The Australian Women's Register

Isabel Letham is renowned throughout the surfing world as ‘the first Australian to ride a surfboard’, although she disputed this, preferring to describe herself as an early Australian female surfer who experimented with riding a board in the Hawaiian tradition. She did this in 1915 at the age of fifteen when the visiting Hawaiian surfer, Duke Kahanamoku, who was giving a surfboard riding exhibition at Sydney’s Freshwater Beach, invited her to ride tandem with him. Since then, her name has become legendary within the surfing world. She has been a source of inspiration for subsequent women surfers; Australian world champion, Pam Burridge, even named her first daughter Isabel in her honour.

Letham is less well known for the important role she played in teaching swimming to hundreds of young people in Australia and in the United States. In the 1920s she lived in San Francisco where she first taught swimming at the University of California and was eventually appointed to the position of Director of Swimming to the City of San Francisco in 1924. She returned to Australia to live in 1929, where she continued to teach swimming at Freshwater and Manly for many years. Letham was also important for introducing water ballet to Australia.

Pam Burridge was born in Sydney into a sport loving family who were active in the surf living saving movement at Sydney’s Bondi Beach. Her mother and sister, Donella, loved to swim, her father was an accomplished distance runner but Pam loved surfing. She was given her first (homemade) surfboard in 1975 at the age of ten, entered her first competition (which she won) in 1977 at the age of twelve, won her first New South Wales State Championship in 1979 aged fourteen and was national champion the following year when she was only fifteen.

At this point, Pam was deemed a professional by virtue of the fact that she had been invited to surf in the elite Hawaiian North Shore events; the strict rules of the governing amateur body offered no leeway. So Pam went on the international circuit when she was sixteen and by the age of seventeen had earned her first of six runner-up finishes in the world championships. She eventually broke through in 1990, winning the world championship by what was then a record margin and becoming the first Australian woman to do so.

The consistency of Pam’s performance throughout the years prior to her claiming the title are even more remarkable when one considers what she overcame to achieve them. She spent the better part of the 1980s battling one personal crisis after the next, crises which can, arguably, be attributed to the unique challenges that confronted young women who dared enter the macho world of 1980s surf riding. She faced plummeting self confidence, which led to drug and alcohol abuse and an eating disorder. The fact that she was able to maintain an overall ranking of number two in the world throughout the 1980s, despite never being ‘at her best’ is testament to her extraordinary talent.

Burridge retired from competition in 1993 made a brief comeback in 1996, retiring again in 1999, ranked eighth in the world. Whilst the result was not one for the record books, Pam was nevertheless satisfied with the result; it proved that she still has it in her to match it with the best in the new world of women’s surfing.

Edith ‘Edie’ Robinson made Australian Olympic history in Amsterdam in 1928 when she became Australia’s first female Olympic track and field athlete. She took up running at the age of 14 (she ran for the St George Athletic Club in Sydney, New South Wales.) Selected to compete in the 100 meters, she did not make the final, but did run a personal best time in the semifinal, which she finished in third place. Robinson also ran in the 800 meters, but did not complete the race. Given that she had never trained for the event before, let alone competed in it, the fact that she made the 600 meter mark before withdrawing was an extraordinary effort.

Edith was a very popular member of the small team that travelled to Amsterdam, and because she had a background in dressmaking, she was popular and much in demand by male athletes who needed badges sown to their shorts!

She officially opened the Olympic athletes village in Homebush, Sydney on September 2, 2000.

Eileen Wearne became the second woman to represent Australia in athletics at the Olympic Games when she competed in the 100 meter sprint at Los Angeles in 1932. Unfortunately, she did not compete at her best in Los Angeles; she finished fourth in her heat in the time of 12.5 seconds which meant that she did not make the finals. On her return to Sydney, however, she continued to compete and won state and Australian titles throughout the 1930s. She and the first woman to represent Australia in athletics at the Olympic Games, Edith Robinson, enjoyed a healthy rivalry. In 1938, she represented Australia at the British Empire Games where she won a gold medal in the 4 X 100 yard relay and a bronze medal in the 200 meter sprint.

An extremely attractive young woman, so much so that, whilst in Los Angeles, she caught the eye of the U.S. media. In an article entitled ‘Future Weissmullers, Beautiful Amazons Keenly watched by Scurrying Studio Scouts’, a journalist noted that ‘scouts from the picture camps have been roving the practice fields ever since the first boatload of athletes was unloaded.’ One of those at training who they noticed was ‘Eileen Wearne of Australia’ who had ‘ a beautiful figure, a great deal of poise and a nice voice.’ Wearne’s looks, according to her teammates, were ‘ proof that athletic competition does not detract from the beauty or femininity of women.’

