The Australian Women's Register

A member of the Australian Labor Party, Judy Spence was elected to the Parliament of Queensland as the representative for the electorate of Mount Gravatt in 1989. She is currently the Leader of the House in the Parliament as well as Parliamentary Secretary to the Premier and Minister for the Arts, Anna Bligh. She has held ministerial portfolios, which have included Police and Corrective Services and Seniors, since 1998.

A member of the Australian Labor Party, Margaret Woodgate was elected to the Parliament of Queensland as Member for Pine Rivers at the election, which was held in 1989. In an electoral redistribution, the seat of Pine Rivers was abolished and Margaret Woodgate became Member for the new seat of Kurwongbah at the 1992 election. During her period in parliament she held the ministerial portfolios of Family and Community Services and Minister Assisting the Premier on the Status of Women, from July 1995 until February 1996. She resigned from the Parliament in 1997. Before her election to the state parliament Margaret Woodgate served in local government as a councillor for the Shire of Pine Rivers from 1985-88.

A member of the Liberal Party of Australia, Joan Sheldon was elected to the Parliament of Queensland at a by-election which was held for the seat of Landsborough in 1990. She was the third woman to be elected to the Queensland Parliament and the first outside Brisbane. In the electoral redistribution before the 1992 election, Joan Sheldon stood successfully for the new seat of Caloundra and remained the Member until her retirement in 2004. On her election to the leadership of the Parliamentary Liberal Party on 11 November 1991, she gained the distinction of becoming the first woman to lead a political party in Queensland and the first to lead a Liberal Party in Australia. She held that position until June 1998. During her period in parliament she served as Deputy Premier, Treasurer and Minister for the Arts and Women’s Policy from February 1996 until June 1998. She was Deputy Coalition Leader from November 1992 until June 1998.

A member of the National Party, now the Liberal National Party in Queensland, Fiona Simpson was the youngest person, at the age of 27, to be elected to the Parliament of Queensland in 1992 as Member for Maroochydore. During her parliamentary career she has served as Deputy Leader of the Nationals from 2006-2008 and Deputy Leader of the Opposition for the same period. She currently holds the position of Shadow Minister for Transport and Main Roads.

Liz Cunningham was elected as an Independent to the Parliament of Queensland in 1995, representing the electorate of Gladstone. Before entering the state parliament she served as a local government councillor for the Calliope Shire Council from 1988-1991 and as Mayor from 1991-1995.

Linda Lavarch was the first female lawyer elected to the Parliament of Queensland, Australia. In July 2005 she was appointed Minister for Justice and Attorney-General – the first woman to be Attorney-General in Queensland. As Attorney-General she oversaw the introduction of permanent drug courts in Queensland and the creation of the offence of identity theft. Retiring from state politics in 2009, Lavarch became involved in medical research and the not-for-profit sector, chairing the Not-For-Profit Sector Reform Council. Lavarch stood as the Labor candidate for the Queensland seat of Dickson in the 2016 Australian federal election.

Linda Lavarch was interviewed by Kim Rubenstein for the Trailblazing Women and the Law Oral History Project. For details of the interview see the National Library of Australia CATALOGUE RECORD.

Columba Boylan was orphaned as a baby and raised by a cousin until she was old enough to board at St Mary’s, Cabra in Dublin. She enter the convent there in January or 1864, made profession in August 1869 and held the office of Mistress of Novices in the convent before emigrating to Australia to take charge of the Dominican order in Adelaide in early 1875. There she held the office of prioress for close to twenty years.

She arrived in Adelaide at a time when the Catholic Church in Adelaide was in some degree of disarray and her tenure coincided with a period of stability for that institution. She is credited with the consolidation and expansion of the Dominican Community’s membership and its integration into the local church community. She was very important in the establishment of a viable Catholic school system in Adelaide.

A member of the Australian Labor Party, Catryna Bilyk was elected to the Senate of the Parliament of Australia for a six year term as a Senator for Tasmania at the election, which was held in November 2007.

