The Australian Women's Register

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.)

Dorothy Johnston is an award-winning novelist, poet, short story writer, and author of reviews and literary essays. Her crime writing portrays the darker side of Canberra.

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

A former Canberran of the Year (1984), and Centenary Medal winner, Frederika Steen has been actively involved in community, refugee, multicultural and human rights activities for thirty years. She retired from the Department of Immigration in 2001 after a distinguished career in settlement services and three years’ service as the Chief Migration Officer, in the Australian Embassy in Germany. In 1984, in response to recommendations that where possible, federal government departments should establish women’s units, the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs established a Women’s Desk. Frederika Steen was the inaugural head of the Women’s Desk between 1984-87. Her major focus, while director of the women’s desk, was to provide information and build up the confidence of migrant women to ‘do it for themselves’ and make demands on the system.

In 2006 she is a volunteer worker at the Romero Centre in Brisbane, a group of Australians supporting refugees on temporary visas.

The Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA) was a division of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. It was established early in 1987 to advise the Prime Minister directly on issues relating to Australian multicultural society. The purpose of the office was to be that of a ‘bridge-builder’, linking community and government to further the policy of multiculturalism. To that end, it had a liaison and Community Information Branch and a Policy and Research Branch. The focus of the community information program was on building upon research undertaken and evaluating ongoing projects. Although most staff were located in Canberra, there were Regional Coordinators in each State and in the Northern Territory, so there was some attention to decentralised services.

In early 1995 the functions of the OMA were to be transferred to the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs. For administration purposes, OMA officially ceased to be part of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet on 26 January 1995.

A Ngambri-Ngunnawal elder, Matilda House has a long-established connection to Canberra and its surrounding regions as one of the traditional custodians of the land.

Canberra’s initial depiction as a civic utopia was captured and communicated by the hand of Marion Mahony Griffin. A remarkably talented draftswoman, Mahony Griffin was responsible for the plan and perspective renderings which accompanied her husband Walter Burley Griffin’s entry for the 1912 design competition for the new Australian capital. Lithographed onto cambric, the exquisite panels fanned out over twelve metres, shining with the golden, burnished splendour of the Australian bush. Conceived and created in less than ten weeks during a bitterly cold Chicago winter, Mahony Griffin enshrined a distinctively Australian landscape on the winning design, without ever having been to the southern site. Her grand vision was finished only when ‘toward midnight of a bitterly cold winter night, the box of drawings, too long to go in a taxi, was rushed with doors open … to the last train that could meet the last boat for Australia’.

Marion Mahony Griffin’s creative force has hesitantly received richer recognition as her prowess as an architect and an artist have continued to be seen in a more independent light.

Helen Maxwell is a freelance curator, art valuer and consultant. She is best known as a curator of contemporary art in Canberra, where she lived from 1979 to 2014. Helen now lives and works on the south coast of New South Wales, where she organises art projects and exhibitions.

Gumbaingerri born of Bundjalung/Thungutti descent, Robyne Bancroft’s people come from the northeast coast of New South Wales. For many generations since colonisation, her family (matrilineally) have passed on their genealogies and oral traditions.

On the slopes of Capitol Hill, overlooking a vast plain and the wandering Molonglo, Lady Denman pronounced in a clear voice, ‘I name the capital of Australia – Canberra’. It was Wednesday, 12 March 1913. While Lady Denman performed the naming rites her husband, the Governor-General, Lord Denman, laid a commemorative foundation stone. The site for the city was selected in accordance with Section 125 of the Constitution which stipulated that the federal seat of government would be located within the state of New South Wales, but not within a 100-mile radius of Sydney.

While playing her role in the creation of Canberra with aplomb, Lady Denman was destined for a higher realm of public duties, later becoming famous as ‘chairman’ of both the National Federation of Women’s Institutes and the National Birth Control Association in Britain.

In 1996, Kate Lundy became the youngest Labor representative in the Senate and the youngest woman ever elected to represent the Australian Labor Party in Federal Parliament. She was 28 years old.