Wearne retired from athletics in 1940 but remained involved in the Olympic movement. She was an active member of the New South Wales Olympian Club and loved attending reunion lunches.

A promising pianist in her school days, Daphne Akhurst attended the State Conservatorium of Music in New South Wales, becoming a music teacher and performer. While studying, she became an enthusiastic tennis player, winning the schoolgirls’ singles championship in 1917-20. In 1923 she won the County of Cumberland ladies’ singles, and two years later, the Australasian championships. She went on to win the Australasian championships a further four times. Akhurst travelled to the United Kingdom, where she competed at Wimbledon, reaching the singles and doubles semi-finals and the mixed doubles final (with Jack Crawford). Akhurst out-performed all of the Australian men in the competition and was ranked third in the world by Ayres’ Almanac.

Akhurst married Royston Stuckey Cozens, a tobacco manufacturer, in 1930, and retired from serious competition in 1931. The pair had one son. Akhurst died of an ectopic pregnancy in 1933.

The trophy for the women’s singles winner at the Australian Tennis Open is names in her honour.

The City Girls’ Amateur Sports Association (CGASA) was established in Sydney, New South Wales, in 1918 to provide a mechanism by which the young working women of Sydney could participate in organised sport. Founding members, Eleanor Hinder and Margaret Thorp, used the experience and networks they developed while working as welfare officers at large department stores (Farmers and Anthony Hordens) to establish the association, which thrived throughout the 1920s. Membership suffered as the depression hit in the 1930s and the CGASA accumulated debts, but in its heyday, over fifty clubs were affiliated with the organisation, representing a cross section of ‘city girls’ from small and large businesses in the service and manufacturing industries.

Described as ‘the cornerstone of Australia’s golden era in women’s hockey’, Rechelle Hawkes was one of the world’s most highly decorated hockey players. She had her international debut in 1985 and retired in 2000, playing an Australian record 279 international matches and winning multiple gold medals in major competitions along the way. She won three Olympic Games gold medals (1988, 1996, 2000), two World Cups (1994, 1998) and five Champions Trophies (1991, 1993, 1995, 1997, 1999). She was a member of the team that won gold at the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur in 1998. She is the most successful female player in international Hockey history

Hawkes had bad luck with injuries early in her career, but this did not stop her from taking her place in the team that won Olympic gold in 1988 in Seoul. In 1993, she was appointed team captain and led the team that compiled an unbeaten streak of 31 games leading into the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, and which eventually went on to beat South Korea 3-1 in the final.

After Atlanta, Hawkes took some time off the game to contemplate her future. She decided to go for Olympic gold one more time and was given the honour of reading the Athletes’ Oath at the opening ceremony in Sydney. Two weeks later, she played her last international game and claimed her third Olympic gold medal.

Hawkes was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 2002 and the Western Australian Hall of Champions in 2005.

In June 1988, Kay Cottee became the first woman to sail solo, unassisted and nonstop around the world. In the course of her voyage she set seven world records. Cottee was named the 1988 Australian of the Year and was awarded the Order of Australia.

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.

When Adair Ferguson won the single sculls title at the 1985 rowing World Championships in Belgium, she became Australia’s first female world champion rower. Her performance was excellent enough for her to be named the 1985 Australian Athlete of the Year; in achieving the honour she beat fellow nominees Jeff Fenech and Alan Border. Ferguson proved it wasn’t a fluke when she won a gold medal in the same event the following year in Edinburgh at the 1986 Commonwealth Games.

Ferguson represented Australia eight times at various international competitions but never at an Olympic Games. 1988 was considered to be her best chance of winning a medal but that year the Australian selectors decided not to send any female rowing competitors.

As well as representing Australia as a sportswoman, Ferguson tried her hand at politics. She stood as the Australian Democrats candidate in the blue ribbon liberal seat of Ryan in the 1990 federal election.

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.

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.

The formation of the Greek Young Matrons’ Association was an overt attempt by second generation parents of Greek heritage to ensure that their children married Australian born Greeks like themselves. By providing them with an organisation which would offer social activities and cultural events in which young Greek people could participate, the organisers hoped that young Greeks would marry within the community.

In July 2002, the Australian Workers Heritage Centre celebrated the opening of Stage One of its national $8 million project, Women in Australia’s Working History. The first stage is an exhibition, A Lot On Her Hands, featuring the working experiences of a diverse range of Australian women.