St Margaret’s Hospital, known initially as St Margaret’s Maternity Home, was founded by Gertrude Abbott in 1893. Located in Elizabeth Street in Strawberry Hills it was founded ‘to provide shelter and care for unmarried girls of the comparatively respectable class. In 1904 the hospital started an outpatients service, and in 1910 St Margaret’s Hospital for Women moved to its final location on Bourke Street in Surry Hills. The work of the maternity hospital and midwifery training was continued from this base until 1998. At its peak, St Margaret’s was the third largest maternity hospital in Sydney. The site was continually extended and rebuilt and specialist services and training courses added, including obstetric and gynaecology training of doctors.

St. Margaret’s Private Hospital was opened in 1946 to assist in the funding of the public facilities. St. Margaret’s Children’s Hospital operated from 1967-1979 for the specialist care of infants and children, particularly the intensive care needs of neonates.

St. Margaret’s Public Hospital closed in June 1993, followed by the closure of the Private Hospital in June 1998. The site of the Children’s Hospital, reused as the Gertrude Abbott Nursing Home, opened in 1982 and remains in operation

On the September 5, 2008, Quentin Bryce assumed the office of Governor-General of Australia, the twenty-fifth person to hold the office, but the first and only woman.

The appointment was the latest in a long line of ‘firsts’ for Bryce. A graduate from the University of Queensland with degrees in arts and law, she was one of the first Queensland women to be admitted to the Queensland Bar. In 1968 she became the first woman to be a faculty member of the Law school where she had studied. In 1984 she was appointed inaugural Director of the Queensland Women’s Information Service, Office of the Status of Women, Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. In the period 1993 to 1996, she was founding Chair and Chief Executive Officer of the National Childcare Accreditation Council. In 2003, she became the second woman to be appointed to the position of Governor of Queensland. She has also served as Queensland director of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. In 1989 she became the Sex Discrimination Commissioner on the commission. And she was one of the first women to serve on the National Women’s Advisory Council, established by the commonwealth government in 1978.

From country stock, raised in a series of small towns scattered around central-west Queensland, Bryce was home schooled by her mother before being packed off to board at Brisbane’s Moreton Bay College, attending the University of Queensland subsequently. At university she reacquainted herself with an architecture student, Michael Bryce, whom she had first met as a nine-year- old. They started dating and married in 1964. They now have two daughters, three sons and five grandchildren.

Of his decision to recommend Quentin Bryce to the role of Governor-General, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in 2008 said:

It’s obvious that we needed to have a governor-general for Australia who captures the spirit of modern Australia, and the spirit of modern Australia is many things. Giving proper voice to people from the bush and the regions, giving proper voice to the rights of women, giving proper voice to the proper place of women in modern Australia and proper place to someone committed to the lives of, improving the lives for Indigenous Australians. These are all considerations in shaping my recommendation to her Majesty the Queen.

Of her own appointment as Governor-General, Quentin Bryce has remarked:

I grew up in a little bush town in Queensland of 200 people and what this day says to Australian women and to Australian girls is that you can do anything, you can be anything, and it makes my heart sing to see women in so many diverse roles across our country and Australia.

A member of the Australian Labor Party, Vi Jordan was elected to the Parliament of Queensland as Member for Ipswich West at the state election, which was held in 1966. She was the second woman to be elected to the Queensland Parliament. She was re-elected in 1969 and 1972, but was ultimately defeated in 1974. Before entering the state Parliament, she served as a Councillor for the Ipswich City Council.

A member of the Liberal Party of Australia, Rosemary Kyburz was elected to the Queensland State Parliament as the Member for Salisbury in 1974 after an unsuccessful attempt in 1972. She was re-elected in 1977 and 1980, but was ultimately defeated at the 1983 election. While a Member of Parliament she married fellow parliamentarian Robert George Akers on 18 January 1981 and was the first sitting female member to give birth to a son in 1982.

Beryce Nelson represented both the Liberal and National Parties in the Queensland Parliament. She was elected as the Member for Aspley, representing the Liberal Party of Australia, in 1980. In August 1983, during her first term in parliament, she was appointed Government Deputy Whip, the first woman to gain the position, but was unfortunately defeated at the election, which was held in the same year. After her resignation from the Liberal Party in 1984 and on joining the National Party in 1985, she won the seat of Apsley in 1986 for the National Party and was appointed Minister for Family Services in 1989. She was the third woman to hold a ministerial portfolio in Queensland.

