The Australian Women's Register

Mary Delahunty won the seat of Northcote (Legislative Assembly) for the Australian Labor Party, in a by-election in August 1998. She held the ministerial portfolios of Education, the Centenary of Federation, Planning, Arts and Women’s Affairs. Before entering politics, she was Managing Director of her own media consultancy company, also a former ABC journalist and long time member of the Journalist’s Union. She retired from politics at the state election in November 2006.

A member of the Australian Labor Party, Sherryl Garbutt was elected to the seat of Greensborough in 1989 at a by-election following the death of Pauline Toner; the seat of Greensborough was abolished in the 1990 redistribution. She was the Member (ALP) of Parliament for the Bundoora electorate from 1992-2006 and held the portfolios of Environment and Conservation and Women’s Affairs from 1999-2002 and Community Services from 2002-06. She did not contest the 2006 election.

Lynne Kosky was elected Member (ALP) for Altona in 1996. On the election of the Labor Government at the 1999 Victorian state election, she held the portfolios of Finance, and later Post Compulsory Education, Training and Employment. After her re-election at the 2002 state election, she was appointed the Minister for Education and Training. She was re-elected at the 2006 state election and held the portfolios of Public Transport and Minister for the Arts. In January 2010 she resigned from the parliament, citing serious family health problems as the reason for her resignation. She died at Williamstown on 4 December 2014.

Edith Onians was a full-time volunteer (organiser and honorary secretary) from 1897 until her death in 1955 of the Melbourne Newsboys Society. She was the first woman Special Magistrate appointed to Children’s Court Melbourne in 1927, and was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (Civil) on 2 January 1933 for services to child welfare in Victoria.

Mervyn Davis commenced A Catalogue of Botanical Collectors and Delineators in 1955. She was elected first individual member and delegate for Australia to the International Federation of Landscape Architects in 1959, a position she held for ten years. Davis was the first woman elected a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Parks and Recreation in 1964, and in 1969 she was elected as the first Fellow of the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects.

On 14 June 1980, Mervyn Davis was appointed a Member of the British Empire for her work in the public service.

Vivienne Abraham was active in the Australian peace movement for several decades. She was Honorary Secretary of the Peace Pledge Union (1946-52), acting editor and editor of the ‘Peacemaker’ and Honorary Secretary and Treasurer of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (1982-89).

Anna Vroland was an activist and writer who campaigned for Aboriginal rights in the 1940s and 1950s.

A member of the Liberal Party of Australia, Sharman Stone was elected to the House of Representatives of the Australian Parliament representing the electorate of Murray, Victoria in 1996. She was appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment and Heritage on 21 October 1998 and served in that capacity until October 2004, when she became Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance and Administration. She also served as Vice-President of the Executive Council. She was Minister for Workforce Participation from January 2006 until December 2007. She was re-elected in 1998, 2001, 2004, 2007, 2010 and 2013 and retired at the 2016 Federal election.

A member of the Liberal Party of Australia, Judith Troeth was elected as a Senator for Victoria in the Parliament of Australia in 1993. She was appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Primary Industries and Energy from October 1997 until October 1998, when she moved to become Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. She held that position until October 2004. She retired at the 2010 federal election, but remained in the Senate until her term expired on 30 June 2011.

Vida Goldstein ran for the Australian Senate in 1903. Though she was not elected, she was the first woman to be nominated for the Australian Parliament.

Margaret Manion was a lecturer (1972-1978) before becoming a Professor of Fine Arts at the University of Melbourne in 1979, then Emeritus Professor in 1995. She was the first woman chair of the Academic Board from 1987 to 1988, and Pro-Vice-Chancellor from 1985 to 1988. She was a member of the Loreto Sisters and was awarded an AO in 1989 for services to the arts and education.

Model Jo Bailey co-hosted the television game show Sale of the Century from 1991 to 1993. She married Carlton football player Stephen ‘SOS’ Silvagni in 1996, and has two sons – Jack and Ben.

Janine Burke was a founding member of Lip, an Australian journal devoted to feminism and the performing and visual arts. She curated a number of exhibitions including Australian Women Artists: One Hundred Years, 1840-1940 (1975); Joy Hester (1981); and The Eye of the Beholder: Albert Tucker’s Photographs (1998). Burke is the author of several books and has been a board member of the Heide Museum of Modern Art since 1997. She received the Victorian Premier’s Award for fiction in 1987.

The Northern Territory gained their first female representative in Federal Parliament in 1998 when Patricia Crossin was chosen to replace the Hon. R. L. Collins, following his resignation. She was re-elected in 1998, 2001, 2004, 2007 and 2010 but was replaced by Nova Peris as the preselected Labor candidate for the 2013 election. Prior to entering Parliament Crossin worked as Branch Secretary for the National Tertiary Education Union (NT Branch) from 1996 to 1998 after spending six years as the Union’s Industrial Officer. Between 1978 and 1989 she worked as a primary school teacher.

