The Australian Women's Register

Julie Janson is a playwright and novelist of Aboriginal descent, belonging to the Burruberongal clan of the Darug Nation of the Hawkesbury River, NSW.

Julie has had plays produced professionally in Australia, Indonesia and the United States of America. Her debut novel, The Crocodile Hotel was published in 2015.

Julie is also a senior researcher on the website A history of Aboriginal Sydney which was first published by the University of Sydney in 2014.

After completing a Master of Arts at Cambridge University, Judith Rodriguez taught English at La Trobe University from 1969 until 1985. In 1986 she was writer-in-residence at Rollins College, Florida. Judith took up a lectureship in writing at Victoria College in 1989 (which became part of Deakin University in 1993) where she continued to teach until her retirement in 2003.

Judith published her first poetry collection in 1962 as part of Four Poets, with the others being David Malouf, Rodney Hall and Don Maynard. In 1973 she published her first solo collection, Nu-Plastik Fanfare Red: and other poems.

Water Life (1976) won the inaugural South Australian Biennial Literature Prize in 1978, while one of Rodriguez’s most highly-regarded collections, Mudcrab at Gambaro’s (1980) received both the Sydney PEN Golden Jubilee Award for Poetry and the Artlook/Shell Literary Award in 1981.

Judith is also known for her poems about women’s experiences; the title poem of Witch Heart (1982), published by the feminist press Sisters, records a visit to Robyn Archer’s play about the often disastrous lives of famous women performers.

In 1994 she was made a Member of the Order of Australia, for services to literature, and also received the FAW Christopher Brennan Award.

Ethel Drus completed her MA in Cape Town, South Africa. She was a Research Fellow in the Department of Pacific History, Research School of Pacific Studies at the Australian National University from 1953 to 1955. Ethel’s research focused on Fiji and British colonial policy.

Dr Alice Benham was a doctor who served during World War I.

Gwen Luly attended the University Practising School (later became University High School) from 1911 to 1913.

In 1919 Gwen started her nursing career at the Alfred Hospital, where she undertook postgraduate studies and became the Senior Sister of Operating Systems. She graduated in 1922.

In 1929 Gwen set up St Clement’s Private Hospital in Southey Street, St. Kilda. However, in 1939 Gwen cancelled the hospital’s registration and spent the war years running the Altona Air Raid Precautions.

The Melbourne Women’s Walking Club was formed in 1922 by a group of young women excluded from the men-only Melbourne Walking Club. The Club pioneered treks with packhorses supplied by the mountain cattlemen who also acted as guides. In 1936 three members walked the Barry Mountains, the first women to do so.

Over the years their dress changed from long skirts to short skirts to riding breeches (then the only acceptable form of trousers for women). Finally in the 1930s they defied all conventions by wearing specially tailored shorts. World War 2 curtailed activities and led to a decline in the 1950s, but the club rallied and grew again. Later, groups began to travel further afield, both interstate and overseas. Recently there has been an influx of new members and the club continues to provide a wide variety of activities.

Marie Charlotte Bage was best known through her association with the National Council of Women of Victoria, of which she was an inaugural member and treasurer for more than 20 years. She was a member of the International Council of Women and in 1900 she joined the committee of the Convalescent Home for Women at Clayton, and the Parents’ National Education Union. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children also interested her from their beginnings. For many years she was a member of the City Newsboys’ Society and of the Charity Organisation Society.

In 1909 she was the honorary treasurer of the Victoria League of Victoria, and was a member of the council. She was also a member of the Field Naturalists’ Club, the Forest league, the Arts and Crafts Society, and the Royal Historical Society of Victoria. She was one of the first members of the Alexandra Club and a foundation member and one-time treasurer of the Lyceum Club.

She was the mother of Miss Freda Bage, principal of the Women’s College, Brisbane University, and Miss Ethel Bage, who, after a distinguished career at the Melbourne University, took over the control of a motor garage in Kew on the death of her friend, Miss Alice Anderson. Mrs Bage’s only son, Robert, was a member of the Mawson Antarctic Expedition in 1911. He served in the Royal Australian Engineers, and was killed at Gallipoli on May 7, 1915. Her husband, Edward, died in 1891.

Eliza Tuckwell was a very successful business woman and landowner in the Northern Territory. She was one of the few Territory women to pay taxes on her income in 1884 when the South Australian parliament imposed taxes on income. Also, at the age of 59, Eliza was on of 82 women who enrolled to vote after the franchise was granted to South Australian and Territory women in 1894.

Ellen Ryan held licences for hotels in the Northern Territory from 1878, becoming a wealthy and successful business woman in her own right. She had a reputation as one of the Northern Territory’s best hostesses, organising a variety of entertainment for her hotel patrons and local residents.

Ellen was one of the 82 Territory women who enrolled to vote after the franchise was granted to South Australian and Territory women in 1894.

In March 2000, the National Foundation for Australian Women (NFAW) established the Australian Women’s Archives Project (AWAP) in order to support the preservation of Australian women’s archival resources. The project is a joint venture with the University of Melbourne, with staff in the School of Historical Studies providing assistance in the area of historical research, and the eScholarship Research centre providing technical innovation and support.

Joan Weidenhofer was appointed compere of the 9PA Women’s Session and Territory correspondent to the Australian Women’s Session by the Australian Broadcasting Commission during 1954.

Claire Dunn emigrated to Australia in 1957 at the age of twenty. She worked as a presenter and occasional actor on television during the 1960s and 1970s. Dunne joined the Radio Ethnic Australia in 1975, which was subsequently incorporated into the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) in 1976. During the 1980s Dunne produced and directed Eire san Astrail (Ireland in Australia) on SBS. In 1985-1986 she was a member of the council of the Australian Institute of Multicultural Arts.

