The Australian Women's Register

Official War Artist during World War II, Stella Bowen received early art training in Adelaide under Margaret Preston. In 1914 she sailed for Europe to study at the Slade School, London, where she was taught by Walter Sickert. Bowen travelled extensively on the Continent and her circle of artistic and literary figures include Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein and Ford Madox Ford. Bowen lived with the novelist Ford for nine years and they had a daughter, Julia. Her chief interests were portraits and she was a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy. Also Bowen exhibited in America. In 1943 Bowen was offered a commission as an official war artist. Working mainly in Britain she illustrated the actions of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) as well as the lives of the returned prisoners of war. Following the war she had hoped to return to Australia, for the first time since she left, but died in London of cancer on 30 October 1947.

The daughter of South Australian landscape painter Sir Hans Heysen, Nora Heysen was the first woman to win the Archibald portrait prize (1938) and the first women to be appointed as an Australian war artist on 12 October 1943. During her service Heysen completed over 170 works of art. Following the war she travelled to England and in January 1953 married Dr Robert Black, who was to become the Head of Tropical Medicine at the University of Sydney. On 26 January 1998 Nora Heysen was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for her service to art as a painter of portraits and still life subjects.

Alice Speedie, the daughter of the Reverend John and Susan (née Long) Burns was treasurer of the Housewives’ Association of Victoria for 20 years. Educated at Clarendon College, Ballarat Victoria and Inglemere College, Adelaide, South Australia, she married Charles Speedie on 10 October 1905. They had three children. A member of the executive to the Children’s Cinema Council of Victoria, Speedie was President of the Australian Women’s National League, Elsternwick branch, between 1939-1943. She later became vice-president of the branch. A delegate to the National Council of Women of Victoria and the Youth Problem of Today committee, Speedie was the President of the Housewives’ Association of Victoria, Elsternwick branch. Aged 76, Alice Speedie died in 1955.

Bella Guérin became the first woman to graduate from an Australian university when she was awarded her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Melbourne (number 255) in December 1883. She taught first at Loreto Convent, Ballarat then as lady principal of Ballarat School of Mines university classes, resigning upon marriage to Henry Halloran. A civil servant and poet, Halloran married Guérin on 28 June 1891 aged 80. Following his death Guérin married George D’Arcie Lavender.

Bella Guérin was politically active and a member of the suffrage movement. She became vice-president of the Women’s Political Association in 1912, and later joined the Labor Party.

Senior Lecturer and Convener of the Classics Program at the Australian National University (ANU), Dr Ann Moffatt was one of the first women wardens of a mixed hall of residence when acting warden of Bruce Hall at the ANU in 1973.

Moffatt attended Unley High School in Adelaide and University High School, Melbourne, before graduating with a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) from the University of Melbourne. She obtained her Master of Arts from the Australian National University and her Doctor of Philosophy from the University of London.

Daughter of Arthur Walker and his wife Frances (née Sinclair), Ellinor Walker was born in Melbourne, Victoria and moved to Adelaide, South Australia when she was nine years old. She attended the Wilderness School, and was awarded the Tennyson Medal for English at the age of fifteen. Walker graduated as a kindergarten teacher, and spent two years as Director of the Halifax St Free Kindergarten. She then opened the Greenways School at her family home in Fullarton, and directed this for 24 years. At the age of eighteen she and a friend formed a Girls’ Club to study political matters, and this led to her joining, at the age of 21, the Non-Party Association. She was an active member of this for 65 years, and when (as the League of Women Voters, which it had become) it voluntarily ended in 1979, she gave the valedictory speech. She was a passionate supporter of the League of Nations and the movement to maintain world peace. In 1940, with the help of Roma Mitchell (later Governor of South Australia) she drew up the Bill which became the Guardianship of Infants Act, No. 55 (1940), giving mothers equal rights with fathers over their children. In 1962 and 1963 she organised an Australia-wide campaign which resulted in recognition of the needs of civilian widows with dependent children. She was a member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). In 1964 she helped form the Local Government Women’s Association, and in 1971 was president of the Women’s Christian Temperance League, of which she had been a member since 1935. Walker wrote several historical pageants and she also wrote a monologue, ‘The Story of the Franchise: How Women Won the Vote in SA’ (1944) for the Golden Jubilee of Women’s Suffrage. Her poem ‘Lullaby’ was set to music by Ruby R McCulloch, and is held in the Mortlock Library. Ellinor Walker was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire on 12 June 1971 for her service to the community.