She was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 2023 for significant service to the Parliament of Australia, and to the community of the Northern Territory.

Margaret Blackwood graduated from the University of Melbourne with a BSc in 1938 and MSc in 1940. During the Second World War she served with the Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force and then was granted an ex-service postgraduate scholarship for Cambridge, where she gained a PhD for her work in plant genetics. In 1951 Blackwood returned to Melbourne and was a senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne until 1974. She was then elected a member of the University Council and in 1980 became the first female Deputy Chancellor. She held both these positions until her retirement in 1983. She was appointed as a Member of the British Empire in 1964 for work in botany and was appointed a Dame (Order of the British Empire – Dames Commander) for her services to education in 1980.

Freelance oral historian, scholar, curator of photography and writer of children’s stories. In 1995 she won the Young Readers/Picture Book award from The Family Therapy Associations of Australia for Grandpa and Ah Gong. Her work deals extensively with the immigrant experience, especially that of immigrant women and their children. Loh is a former member of the Advisory Council on Multicultural Affairs
(Source: Left-Wing Ladies, Suzane Fabian and Morag Loh)

Edith Bonney passed her University of Melbourne Matriculation examination in Algebra, Geometry, English, History, Arithmetic, Geography, and Elementary Physics held in November 1889, and received her certificate 29 March 1890.

(Source: Historical Note University of Melbourne Archives)

Edith married Stewart Frank Wylie at ‘Cleffcote’ in Sandringham, Victoria, on 6 February 1907.

Audrey Cahn was the first woman to complete the newly established agriculture degree at the University of Melbourne in 1928. Born to parents who were influential scientists themselves, she developed a life long interest in the field of nutritional science and went on to pioneer the academic field of dietetics. Regarded in the 1950s and 60s as a ‘soft science’ by the then university’s head of biochemistry, Victor Trikojus, Cahn fought a long battle for respect, one in which she was eventually supported by major funding bodies such as Nicholas Pty Ltd (Aspro).

Her research output in the field of nutritional biochemistry is well respected. Some of her studies undertaken during her time at the University of Melbourne (1947-68) included examining the physical properties and energy value of common dietary foods, so that she could compile calorie tables. She was an early proponent of the need to reduce fat intake and to substitute polyunsaturated fatty acids for saturated fats. With colleagues in the anatomy department, she participated in a 17-year longitudinal study of “Child Growth in Melbourne (1954-71)”. The study was compared with similar studies in the United States and Britain and found that Australian children were overweight and inactive compared with their peers elsewhere.

Cahn enjoyed a very long life, thanks, she said, to a combination of good luck and good genes.

Pauline Toner stood as a candidate for the Australian Labor Party in the Legislative Council Province of Templestowe at the Victorian state election, which was held on 20 March 1976, but was unsuccessful. She was elected Member of the Legislative Assembly at a by-election for Greensborough in 1977 and served until 1989. While in Parliament she was Minister for Community and Welfare Services (1982-1985) and a former Shadow Minister for Community and Welfare Services and Women’s Affairs.

Following her education at the Brigidine Convent Horsham, Toner obtained the subsequent qualifications TPTC, BA (Melb) and BEd (La Trobe). She held positions at the State College of Victoria (1974-1975), and SCV Hawthorn (1975-1977). Toner began the first woman Shire President of the Diamond Valley Council (1977-1978), where she was a Councillor from 1973 to 1979.

Married to Brian Toner on 2 January 1962 and the mother of five children (1s 4d) her recreations included: canoeing, bushwalking and chess. Also she was a director of the Victorian State Opera and a member of Amnesty International and the National Trust

Miss Marjorie Connor was born in Colac, Victoria in 1906 and died in Balwyn on 7 May 1991 aged 84. She was educated by a governess an later attended Lauriston before training as a nurse at the Alfred Hospital 1925-1928. After graduation she worked in the private consulting rooms of a dermatologist who used radium. She sustained some radium burns to the hand. From 1945-1972 she was the Executive Secretary of the Royal Victorian College of Nursing. Both it and its successor the RANF Vic. Branch awarded her Honorary Life Memberships. After her retirement she became the Hon. Secretary/Treasurer of the Florence Nightingale Committee Vic. Br. until shortly before her death.

(Source: Historical Note University Melbourne Archives)

Isabel Clifton Cookson was born in Melbourne in December 1893 and educated at Hambledon Ladies’ College and later at the Methodist Ladies’ College before entering the University of Melbourne where she graduated B.Sc. in 1916. She tutored at Newman and was appointed as Lecturer in Botany “including evening”) for 1930 and remained associated with the Department until her death on 1 July 1973, when she was still a Research Associate. She visited Europe for the first time in 1925, and in 1929 studied at the University of Manchester under Professor Lang, a specialist in fossil plants. In 1948 she received a Leverhulme Research Grant and in 1952 attended the 40th session of the Indian Science Congress.