On 11 September 2010, Lundy was appointed Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration and Citizenship and Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister and Cabinet as part of the Second Gillard Ministry. In a subsequent reshuffle in March 2012, Lundy was appointed as the Minister for Sport and she was also made Minister for Multicultural Affairs and Minister Assisting the Minister for Industry and Innovation. On 1 July 2013, as part of the Second Rudd Ministry, Lundy retained the portfolio of Multicultural Affairs and gained the portfolio of Minister Assisting for the Digital Economy. She resigned from the Senate on 24 March 2015.

Australian in My Difference is an online exhibition that celebrates Australian women by focusing on the ways that women from diverse cultures, particularly, but not exclusively, those who came in the latter part of the twentieth century, have contributed to Australian society through their roles in the home, family, community leadership and public life. It not only aims to highlight the achievements of some remarkable women, but to add to the growing scholarly and public discussion about migration as a ‘gendered process’; one that is now undergone by more women than men, not only in Australia, but on a global scale.

The project is a joint initiative of the Australian Women’s Archives Project, the Department of Immigration, Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs and the University of Melbourne.

Elba was born into a strongly socialist working-class family in Chile, which became closely associated with the government of Savador Allende and was forced to flee Chile following his assassination. On settling in Canberra she instigated a strike of workers at the at the Health Services Supply Services laundry at Mitchell in 1987. In 1991 she joined the staff of the Beryl Women’s Refuge, where she is still employed. She has assisted many Chilean refugees settle in Canberra and has been involved in a number of community organizations.

Lily Ah Toy was well known and respected across the Northern Territory; so well respected that, as part of the bicentennial events in 1988, she was one of only eight Territory women to be recognised for their contributions and achievements. Her family were key figures in the Pine Creek and Darwin (Northern Territory) Chinese communities, although, they came to be well regarded across ethnic boundaries, for the extent of their generosity and involvement in the community, her efforts in 1974 to assist people made homeless and hungry by Cyclone Tracy being a case in point.

At various times in her life, Lily was involved in school mother’s clubs, church councils, the Red Cross and various Chinese organisations. In 1982, Lily graduated from the Northern Territory University with a diploma in ceramics. At 65 years of age she was the oldest graduate.

Lily’s family was very poor but, through hard work and commitment, they made their place in the Territory. It is important that Lily and other Chinese Australians are now recognised as an important part of our Northern Territory history.

A member of the Liberal Party of Australia, Jan Wade served as the member for Kew in the Legislative Assembly of the Parliament of the State of Victoria from 1988-99. As a Minister in the Liberal Government from 1992-99, she held the portfolios of Attorney General, Fair Trading and Women’s Affairs.

Educated at Sydney Girls’ High School, Firbank Church of England Girls’ Grammar School and the University of Melbourne, Jan Wade worked as a solicitor in private practice (1964-67), in the Parliamentary Counsel’s office from 1970-79 and as president of the Equal Opportunity Board (1985-88) before entering parliament in 1988.

Go to ‘Details’ below to read a reflective essay written by Jan Wade for the Trailblazing Women and the Law Project.

Marion Lê has advocated on behalf of refugees since the arrival of the first Vietnamese boat people in the mid-1970s. She has received a number of awards for her tireless work over three decades, including the 2003 Human Rights Medal.

In 1979, Gracia Baylor became the first woman member of the Liberal Party to be elected to the Victorian Legislative Council when she was electedthe member for Boronia. That year, she was one of the first two women to be elected to the Upper House, the other being Joan Coxsedge of the Australian Labor Party. Baylor held her seat until 1985 when she resigned to contest (unsucessfully) the Legislative Assembly seat of Warrandyte.

Una B. Porter (née Cato) was a renowned psychiatrist, philanthropist and devotee of the Methodist Church in Melbourne, Victoria. She was the first female member of staff at Ballarat Mental Hospital in 1946. In 1963 she was elected World President of the YWCA and travelled extensively. In recognition of her services to the community she was appointed Officer of the British Empire (OBE) in 1961, and Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 1968.

Tracey Moffatt is an internationally renowned Aboriginal photographer, documentary maker and director. Moffatt’s photography is reflected in her films and documentaries, which explore Aboriginal culture by confronting commonly held stereotypes.

