The Australian Women's Register

Kerry Sculthorpe-Randriamahefa grew up on a farm at Nicholls Rivulet near Oyster Cove in southern Tasmania. After leaving school at 16 and working at a number of jobs, including secretarial work, waitressing and labouring, she travelled overseas. She received a Diploma in Natural Healing in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1972, and completed bilingual studies in Business and Commercial Practice in 1975. She lived in France and Madagascar before returning to Tasmania in 1977.

In 1981 she received her Bachelor of Arts (Social Work) degree from the University of Tasmania, and in 1987 completed a Graduate Diploma in Public Policy at the Australian National University in Canberra. She worked at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies in the research and administration sections before joining the Australian Public Service in 1987. Since 1990 she has been the manager of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission in Tasmania. She has participated in national forums on indigenous education, health, land rights and legislation, and published a number of papers and reports on Aboriginal issues.

Mundja, of Kukatja descent, was born at Naaru in the Canning stock route area of the Great Sandy Desert in northern Western Australia. Her husband, a much older man, had several wives and caused her a leg injury which brought her ongoing trouble. In the 1940s her family moved out of the desert to Balgo.

Mundja spoke several languages from her area, and was a custodian of many songs, ceremonies and dances, especially women’s. She was one of the two women leaders in the important, partly secret Djuluru Dreaming complex that travelled through the Kimberleys and the Northern Territory. She travelled widely to ceremonial gatherings at places such as Yuendumu, Kintore, Christmas Creek, Jigalong and Wiluna, and to Broome and Derby, to renew contacts with relatives and create new friendships. She acted as an adviser on Aboriginal traditions in the local school, and was nominated as a local Justice of the Peace. She was also engaged in the women’s art movement at Balgo.

Gracelyn Smallwood, of Biri descent, was born and grew up in Townsville, Queensland. She obtained general nursing, midwifery and psychiatric nursing certificates from the Townsville hospital. She helped establish the Townsville Aboriginal Medical Service before working for a year as a volunteer among remote Aboriginal communities. In the 1970s and 1980s she studied indigenous health services in the United States and China. Upon her return to Australia, she worked for the national trachoma and eye health program, and the Pitjantjatjara council in northern South Australia. In 1985 she became matron of the Hetti Perkins home for the aged in Alice Springs.

Smallwood continued her studies, enrolling in a Master of Science degree at James Cook University in Queensland. She was appointed adviser on indigenous health to the federal Minister of Health, and has since become a leading commentator on AIDS among Aboriginal communities.

In 1989 Smallwood became the proprietor of ‘Birri’s Walkabout’, an outlet for Aboriginal arts and crafts at the Townsville airport. In 1991 she was a founding member of the advisory committee formed to guide the Aboriginal and Islander Health Worker journal.

Nanny, whose original name is unknown, was probably born into the Toolinyagan group of the Yorta Yorta (Pangerang) people. She married a man named Jackey, of the Pallangan-mittang group of the Waveroo people further up the Murray River. After a number of violent clashes between the Riverina peoples and the incoming pastoralists, Nanny and Jackey settled on Barnawartha station.

In May 1843 Jackey was shot by the convict drover Jack Tunnecliffe, following which the Pallangan-mittang and Yorta Yorta attacked several stations in the vicinity to avenge his death. Two settler shepherds and at least five Aboriginal people were killed during these raids. Nanny protested Jackey’s murder to the Commissioner of Crown Lands at Ulupna, who duly informed Governor Gipps. Nothing, however, was done about it.

In the mid-1870s Nanny, together with her daughter Ellen and son-in-law Charcoal, moved to the Maloga mission, to join her relatives. The women were very distressed when missionary Daniel Matthews showed them some photographs of the dead Yorta Yorta people they had known. When five of Ellen’s grandchildren died, Nanny observed traditional mourning ceremonies by burning herself with firesticks. She herself was among the many Yorta Yorta people who died in 1881-82.

Mimbingal Violet (Vai) McGinness Stanton, of Kungarakany and Gurindji descent, attended primary schools in Darwin and Katherine. Following the bombing of Darwin in 1942, she was evacuated to South Australia, where she completed her primary education. At the end of the war, she returned to the Northern Territory, became a wardsmaid at the Katherine hospital and completed a correspondence certificate course in English.

In 1964 Stanton was appointed as an instructor in home management at the Bagot reserve by the Aboriginal welfare branch of the Northern Territory administration. In 1969 she was awarded a scholarship to the South Pacific Commission community education training centre in Fiji, and then became a welfare officer in the Northern Territory administration’s social development branch. She became involved with a women’s group, Djuani, and the Aboriginal Development Foundation, and through these two organisations helped to improve housing, women’s arts and crafts and occupational training for young people.