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.

From the time of her election to parliament, Franca Arean was hopeful of forming a “network” of women of all backgrounds who could meet informally, exchange ideas and help and support each other. In January 1984, she sent a letter to twenty to thirty women asking them to come to a meeting at Parliament House. They met in Feb 1984 for the first time, and the Women’s Network – Australia was born. The first Women’s Network guest was Frederika Steen, the head of a newly established Women’s Desk at the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs in Canberra.

The review of Post Arrival Programs and Services to Migrants was established by Cabinet decision and announced by the Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. Malcolm Fraser, on August 31, 1977. Established in order to ensure that the changing needs of migrants were being met by available resources, the review was conducted under prime ministerial authority in order to circumvent some allegedly obstructionist senior bureaucrats in the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs. The first meeting of the Review Group, which was chaired by Mr Frank Galbally, C.B.E, was held on 1 September 1977. The committee of review consulted widely, seeking submissions from individuals and organisations, government and non-government. Advice from migrant community groups was actively sought.

The report brought down by the review group, Migrant Services and Programs, was submitted to
the Prime Minister on 27 April 1978 and tabled by him on 30 May 1978. It was made available in Arabic, Dutch, English, German, Greek, Italian, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, Turkish and Vietnamese. In it, the Review Group came down with a total number of fifty-seven recommended improvements to
programs and services involving expenditure of about $50 million in such areas as initial settlement and education, especially the teaching of English, with emphasis placed on the role of ethnic communities themselves, and other levels of government, to encourage multiculturalism.

Of particular significance to migrant women was recommendation number 43, which stated ‘the implementation of the general recommendations of the Report, which have been framed in recognition of the special problems of migrant women, should take particular account of their needs’.

Conducted at a time, according to the committee, when Australia was ‘at a critical stage in the development of a cohesive, united, multicultural nation’, the Galbally review of Post Arrival Programs and Services to Migrants marks an important development in the evolution of Australian official policy towards settlers from one of assimilation to multiculturalism. Its pointed reference to the needs of women also marked a moment when ethnic and gender politics connected.

Dorothy Buckland-Fuller was a sociologist and social activist of some longstanding, with a distinguished career in ethnic and multicultural politics, particularly as they impact upon women of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. She was a peace activist, an environmentalist, a feminist and committed to the cause of reconciliation with indigenous Australia.

Of Greek heritage, Buckland-Fuller had a long involvement with the Greek Community of New South Wales, and her valuable contributions were acknowledged in 2001 when she was granted Life Membership to the Council of the Greek Orthodox Community of Sydney and New South Wales. In 1974, she established the Australian-Migrant Women’s Association, an organisation designed to bring together immigrant and Australian-born women.

She was active in the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, serving as president in 2002-4. As a sociologist, she taught and conducted action research. Her life has been a case of putting that theory to practice. In her own words, she was an ‘action oriented person’.

Dorothy Buckland-Fuller passed away in Sydney on 5 July 2019. She will be remembered for her words resounding in the ears of all those who knew her over her great life: “I will continue to work for equal rights for all and the betterment of our society for as long as I live”.

The experience of Greek-Australians is an integral part of Australian History. Since first arriving in the late 1810s, Greeks have made significant contributions to the nation’s cultural diversity and prosperity. Today, descendants of the earliest arrivals, immigrants, and their Australian-born children inhabit vital communities throughout the country, the inheritors of a vigorous Greek culture secured through the determined efforts of their forebears.

Anastasia Bekas was born in Greece in the late 1930s, the youngest of four children. She liked school and was a good student, her teachers encouraged her to attend high school. Unfortunately, she could not live this dream because, as was customary at the time, she had to leave school because her help was required to run the farm. She was a good, hard worker, but in the end her father encouraged her to migrate to Australia, as a way of avoiding the dowry he would eventually have to supply should she stay in Greece. The Australian government was keen to attract single Greek girls to the country at this time. As long as she had somewhere to stay, they would pay her fare. ‘You are healthy, you are going to Australia’, she was told. ‘So I have to go.’

She migrated to Australia, where her sister already lived, in December 1963 and arrived in Adelaide, where she would settle, on January 14, 1964. Adjustment was difficult, with the lack of English language skills being the major problem.