Marlienne Thomson was born at Ceduna, South Australia. After two years as a dental nurse she began training at the Royal Adelaide Hospital (RAH) in 1951. When training was completed she had appointments as staff nurse and charge nurse at the RAH. Marlienne attended the College of Nursing, Australia in 1958 and gained a diploma in ward management and teaching. On her return to Adelaide she was active in introducing new procedures at the RAH. She resigned in 1961 to attend the Adelaide Bible Institute and in 1964 went to South India to serve as a missionary at the Christian Medical College and Hospital at Vellore. She was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in June 1995 for her service there.

Joan Durdin, author of They Became Nurses: A History of Nursing in South Australia, 1836-1980 (1991) and Eleven Thousand Nurses: A History of Nursing Education at the Royal Adelaide Hospital 1889-1993 (1999), was a nurse educator and historian who contributed much to the advancement of nursing through the development of advanced education in the higher education sector. In addition to her ten years’ teaching at Royal Adelaide Hospital she spent six years as a nurse educator in Papua New Guinea. She conducted extensive oral history interviews for the Royal Adelaide Hospital Heritage and History Committee, 1991-1998. Durdin received an Honorary Doctorate from Flinders University in 1994, was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 1985 and is commemorated by the Joan Durdin Oration, an annual event initiated and sponsored by the Department of Clinical Nursing at the University of Adelaide.

Berthe Mathilde Fritsch (née Simpfendor) was born in 1896 in the Baranduda – Leneva District in Victoria, Australia. Her father was a Lutheran Pastor. She took over the housekeeping duties after her mother died in 1920. She married Walter Fritsch in 1922, moved to New South Wales then back to Victoria, before settling in Adelaide in 1938 at St Stephen’s. There she joined the Lutheran Women’s Guild, and the Lutheran Women’s Association of South Australia. Fritsch served on the Ladies’ Committee of Emmanuel College from 1942-1971 and represented the Lutheran Women’s Association at the Women’s Jubilee Convention in Canberra in 1951. In 1954 she went to Minneapolis, USA, to the LWF (Lutheran Womens’ Federation?) assembly. She had 5 daughters who all graduated from the University of Adelaide.

Helen Jericho (née Vogelsang) was born 20 August 1896 at Kapperamanna, an outpost of Bethesda Mission near the Birdsville Track. Her father was a lay missionary, and one of the founders of Bethesda Mission. She left the Mission after her father’s death in 1916, and married in 1920

Maria Elizabeth Jacob (née Auricht) was born 10 May 1841 in Klemzig, South Australia. She married Wilhelm G. Irrgang on 4 September 1862, who died in 1872. She then married Ernest Jacob on 24 May 1878. She worked with Aboriginal people at Bethesda Mission Station and died on 13 October 1924.

Anna Maria Vogelsang (née Auricht), was born 3 September 1855 at Langmeil (Tanunda). She wanted to become a missionary and in 1877 met Hermann Heinrich Vogelsang who was a missionary at Bethesda Mission Station. She worked at Bethesda and Kopperamanna Missions. Her husband died in 1913 and she later moved to Lowbank to be with her children. She died on 12 October 1945.

Alison Gent, née Hogben, was born at Rose Park, Adelaide and brought up by her widowed working mother. She attended Walford School and went on to gain an MA at Adelaide University. She married an Anglican priest in 1947 and they had five children. In 1970, Alison returned to part-time tutoring and saw publicity about the proposed Women’s Liberation Movement, and she became heavily involved in its activities. In 1980, the year that Alison and her husband separated, she began a discussion group about the ordination of women, her interest stemming in part from her personal frustration. She became involved in the Movement for the Ordination of Women, which began in Adelaide in 1984. She remains a committed Christian and feminist.