Tracey Moffatt was born in 1960 in Brisbane, where she graduated from the Queensland College of Arts. Her debut film, Nice Coloured Girls, won the Most Innovative Film award at the 1988 Festival of Australian Film and Video. At the same festival, she won the Best New Australian Video award for her 5-minute Aboriginal and Islander dance video, Watch Out. Moffatt also produced Moodeitj Yorgas, which includes interviews, dances, and storytelling by Western Australian Aboriginal women. Her film Night Cries: A Rural Tragedy (1990) draws from the 1955 Chauvel film Jedda.

Moffatt’s photographic exhibitions include “Some Lads” and “Something More”.

Fanny Cochrane Smith was born in 1834 at Wybalenna settlement on Flinders Island in Bass Strait. From the age of seven she spent her childhood in European homes and institutions, mostly in the household of Robert Clark, catechist at Flinders Island, in conditions of neglect and brutality. When Wybalenna people were moved to Oyster Cove she went into service in Hobart, but returned to Oyster Cove the same year.

On her marriage in 1854 to William Smith, sawyer and ex-convict, she received an annuity of £24. In 1857 they moved to Nicholls Rivulet and took up a land grant, and the first of their 11 children was born the following year. They supported the family by growing produce and splitting shingles. After Truganini died, she claimed herself to be ‘the last Tasmanian’. Her annuity was raised to £50, and she was granted 120 ha of land. She became a Methodist and an active fundraiser, donating land for a church.

Cochrane Smith was proud of her Aboriginal identity, and of her knowledge of food gathering and bush medicine. She became famous for her wax cylinder recordings of Aboriginal songs, now housed in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery.

Janet Clarke (née Snodgrass) was a society hostess and leading patron of good causes in Melbourne from the 1880s until her death. She was a member of the Charity Organisation Society, the Austral Salon, the Melbourne District Nursing Society, the Talbot Epileptic Colony committee, the Alliance Française, the Dante Society, the Women’s Hospital Committee, the Hospital for Sick Children and the City Newsboys’ Society. She helped to organise the Women’s Work Exhibition in 1907. Clarke’s influence was such that she became the first president of the National Council of Women of Victoria in 1902, and of the Australian Women’s National League in 1904.

Anne Fraser Bon had just turned twenty and was newly married when she arrived in Victoria, from Scotland, in 1858. Her husband, John, who was twenty-eight years her senior, was already well-established in pastoralism at Wappan Station in the Bonnie Doon area of south-eastern Victoria. Anne accompanied him to what was then a remote area and bore five children in quick succession. She was widowed at the age of thirty, in 1868, when John Bon died of a heart attack.

Unusually for a women, after her husband’s death, Anne Bon assumed management of the station. She was also unusual amongst her peers for her attempts to act on the behalf of the indigenous people of the region. A devout Presbyterian and humanitarian, Anne Bon supported Aborigines’ resistance to increasing state regimes of control and surveillance. While some of her ideas and goals for the ‘improvement’ of Aboriginal people now seem paternalistic and outdated, many members of indigenous communities nevertheless expressed gratitude for her assistance in thwarting if not defeating the diminution of Aboriginal entitlements and civil rights. It was a cause she remained actively committed to until her death in 1936.

Gay Davidson was the first female political correspondent for a major newspaper in Australia, the first woman President of the Australian Commonwealth Parliamentary Press Gallery, and a great mentor and friend to a vast array of journalists, not least women taking advantage of the openings to them in that profession during the 1970s and 80s.

Wendy McCarthy is an experienced businesswoman who has assumed many major leadership roles in both the public and private sectors for nearly forty years. Her first experience as a political lobbyist came about when, newly pregnant, she and her husband joined the Childbirth Education Association (CEA) in Sydney, campaigning for (amongst other things) the rights of fathers to be present at the births of their babies. Since then, she has had three children, and been an active change agent in women’s health, education, broadcasting, conservation and heritage and Australian business.