A member of the Liberal Party of Australia, Marise Payne was appointed to the Senate of the Parliament of Australia, representing the state of New South Wales, in 1997. She was elected in 2001 and re-elected in 2007. She held various Shadow portfolios from December 2007 until September 2013, was Minister for Human Services (2013-15) and appointed Minister for Defence in September 2015.

In 1868 Bishop Sheil of Adelaide requested the assistance of the Dominican Sisters of Cabra to set up a secondary school for the daughters of the early white settlers of Adelaide, South Australia. A school, with provision for boarders, opened at Franklin Street Adelaide in 1869. The school continues to exist today at different premises and under the name of Cabra Dominican College.

Known as the Josephites or the ‘Brown Joeys’ (on account of the brown habits they wore), the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart were founded in Penola, South Australia in 1866 by a teacher, Mary MacKillop, and an English priest, Reverend Julian E Tenison Woods. Both were concerned about the needs of children in remote areas growing up without Catholic education or religious training.

Unique to their ministry was their view that, to do their best work, members of their flock needed to move out of the convents and into the community. This belief, in effect, saw the Sisters adopt an administrative structure which eventually saw Mary McKillop excommunicated in 1871. The order was removed in February of 1872, and a full Episcopal investigation of the order cleared her of any wrong-doing. It did, however, impress upon her the need to obtain higher authority to conduct her ministry in the way she saw fit.

In 1873-74, Mary MacKillop went to Rome to seek approval for what was, essentially, a cloisterless organisation of women religious. She returned victorious, with Constitutions for this new and different kind of religious institute in hand, a document that defined an administrative structure specifically suited to Australian conditions. It allowed for the sisters to leave their convent and serve the poor in the districts where they lived.

Even today, Josephites live among ordinary people in houses of two or three providing education and support for the children and families living in rural areas as well as the cities.

Caroline Rowland was an English born, German trained nun of the Ursuline order who made profession in October 1873, taking the religious name Mary Cordula. A casualty of the 1877 Falk laws that dissolved and/or expelled teaching religious orders throughout the German Empire, she returned from Germany to England in 1878 where she helped to establish, in Greenwich, a school for girls which still flourishes under the Ursulines.

In 1882, after accepting an invitation from Bishop Elzear Torreggiani to come to Australia, twelve sisters, including Sister Cordula, arrived in Sydney, to join him in the vast diocese of Armidale in northern New South Wales. They arrived in the inland town on 12 September, 1882. Here they established a day and boarding school for girls which grew rapidly: St Ursula’s College, Armidale, drew its students from all over New South Wales and Queensland and even from Victoria. They also took responsibility for the parochial primary school which had existed under lay administration since the 1850s.

Sister Cordula proved herself to be an adaptable and energetic teacher, business woman and administrator. She held various offices in the religious community: treasurer several times after 1885, superior (1898-1904 and 1905-11) and mistress general of the boarding school (1911-19).

She was well loved and much admired, and developed a reputation as a fair and broadminded person. Her friendly manner endeared her to the members of her own religious community as well as to the wider local community.

The Ursuline order of nuns dates back to the sixteenth century when Angela Merici founded them in the northern Italian town of Brescia in 1535. Its presence in Australia dates back to 1872, when twelve of their order travelled from England to Armidale in New South Wales, at the invitation of Elzear Torreggiani – Bishop of Armidale. Knowing full well the Ursulines commitment to providing quality, Catholic education to girls, he requested that they join him in his quest to spread the word and teach the young in remote New South Wales. Thus began their influence in Australia, which is particularly strong in New South Wales and south east Queensland.

The Institute of the Sisters of the Good Samaritan of the Order of St Benedict was founded by Archbishop Polding at Pitt Street, Sydney on 2 February, 1857. It was the first institute of religious women founded in Australia. Until 1866 the sisters were called Good Shepherd Sisters but the title was changed to avoid confusion with an older order of the same name.