Barbara Hardy, née Begg, was born at Largs Bay, Adelaide. She attended Woodlands Girls’ School and began a science degree at Adelaide University aged 16. She married Tom Hardy in 1948. During the 1950s and 60s family and sport were Barbara’s chief interests, however camping holidays also awakened her concern for the environment. In 1972 she began voluntary work with the Conservation Council and in 1974 started a degree in earth sciences at Flinders University. With growing expertise as a lobbyist, Barbara assisted David Wotton, Shadow and then Minister for the Environment in the late 70s and early 80s. Her husband died in 1980. Barbara resigned from the Liberal Party so that her activism could be non-party based, and since then has applied her ‘patience, persistence and perspiration’ to many organisations and issues, including the Australian Heritage Commission, Landcare, the National Parks Foundation and the Science and Technology Centre.

Lenore Bishop, née Wilson, was born in Mount Gambier, South Australia where her father was a butcher. After finishing high school she began working, first as a legal secretary, then as a journalist, and then with her husband in a hardware business. Lenore became heavily involved in community work during her three children’s school years. Following the retirement of Mount Gambier’s first woman councillor in 1959, Lenore was asked to stand. She was re-elected two years later unopposed. At this time she was one of very few women in local government. In 1964 Lenore nominated for mayor and was unopposed, becoming the first woman mayor in South Australia. Lenore retired from council in 1967 but returned as the region’s first woman alderman in 1972.

Elizabeth Furner (formerly Laurenson and Guy) was born in London, England. Her parents separated when she was a child. Elizabeth married a soldier in 1941 and they emigrated to Australia in 1952 with their four year old son. They came to Adelaide, via Tasmania and Sydney, in 1961. It was at this time that Elizabeth began taking an interest in both writing and local government, stimulated by her disgust with discriminatory franchise laws. She joined the Australian Local Government Women’s Association, rising quickly to President of the South Australian Branch, and did much public speaking as well as standing for council in North Brighton. In the early 1970s Elizabeth founded the Brighton Writers’ Workshop from which the South Australian Branch of the Society of Women Writers was formed.

Jessie Goodes, née Tate, was born in Salisbury, South Australia. She attended St Peters Girls’ College and married in 1939. Experience working in her husband’s St Morris delicatessen meant that she was able to gain employment in a Salisbury grocery shop when she was widowed with three children. Jessie attended a local meeting arranged by the Apex Club in 1958 to form a South Australian branch of the Civilian Widows Association, and was elected President – first of the local sub-branch, and in 1959 of the state branch. Two weeks later she was in Sydney for the formation of the national body.

Christobel Oldfield, née McInnes, was born at Millicent, South Australia and grew up on a farm west of Lucindale. She began her education by correspondence and then attended local schools before finishing at Scotch College in Adelaide. She married in 1977 and had two daughters. Chris did further studies part-time and in 1985 breached the male bastion of the Greenways branch of the United Farmers and Stockowners to gain insight into issues she was studying in Psychology. She became politically conscious as a child when her parents were involved in a legal dispute over drainage rates, but assisting in her mother’s Lucindale shop gave Chris a wider understanding of the impact on families of the rural crisis. In July 1993 Chris and five other women formed Rural Women for Justice to educate outsiders and set up legal aid and mediation services.

Christobel was a 1994 nominee from South Australia for ABC Rural Woman of the Year

Diana Penniment, née Thomas, was born in Adelaide, South Australia. She attended Methodist Ladies College for her secondary education. Her family could not support further studies, so she worked in a bank until her marriage in 1956, when she moved with her husband into a two room cottage on his father’s property at Wirrega, near Bordertown. They had four children as the children grew up Diana became involved in public affairs, from school activities and craft groups to helping form a local branch of the Women’s Agricultural Bureau (WAB). Diana rose to State President of WAB in 1986. Highlights of her term included organising two international conferences. Diana also sat on the South Australian Rural Advisory Council. In 1991 she decided to focus on local issues and stood for the Tatiara District Council.

Kathleen Russell was born at Mount Gambier, South Australia. She came to Adelaide to live in 1936. Following the death of her husband in the late 1960s she became active in the Housewives Association and was Vice-President for a time. She died in Adelaide in 2005 at the age of 94.