Her senior executive and non-executive positions have included: CEO – Family Planning Association of Australia (1979-84); Member – National Women’s Advisory Council (1978-81); Member – Sydney Symphony Orchestra Council; Director – Australian Multicultural Foundation. She has held executive and non-executive director roles in many of Australia’s leading private and public institutions including Executive Director, Australian Federation of Family Planning Associations; Deputy Chair of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) for eight years; General Manager of Marketing and Communications, the Australian Bicentennial Authority; Chair of the National Better Health Program; Executive Director of the National Trust; Director Star City; Chair of the Australian Heritage Commission; and Chair of Symphony Australia. In 2005 she compiled ten years as Chancellor of the University of Canberra.

In 2013 she is Chair of Circus Oz, McGrath National Youth Mental Health Foundation and Pacific Friends of the Global Foundation. In 2010 Wendy became a Non-Executive Director to GoodStart Childcare Limited. In 2009 after 13 years of service to Plan International, she retired from her most recent role as Global Vice Chair. She is Patron of the Australian Reproductive Health Alliance.

Wendy’s contribution to Australian life has been recognised in various ways. In 1989 she became an Officer of the Order of Australia for her contribution to community affairs, women’s affairs and the Bicentennial celebrations and in 1996 she received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of South Australia. In April 2003 she was awarded a Centenary of Federation Medal.

Truganini was the daughter of Mangana, chief of the Bruny Island people. A survivor of The Black Wars that accompanied European settlement in Tasmania, her life epitomises the story of colonial encounters in Tasmania, the clash of two disparate cultures and the resistance and survival of indigenous Tasmanians.

After losing her mother, her sister and her prospective husband at a young age, all of them the victims of colonial violence, Truganini worked hard in the early 1830s to unify what was left of the indigenous communities of Tasmania. An intelligent, energetic and resourceful woman, she worked with white authorities to protect other survivors of The Black Wars who had been forcibly removed from their homelands. In 1830 George Augustus Robinson, a Christian missionary was hired to round up the rest of the indigenous population and he settled them on Flinders Island. Truganini and her husband, Woorrady, helped Robinson in this venture in the hope that removing them would protect them from further violence. Unfortunately, the shock of resettlement, combined with the unsanitary conditions the people were forced to live in, proved fatal and the resettlement program did not work. The result was the virtual annihilation of the one hundred or so people left – mainly due to malnutrition and illness.

Truganini went with Robinson to Port Phillip in 1839 where a similar settlement was attempted with mainland nations, again with disastrous results. This time, having learnt from the Tasmanian experience, Truganini joined with the Port Phillip people when they resisted Robinson’s plans but she was captured and sent back to Flinders Island.

In 1856 there were only a few remaining indigenous survivors left in Tasmania, Truganini among them, who were taken to Oyster Bay. By 1873, except for Truganini, all of the people taken there had died. Truganini was moved to Hobart where she died in 1876. She had no known descendants.

Even in death she was not left in peace. Her skeleton was on display in the Tasmanian Museum from 1904 to 1907. It was not until 1976 that her remains received a proper burial. Aboriginal rights workers cremated Truganini and spread her ashes on the D’Entrecasteaux Channel, close to her birthplace.

Despite being labelled as such for many years, Truganini was not the ‘last Tasmanian Aborigine’, as the population of mixed descent Aboriginal people living in Tasmania readily attests to. Nevertheless, the story of her life and death remains immensely important, not only as a symbol of the plight of indigenous Australians, but as an example of the insensitivity of museum practices.

Catherine (Cathy) Freeman was born in Mackay in Queensland in 1973. As a very good runner, she won a scholarship to boarding school where she was able to have professional coaching. In 1994 she became the first Aboriginal sprinter to win a gold medal at the Commonwealth Games, going on to win a silver medal in the 1996 Olympic Games and then gold at the Sydney Olympics in 2000.

She is very proud of her Aboriginal heritage and has carried the Australian and Aboriginal flags around the track after winning a race, which at times has resulted in public controversy.

She was made Young Australian of the Year in 1990 and Australian of the Year in 1998. She is the first person to receive both awards.