In 1973 she became a founding member of the Aboriginal Arts Board of the Australia Council. She helped establish the Foundation of Rehabilitation with Aboriginal Alcohol Related Difficulties (FORWAARD) in 1976 and later became its coordinator. She was also one of the central figures in the 1983 Maranunggu land claim.

Maudie Naylon was the last fluent speaker of the Ngamini and Yarluyandi languages.

Cherry O’Keefe was an excellent horsewoman with a leading knowledge of the Ngawun language.

Alice Warrika Oldfield, of Kuyani descent, was born on Callanna station in South Australia. She grew up on Millers Creek station where her parents worked. As a very small child, she was attacked and nearly killed there by the station geese. Though she was badly injured, it was the geese who were all mysteriously found dead the next morning.

Alice married Sandy Dinta Oldfield, the famous last Ngamini rainmaker. They lived and worked on stations on the Strzelecki and the Birdsville Track, mainly Etadunna. In the 1950s they retired to Marree, where Sandy died in 1964.

Alice was devoted to traditions and was a rainmaker in her own right, though this was ignored by people who came to visit Sandy. She kept traditions alive by organising the Wandji-Wandji corroboree at Stuart Creek in the early 1930s; she knew the karlapa, the Arabana women’s dance; and she made rain at a ceremony she organised in 1969, when she was almost totally blind. She was a speaker of Arabana, and most of what has been preserved of the Kuyani language is due to her.

June Oscar, of Punuba descent, was born in 1962 at Fitzroy Crossing, Western Australia. She was sent to Perth for her secondary education at the John Forrest senior high school. She left school at the age of 16.

After returning to Fitzroy Crossing, Oscar worked for the state community welfare and health departments. She later became a women’s resource officer with the Junjuwa community. She chaired the Marra Worra Worra resource agency until 1991, when she was appointed to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission for a two-year term as a commissioner.

She was a principal of Bunuba Productions, which made the film Jandamarra, based on the life of ‘Pigeon’, the leader of Punuba resistance against European settlement.

Pansy Napangati, of Luritja and Walpiri descent, was born at Haasts Bluff in the Northern Territory. When the settlement at Haasts Bluff became abandoned due to lack of suitable water, the family moved to Papunya. There Napangati began painting in the 1970s, when the Papunya art movement was still in its infancy. She learnt to paint by observation; watching two established artists, Johnny Warangula and Kaapa, at work. Anmanarri Nungurrayi, her mother’s cousin, taught her the Dreamings which became the inspiration for and subject of her paintings.

Napangati’s work is held in the National Gallery of Victoria, the Holmes a Court collection and the museums and art galleries of the Northern Territory. In 1989 she won the National Aboriginal Art Award.

Louise Pepper-Conolly was of Kurnai descent. Her mother was killed by squatters and she, in her grandsons’ words, ‘was overtaken and wounded by gun pellets’. Later, in search of her own people, she settled on the Ramahyuck mission. There she married Nathaniel Pepper, and the couple were given charge of children in the mission orphanage house.

Upon her husband’s death in 1877, Louise remained in charge of the orphanage which, at times, housed 20 children as consumption took its toll on the Kurnai. In 1886, government assimilation policy forced Louise and her family from Ramahyuck to Stratford. She was on call to many of the people who had been residents at Ramahyuck.

A stone monument commemorating Louise Pepper-Conolly has been placed in the main street of Bairnsdale, Victoria.

Marmburra Wananumba Banduk Marika has been an active member of the Aboriginal arts scene since 1980, working with prints and film.

On Australia Day 2019 she was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) ‘for distinguished service to the visual arts, particularly to Indigenous printmaking and bark painting, and through cultural advisory roles’.

Co-founder of the National Council of Aboriginal and Island Women in 1970, Hyllus Noel Maris co-wrote the award-winning Women of the Sun, which was later adapted as a screen production by the ABC.

Matilda Thompson was an active member of the Ballarat community. She raised a substantial sum of money for Ballarat’s Avenue of Honour during the First World War and opened her home, Sunways, as a refuge for ex-servicemen.

Maroochy Barambah is a distinguished indigenous musician whose career since the 1970s has spanned the genres of jazz, rock, musical theatre and classical opera.