Irene Jeffreys was born in London, England. She migrated to Australia in 1922 with her parents. Determined from the age of 12 to be an accountant, Irene attended Adelaide Technical High school. She went to work at the age of 16 but studied for the Federal Institute of Accountants diploma at night at the School of Mines. In 1942 she was the first South Australian woman to qualify by examination for the Institute of Chartered Accountants. Irene’s accountancy practice and personal interests included much involvement in the Church of England, particularly the Church Missionary Society and the General Synod, where she pioneered the involvement of South Australian women. Irene supported the movement for the ordination of women and is herself licensed as a lay preacher. For many years she was involved with the National Council of Women. On 3 June 1978 Irene Jeffreys was appointed an Officer to the Order of the British Empire for service to the church, women, children and the aged.

Andi Sebastian has a diverse work background including having established the Women’s Information Service, been General Manager of the AIDS Council of South Australia, Manager of the Disability Complaints Service and Equity and Diversity Consultant at the University of Adelaide.

She now runs an independent business specialising in the management of diverse workgroups and interpersonal complaints in the workplace. She has two degrees from Flinders University, a Masters degree in Primary Health Care and a Bachelor of Arts (Hons).

She can be contacted via her business email address: andi.sebastian@d-q.biz

Lorna Esme Adams, née Eames, was born in Torrensville, South Australia. She trained at the Adelaide Teachers’ College and met her future husband after taking up her second teaching post at Black Hill in 1942. In 1945 they began dairy farming at Black Hill, moving to Paracombe three years later. After their infant son died of cystic fibrosis and their older boy was also diagnosed, they decided to settle at Ponde for the drier climate. Their second son died in 1955. Lorna has had three enduring interests; the Girl Guides movement and the Country Women’s Association, both of which she has represented at State level, and the Holstein-Fresian dairy cattle stud that she and her husband developed. Lorna and her husband Jack’s surviving daughter has had nine children.

Mary Lee became secretary of the Women’s Suffrage League of South Australia in 1888. She served with the Female Refuge ladies’ committee, the Distressed Women’s and Children’s Committee and the Adelaide Sick Poor Fund, and was secretary of the Working Women’s Trades Union.

Veronica Brodie (née Wilson) was born at the Point McLeay Mission. She moved to the Port Adelaide area in 1971, an area to which her grandmother’s had links. For a time Brodie worked with the local Aboriginal Community including an Aboriginal Friendship Club for parents and children at the Port Adelaide Central Methodist Mission. She has been involved with the development of the regional Aboriginal Co-ordinating Committee; Kura Yerlo, the Aboriginal Centre in Largs Bay and the Nunga Miminis Women’s Shelter.

Born at Point Pass in 1901, Jessie March was educated at Adelaide High School and Teachers Training College. She joined the New Britain Methodist Mission in 1925, becoming principal of Vunairima Girls School in 1939. In 1940 she was a governess at Brachina Station in the Flinders Ranges. She was also a Croker Island Methodist Mission teacher in 1941 before being evacuated in 1942. After the war she taught in state government schools before returning to New Britain in 1967. She moved to Papua New Guinea’s eastern highlands in 1971 to translate bibles. Her life and work have been commemorated by the Jessie March Library at George Brown High School, New Britain.

The daughter of Edward and Amy (née Thiselton) Dolling, Alison Dolling was born in St Peters and grew up in Tranmere, South Australia. She was educated at Ellerslie College, Tranmere, and Methodist Ladies College, Wayville, before studying at the universities of Adelaide, Washington, Seattle, Berkeley and King’s College, London. Returning to Australia she taught in both South Australia and New South Wales, including ex-servicemen after World War II. Dolling joined the Chronicle newspaper as the editor of the Women’s Pages and was unemployed after the Chronicle closed down. Her publications include Chronicle cameos and a district history of Marion. She completed research on John Harvey and the Spoehr family, as well as being involved with family history and German ancestry. She also worked on the book South Australian Women Artists by Shirley Cameron Wilson. Dolling’s special interests included Australian history, especially early architecture, literature and art.