Born and educated in Ireland, Geraldine Gibbons arrived in Sydney, New South Wales with her family in 1834. She and a sister joined the newly-arrived Sisters of Charity, and on 17 July 1847 Geraldine was professed as Scholastica, beginning work in the Female Factory at Parramatta. On 9 April 1848 she went to Sydney to establish a home for penitent women in Campbell Street. The home was moved to Carter’s Barracks in Pitt Street in March 1849.

At around the same time, the Archbishop of Sydney, John Bede Polding decided to found an order following Benedictine rules but suited to Australian conditions. He found a group of volunteers and requested Mother Scholastica to be superior of both orders. On 2 February 1857 she helped to establish the Community of the Good Shepherd which took the name of the Good Samaritan to avoid confusion with a similar congregation in Europe. She acted as a Novice Mistress and Superior for the Good Samaritans for nearly ten years, wearing the habit of the Charity order while living with the Good Samaritans. Both the Samaritans and the Sisters of Charity prospered under her leadership.

A member of the Greens Party, Christabel Chamarette was appointed to a casual vacancy in the Senate of the Australian Parliament in 1992, as Senator for Western Australia, on the resignation of Jo Vallentine. She held the position of The Greens Deputy Whip from May to June 1996. She was defeated at the 1996 general election.

A member of the Australian Labor Party, Susan Mackay was elected to the Senate of the Parliament of Australia as a Senator for Tasmania in March 1996. She was re-elected in 2001. During her terms in parliament, she held a number of Shadow ministries, which included Employment and Training, Industrial Relations, and Regional Services, Territories and Local Government. She was Opposition Whip in the Senate from 2001 until 2004. She resigned from the Parliament in 2005.

The Society of the Sacred Advent is an Anglican religious order founded in 1892 by Caroline Amy Balguy (later to be known as Mother Caroline). She migrated from England to do the job at the request of the Reverend Stone-Wigg, Vicar of St John’s Pro-Cathedral in Brisbane, Queensland, who saw the need for an Anglican religious order for women in Brisbane. In its early days, the Society of the Sacred Advent focused on ministering to the needs of women and children. It established several schools and children’s homes throughout Queensland in order to advance its mission

The Society still has two girls’ schools located in Brisbane; St Margaret’s and St Aidan’s. Although the Sisters are no longer involved in the day-to-day running of the schools, two Sisters remain active on each of the School Councils.

Emma Crawford probably migrated to Brisbane in 1896 and almost immediately involved herself in the work of the Society of the Sacred Advent, a religious order committed to the care of Brisbane’s underprivileged women and children. She presided over the Society’s establishment of Anglican schools (all public teaching in Queensland was legislated secular) and made them financially viable. After developing an industrial school for wayward girls in Brisbane, the community took charge of a school in Stanthorpe in 1909 which was later moved to Warwick and named St Catharine’s. She also helped to establish boarding schools for girls in Townsville, Herberton, Charters Towers, Yeppoon and Brisbane.

By the time Mother Emma died, in 1939, the Society was active in three of Queensland’s five Dioceses – this despite never having more that thirty professed sisters working during the course of her lifetime.

A member of the Australian Labor Party, Jean Hearn served as a Senator for Tasmania in the Senate of the Australian Parliament from 1980 until the expiration of her term in 1985, when she retired.

Her first husband died in 1944 in a prisoner of war camp in Java, an event that sparked Jean Hearn’s life-long commitment to pacifism. She established the Tamar Community Peace Trust in 2015, seeking to promote a non-violent approach to conflict resolution.

Jean Hearn passed away in 2017.

A member of the National Party, Flo Bjelke-Petersen was elected Senator for Queensland in the Senate of the Australian Parliament in 1980. She held the position of Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate from 1985 until 1990 and retired from parliament in 1993. She was married to Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, who served as Premier of Queensland from 1968-87.

A member of the Liberal Party of Australia, Susan Knowles was elected to the Senate of the Parliament of Australia as a Senator for Western Australia in 1984. In 1987 she was elected Deputy Opposition Whip in the Senate, a position she retained until 1993. She remained in Parliament until 30 June 2005, having served for more than twenty years.