Joan Coxsedge was the first Labor woman to be elected to the Victorian Legislative Council as the Member for Melbourne West Province in July 1979. She served until 1992. While in office she wrote and produced the newsletter, Hard Facts For Hard Times, from her Footscray office, in which she offered a left view of current local, national and international events.

(Source: Historical Note Melbourne University Archives)

Barclay is the Professor of Family Health and Director of the Centre for Family Health and Midwifery at the University of Technology Sydney.

Prior to commencing an academic career Barclay, who is a registered nurse and midwife, worked in a range of midwifery and women’s health and community development roles. She also has degrees in social sciences and education plus doctoral research into sexuality and pregnancy.
In 1997 The Hon. Dr Michael Wooldridge, the Federal Minister for Health, appointed Barclay to the National Health and Medical Research Council. She was re-appointed for a second three-year term in 2000. Also she is a founding member of the Australian Council for Safety and Quality in Health Care.

(Source: http://www.familyhealth.uts.edu.au/about/lbarclay.html accessed 18/02/02 and http://www.aut.ac.nz/conferences/healthpolicy/speakers.shtml accessed 18/02/02)

Marjorie Tipping was a prolific writer and historian of art and colonial Australia. In 1990, based on her many published scholarly works, she became the first woman to earn the degree of Doctor of Letters by examination from the University of Melbourne. Tipping’s books include Eugene von Guerard’s Australian Landscapes (1975) Ludwig Becker: Artist & Naturalist with the Burke & Wills Expedition (1978), Melbourne on the Yarra (1978) and Convicts Unbound: The Story of the Calcutta Convicts and Their Settlement in Australia (1988).

Tipping was the first woman president (1972-1975) and fellow (1968) of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria. She was a member of the Victorian Council of the Arts and numerous other committees and community organizations, often in a voluntary capacity. Tipping was appointed as a Member of the Order of the British Empire (13 June 1981), for her contribution to the Arts.

Tipping was the patron of and one of the founders of the E W Tipping Foundation for Mentally Retarded Children and Adults, established in 1970. Tipping travelled on six continents; her interests included music, theatre, archaeology, Australiana, and Chinese art.

Source(s): Personal Communication (2002), Who’s Who of Australian Women, Who’s Who 2002.

A descendant of the Wergaia and Wamba Wamba people of western Victoria, Eleanor Bourke, née Anderson, formerly Koumalatsos, married Colin Bourke and had two children: Sia and Kelly. Eleanor and her family moved to Murraydale, near Swan Hill, Victoria in 1945. She attended primary and high school in rural Victoria and was awarded the degrees
Dip Arts Journalism (RMIT), BA Writing (CCAE), and MEdStud (Adelaide).

Eleanor’s work includes policy concerning Aboriginal people in both the Victorian and Commonwealth governments and academia. Positions held include: Associate Professor in Indigenous Affairs and the Director of the Aboriginal Research Institute, Faculty of the Aboriginal and Islander Studies, University of South Australia; Professor of Aboriginal and Islander Studies and Director of Aboriginal Programs at Monash University; member of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Family Law Council and the National Aboriginal Consultative Committee; Fellow of the Australian College of Education; and Chair of the Yoorrook Justice Commission. She was a Co-Chair of Reconciliation Victoria for three years, Board Member for the Victorian Aboriginal Heritage Council for twelve years and a Board Member of Native Title Services Victoria. Her membership of community-based organisations include the Victorian Aboriginal Advancement League, the Victorian Aboriginal Education Consultative Group and Camp Jungai Cooperative Ltd.

Eleanor Bourke was inducted into the Victorian Honour Roll for Women in 2010 and the Victorian Aboriginal Honour Roll in 2019 and was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 2022 for significant service to Indigenous heritage, to justice, and to education.

(Sources: Aboriginal Women by Degrees Mary Ann Bin-Sallik, ed. University of Queensland Press, 2000.)

Enid Derham was a poet and an academic who photographed her travels to Egypt, the Mediterranean, Europe, and England during 1927.

Margaret Jackson was born on March 17, 1953 in Warragul, Victoria, educated at Warragul High School and studied Economics at Monash and Business Administration at Melbourne University.

Margaret was chairman of Qantas from 2000 to 2007. She has been a director of Qantas since 1992 and her other directorships include ANZ since 1994.
Margaret is married to Roger Donazzan and they have 2 children.

(Source: Herd, Margaret (editor) Who’s Who in Australia, 2002 38th edition, Crown Content, Melbourne.)

[NB: the above biography was researched and written by Philida Sturgiss-Hoy]