Louisa Lawson was an independent and resourceful woman who fought for women’s rights during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in Australia. Married at eighteen years of age to Niels (Peter) Larsen, later Lawson, she produced five children, one of whom died in infancy. Another child, Henry became one of Australia’s most famous writers. On her move to Sydney from country New South Wales in 1883 she supported her family by doing washing, sewing and taking in boarders. In 1887 she bought the Republican and with her son Henry edited and wrote most of the newspaper’s copy. In 1888 she established the Dawn, a journal devoted to women’s concerns and continued publication until 1905. In May 1889 Louisa launched the campaign for female suffrage and announced the formation of the Dawn Club where women met to discuss ‘every question of life, work and reform’ and to gain experience in public speaking. Louisa Lawson could claim success when women in New South Wales gained the suffrage in 1902.

A committed advocate for Aboriginal health and welfare, Naomi Ruth Mayers was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia in 1984 in recognition of her services to the community – much of her work was centred in the Aboriginal community of Redfern, Sydney.

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.

Jessie Shillingsworth, of Margany descent, was born at Beechal Creek, north of Eulo in southwest Queensland. As a girl, she lived at Guwany-Mungarie camp, near the present Bundoona station. She married Arthur Shillingsworth and raised four sons and two daughters.

Jessie was the last person to have extensive knowledge of the language and culture of her people. She had not spoken her language for forty years prior to 1967, when she was first asked about it. She subsequently contributed many words to the grammar of her language published by Hazel McKellar in 1984. Jessie was also strongly opposed to the alcohol that was causing such damage to her people.

Fanny Brownbill was the first woman Labor Member of Parliament in Victoria. She held the Legislative Assembly seat of Geelong for ten years from 1938 until her death in 1948. In Parliament she focused on issues relating to women, children and the family.

Judy Trew Thandripilinha (‘Poisonous Snake’), of Yarluyandi descent, was born in c.1865, probably on Goyder Lagoon in South Australia. She took the name ‘Trew’ from one of the early station people. Her first husband was Kuranta (‘Sticknest Rat’), also called ‘Lagoon Charlie’, and her second husband was the highly respected old Wangkangurru man, Yarinjili Todd.

Judy lived and worked on old Clifton Hills and The Bluff, remaining in or close to her own country. She had an excellent knowledge of the bush, and taught her grandchildren about sites and stories, including her own main tradition, the Song Cycle of the Swan. Nearly all the sites recorded on the Diamantina in South Australia are based on her traditions. In c.1936 she organised the last expedition, by camel, to collect pituri from the traditional site west of the Mulligan.

Annie (“Grannie”) Moysey, of Gunu descent, was born on the banks of the Warrego near Fords Bridge north of Bourke, New South Wales. She was reared by her grandmother, and learnt not only her grandmother’s language, Gunu, but also Margany and Wangkumara. She spent most of her adult life working hard on stations along the Darling, mainly at Old Toorale. She raised her own children and grandchildren as well as a number of others. Late in her life she settled in Wilcannia. She was trained in esoteric practices as a ‘clever woman’, and she once saved a man’s life and sight after he had been struck by lighting. She was the last person in the area who could ‘corroboree’ in the traditional style and she was asked to demonstrate this on important occasions. She lived to be about 100 years old. Her last days were spent sitting on the verandah of the Wilcannia hospital, smoking her pipe.

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”.

Lucy Beeton spent most of her life on Badger Island, though she was sent to Launceston as a young girl to receive a Christian education. In adult life, the well-loved Beeton provided an education for the children of sealers on Badger Island and entertained visitors there.

Jeanie Bell is a linguist and educator who has lived and worked in Queensland, Victoria and the Northern Territory. Over the course of her career Bell has made an extraordinary contribution to the development of Aboriginal education within the tertiary sector, and to the preservation of Aboriginal linguistic heritage.

Mary Ann Bin-Sallik has played a monumental role in the advancement of Aboriginal studies with a proliferation of posts in the tertiary sector. She has been part of government committees of inquiry into Aboriginal employment; discrimination in employment; and the forced removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.

In 2017, Mary Ann Bin-Sallik was made an Officer in the General division of the Order of Australia ‘for distinguished service to tertiary education as an academic, author and administrator, particularly in the area of Indigenous studies and culture, and as a role model and mentor.

Nerida Blair, daughter of Harold Blair, was born in Victoria. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree, a Graduate Diploma in Education and a Master of Arts (Honours) in Education.

Blair has held a number of positions lecturing in Aboriginal Studies, and counselling and tutoring in various educational institutions. From 1984 to 1989 she was Head of the Aboriginal Education Support Unit at the Catholic Education Centre in Sydney. In 1989 she moved to Canberra to become a Policy Officer for the Department of Employment, Education and Training. She then joined the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Canberra for one year, and was actively involved in indigenous people’s issues nationally and internationally.

1990 saw Blair move to Sydney to become a Policy Adviser with the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. In 1998, she was appointed Associate Professor to the Umulliko Indigenous Higher Education Research Centre at the University of Newcastle.