Dunne produced an ABC radio programme entitled Poems from prisons during the 1970s and during the 1970s and 1980s Dunne was involved with the peace movement and the United Nations Association of Australia. Dunne has also produced books and worked as an occasional journalist, as well as a television and radio script writer.

Josephine Zammit emigrated to Australia from Malta with her husband Charles in 1952. In the late 1960s the couple became Australian representatives of the Malta Emigrants’ Commission and Josephine became involved in radio broadcasting as part of her welfare work with migrants. She was a pioneer of ethnic station 2EA in Sydney and continued her active involvement with ethnic radio broadcasting until the mid-1980s.

In 1978 she was awarded an MBE in the ‘ethnic community’ category, the first Maltese woman in Australia to be honoured in that way.

Grace Amelia Perry studied medicine at the University of Sydney. She had a home-based medical practice at Five Dock and served as an honorary physician at the Renwick Hospital for Infants and as an honorary paediatrician at the Fairfield District and South Sydney Women’s hospitals.

As a child, Grace had written poetry and three collections were published by Consolidated Press Ltd. She began writing poetry again in 1961 and the following year she joined the Poetry Society of Australia.

Grace was editor of Poetry Magazine from 1962-1964. After being expelled from the poetry society in 1964, she established a new Magazine Poetry Australia, which she edited until her death.

Perry won a medal at the New South Wales premier’s literary awards in 1985 and was appointed AM the next year. After failing to receive funding for two projects and feeling abandoned by her supporter, Grace committed suicide at her Berrima home on 3 July 1987.

Fanny Balbuk was a prominent Noongar woman and an informant on Noongar culture and history to anthropologist Daisy Bates. She is renowned for protesting at Government House about the occupation of her traditional land around Perth.

The information which Fanny Balbuk passed on to Daisy Bates played an important role in the native title claim of 19 September 2006, whereby Justice Wilcox of the Federal Court of Australia found that Noongar people held native title rights over parts of the Perth area.

Dr Isabel Ormiston had been working with the Red Cross in London before enlisting in the war effort in World War I. She worked at the Queen of the Belgians’ Hospital at Ostend and La Panne (1914-1915), the Wounded Allies Relief (W.A.R.) Hospital Montenegro (1916-1917), British Red Cross Depot Egypt (1916), and the W.A.R. Hospital Limoges.

Dr Ormiston was awarded the Montenegrin Red Cross and Orders of Danilo and the Nile. She later took up the position of Senior Lady Medical Officer, Egyptian Ministry of Education and in 1928 was awarded an MBE.

Dr Laura Forster was the first Australian doctor to head to the war in Belgium. She joined the British Field Hospital in Antwerp in September 1914.

Laura’s sister, Mrs H. E. Kater, provided funding to the Sydney University Women’s College in her memory, which was to provide for a series of lectures on hygiene. There was also a scholarship in her name.

Jane Macartney was a well-respected and much-loved member of both Irish and Victorian society during the nineteenth century. She dedicated much of her time to working with the sick and poor and was involved in the establishment of an Orphan Asylum, the Carlton Refuge, the Melbourne Home and the Lying-In Hospital.

Jane was the wife of Hussey Burgh Macartney, the Dean of Melbourne from 1852 until his death in 1894.

The Victorian Teachers’ Union (VTU) was established in 1926 following negotiations between the Victorian State School Teachers’ Union, the Victorian High School Teachers’ Union and the Victorian Technical Teachers’ Union.

Betty Feith is a teacher and volunteer whose work inside and outside the classroom has reflected her ideals of a peaceful, just and inclusive society, and her abiding Christian faith. Betty was a co-founder of the Volunteer Graduate Scheme for Indonesia, a programme established in the early 1950s that pioneered the concept of international volunteering as it is understood today. Betty herself worked in Indonesia in a volunteer capacity during the mid-1950s and again in the 1990s, both times with her husband, political scientist Herb Feith. Betty has taught at schools and tertiary institutions in Melbourne and Indonesia, and the Asian Studies and Indonesian history courses she taught in Melbourne during the 1960s and 1970s were among the first of their kind in Victoria. Betty has had a lifetime involvement in church and other service, including for the Christian World Service (renamed Act for Peace), the Division of Social Justice (Victoria) in the Uniting Church of Australia, and other ecumenical organisations.

Ailsa Thomson Zainuddin is a writer and academic who taught at the Faculty of Education at Monash University, specialising in the history of education. Her undergraduate courses at Monash on the history of education in Southeast Asia and the history of education for girls and women, were among the first of their kind in Australia. Her published writing in these fields includes the text-book, A Short History of Indonesia. Ailsa has maintained a close and enduring association with Indonesia, the country where her husband Zainu’ddin was born and raised, and where she herself lived and worked during the 1950s. Ailsa was awarded a PhD for They Dreamt Of A School, the centenary history of Methodist Ladies’ College, Kew; the school she herself attended.

Caroline Williams experienced a ‘pioneering rural life’ on the Mornington Peninsula around the turn of the nineteenth century.

Mary Ann Cannard was one of very few returned WW1 nurses granted a block of land to farm under the Soldier Settlement Scheme.

Helen Baillie was an Aboriginal rights activist and a nurse. She was passionate about Aboriginal issues and was involved in various Aboriginals rights organisations. In addition, Baillie opened her house on Punt Road as a hostel to Aboriginal people from the 1930s to the 1950s.