedly established relationships with local Aborigines. By 1644, Abel Tasman had completed a partial circumnavigation of Australia which revealed, for the first time, the size of the continent. The resulting incomplete map of New Holland was not superseded until the arrival of Captain Cook in 1770.

During the 1850s gold rushes Dutch merchant ships continued to visit Australia but immigration of the Netherlands-born remained negligible. Until 1947, when the Census recorded 2,174 Netherlands born, the number of people arriving from the Netherlands were offset by a large proportion of departures of Netherlands-born from Australia. This trend has continued to the present day, apart from a period of high migration during the 1950s and 1960s.

After the Second World War, many Dutch people suffered severe economic and social dislocation in Holland. With an already high population density, a relatively small land area and the highest birth rate in Europe, the Netherlands faced a severe housing crisis and rising unemployment, due mainly to the mechanisation of agriculture. Dutch authorities actively supported emigration as a partial solution to the problem of overcrowding.

Meanwhile, immigration policy change meant that Australia was looking for acceptable migrants from non-British sources. The hard working rural Dutch, with their linguistic and cultural affinities with the Australian population, were seen to be ideal immigrants. Both the Australian and Netherlands Governments contributed to the cost of passage, while the Australian Government accepted the responsibility for assisting settlement. As a result, during the 1950s Australia was the destination of 30 per cent of Dutch emigrants and the Netherlands-born became numerically the second largest non-British group. Their numbers peaked in 1961 at 102,134.

Janet Biddlecombe ran her father’s estate at Golf Hill, Victoria, from his death in 1888 to her own in 1954. She pioneered the breeding of Herefords in Australia. As a pastoralist Janet was remarkably successful, and proceeds from her Hereford Stud went to any number of charitable causes – usually as anonymous donations.