The first branch of the Ukrainian Women’s Association was formed on September 13th, 1949 in Cowra migrant camp. Mrs. I Polensly was the inaugural president. Ukrainian women were holding meetings in all the migrant centres across Australia, however Cowra is always considered to be the cradle of the U.W.A in Australia

Ukraine is located on the northern coast of the Black Sea in south-eastern Europe. The area of present-day Ukraine was populated only by Scythian nomads until the 6th century AD, when Slavic people begin to settle in the area. An organised political entity, known as Rus, evolved around Kyiv. (Russia, which later evolved around the principality of Moscow, did not yet exist).

In the fifteenth century Ukraine became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and then of the Polish-Lithuanian ‘Commonwealth’ (Rzeczpospolita), until the eastern half of the country was finally annexed by Muscovy in the seventeenth century. With the annexation of the Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth by Russia in 1795, the whole of Ukraine came under Russia’s rule until 1918.

Ukrainians managed to establish an independent Ukrainian state in 1918, but it could not withstand simultaneous attacks by Poland from the west and Russia from the east. Ultimately the fighting ended in the partition of Ukraine between Poland and the USSR. Ukrainians suffered greatly under Stalin’s repression during the inter-war period. An artificially-induced famine, in which Ukrainians estimate about six million
people died, was used by Stalin to forcibly implement the collectivisation of agriculture in Ukraine. Ukraine remained occupied by the USSR until 1991, when the latter was dismantled.

It is believed that prior to World War I up to 5,000 Ukrainian workers had settled in Australia. Ukraine was a major area of conflict in World War II and many Ukrainians fled to Western Europe, where they were interned as Displaced Persons (DPs). The first Ukrainians began arriving from the refugee camps in late 1948. They came to Australia on assisted passages which included two-year work contracts with the Commonwealth Government. Among the migrants were priests, lawyers, doctors and engineers, but the vast majority were people from a rural background.

The 1947 census did not list Ukraine as a birthplace, but the 1954 Census recorded 14,757 Ukraine-born. After that the number of migrants from the Soviet Ukraine was negligible, apart from some Ukrainian Jews. There was also limited migration of Ukrainians from communities in Poland and
Yugoslavia. Migration from Ukraine has only been significant since independence in 1991. The 1996 Census recorded 13,460 Ukraine-born people resident in Australia (up from 9,051 at the 1991 Census). Most live in Victoria and New South Wales.

The Marian Eldridge Award is a national award to encourage an aspiring female writer to undertake a literary activity such as a short course of study, or to complete a project, or attend a writers’ week or a conference. There is no age limit.

The award was established in 1998 under the auspices of the National Foundation for Australian Women, as a legacy of Marian Eldridge (1 February 1936 – 14 February 1997), an acclaimed short story writer, a novelist, poet and teacher who spent most of her creative writing years in Canberra, where inter alia she was instrumental in establishing the ACT Writers’ Centre.

In the last months of her life she planned a gift to establish a professional development award to nurture writers. She said that the recipient should not be established but someone whose writing showed promise, and that the writing need not be fiction. Marian said that “when trying to assist aspiring writers ‘every little bit helps’ and that such recognition would be an important milestone in a developing literary career.

An Advisory Group selected by Marian Eldridge’s family decides each year on guidelines for applicants, assesses applications and selects the recipient of the award.

The first four competitions ($1000 cash prize) were confined to residents of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and New South Wales (NSW), and brought in a total of 78 applications. The winners of those competitions of were:
•Sarah St Vincent Welch (1998)
•Julie Simpson (1999)
•Rose de Angelis (2000)
•Elanna Herbert (2001)

A wider Advisory Group has since been established, which now includes representatives from the National Library of Australia, the School of Creative Communication at the University of Canberra and the ACT Cultural Council. From its fifth year, the award was open to applicants throughout Australia. National competition winners have been:
•Annah Faulkner (2002/2003)
•Caroline Lee (2005).

The award amount is currently $1500.

(This entry is sponsored by generous donation from Christine Foley.)

Margaret Barbalet is an award-winning children’s author, a novelist, poet and short-story writer, a public servant and a historian

(This entry is sponsored by generous donation from Christine Foley.)

Suzanne Edgar is a Canberra-based writer of fiction, feature articles, poetry and reviews.

(This entry is sponsored by generous donation from Christine Foley.)

Marian Eldridge was an acclaimed short-story writer, novelist and poet, and was instrumental in establishing the ACT Writers Centre. Her legacy is the Marian Eldridge Award to nurture promising women writers.

(This entry is sponsored by generous donation from Christine Foley.)

Marion Halligan was an acclaimed author of novels, short stories, reviews, essays and gastronomic writing.

(This entry is sponsored by generous donation from Christine Foley.)