The Australian Women's Register

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.

Gloria Brennan, of Pindiini (Nyanganyatjara) descent, was born in 1948 in the eastern goldfields of Western Australia. She graduated in linguistics and anthropology from the University of Western Australia in 1978.

Brennan was one of the founders of the Aboriginal Medical Service and Aboriginal Legal Service in Western Australia. She continued her work in Canberra with the Equal Employment Opportunity Bureau of the Public Service Board. She was Aboriginal Australian delegate to the Second World African and Black Festival of Arts and Culture in 1977 and travelled extensively, making contacts with other indigenous people. She was also a classical pianist. Brennan died of cancer in 1985.

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.

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.

Alice Marshall Moyle was an ethno-musicologist of high renown whose work is always referred to whenever Aboriginal music is studied in schools and tertiary institutions. A talented musician, she was prompted by a talk by A.P. Elkin, then Professor of Anthropology at the University of Sydney, to undertake a study of some recordings of Aboriginal music he had made. She was awarded the Master of Arts (Hons) for this work in 1957. She then undertook her own field trips to complete the first systematic attempt to identify and musically characterise the many different styles and genres of Aboriginal music found in northern and central Australia. Her doctoral thesis, awarded in 1975, was one outcome of this work.

Moyle was a founding member of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (AIAS) and became a Research Officer there from 1964 to 1965. From 1966-73 Moyle was AIAS Research Fellow in Ethnomusicology, based at Monash University and later a Research Fellow and Research Officer at the Institute in 1973 and 1974 respectively. Her work included the documentation of Aboriginal sound instruments, the history of Aboriginal music and dance through film, field recordings, archaeo-musicology, analysis, taxonomy, and the cataloguing and indexing of ethno-musicological material held in the Institute. She took a great interest in the preservation of recorded sound material and was the guiding force behind the establishment of the ‘Sound Archive’ at the (then) AIAS.

Moyle also played a key role in the establishment of the Musicological Society of Australia and in 1982-83 served as the Society’s National President. She was later instrumental in forming a branch of the International Council for Traditional Music in Australia. She became a Member of the Order of Australia – General Division on Australia Day 1977, was elected as an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities on 4 November 1994, and received a degree of Doctor of Music (honoris causa) from the University of Sydney in 1989 and another from the University of Melbourne in 1995.

Elspeth Young was a geographer who spent many years studying Indigenous communities in Australia and Papua New Guinea. After completing her PhD in human geography at the Australian National University in 1977, she was appointed to the position of Research Fellow in the ‘Aboriginal component in the Australian economy project’ led by Fred Fisk in the Development Studies Centre, ANU. In 1978, while working with Fisk, Young began a study of the newly established Aboriginal-owned pastoral enterprise at Willowra station, north of Alice Springs. Thus began her interest in Aboriginal land management from which she became one of the most influential champions of the Aboriginal English term ‘Caring for Country’.

Subsequently, she became the first geographer to have worked on Northern Territory land claims, contributing to the successful claims to Ti Tree and Mt Allen (1980-85). Her professional expertise was also usefully employed while she was a Senior Research Fellow (1982-1985) in the North Australia Research Unit of the ANU in Darwin. At this time, Young contributed to the East Kimberley Impact Assessment Project led by Nugget Coombs and a study on Aboriginal mobility.

Young made a significant contribution to a variety of professional organisations. She was a Council Member of the Institute of Australian Geographers (1987-1992); editor of Australian Geographical Studies (1989-1992); holder of the IAG Professional Services Award for 1998; Member and then Chair of the National Committee for Geography; Treasurer and member of the Executive Committee of the Federation of Australian Social Science Organisations; and Chair of the Australian Antarctic Naming and Medals Committee.

Carol Mills was appointed librarian at the newly-formed Canberra College of Advanced Education in 1969. Her publications include a bibliography of Northern Territory literature and numerous articles on early Australian writers, book illustrators and book history. She worked subsequently as librarian of the Charles Sturt University at Wagga, and the University of the South Pacific in Suva, where she published articles on library management and literacy in the South Pacific.

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.

Vim Wlehelm was named after the Vickers Vimy, a reconditioned WWI fighter bomber that flew from London to Australia and landed on the day she was born. Her father, Roy Klopper, was an early enthusiast of flying and had built his own aeroplane as a young man. Her mother, Jessie Sullivan, was a midwife and matron of the local hospital at Crystal Brook, north of Adelaide, South Australia. They named their daughter Eileen Vimy but she was nearly always Vim. Jessie died when Vim was ten, and Vim left school at the age of twelve to look after her four siblings. She picked up her formal education again at the age of seventeen when she went to Royal Adelaide Hospital to be a nurse. In 1943 she married a young doctor, Don Wilhelm (with whom she had two children), and graduated top of the state in 1944.

Once graduated, Vimy trained as a family planning nurse at the Marie Stopes Centre in London and learned to appreciate the worth of volunteering. Returning to Australia in 1960 and with some encouragement from Ruby Rich of the Racial Hygiene Association, Vimy joined the Family Planning Association of Australia (FPAA), where she eventually served as president and chief executive officer, on a full-time, volunteer basis. “She ran the organisation as efficiently as she appears to have done everything else in her life,” notes a friend. “She turned it from an organisation that had virtually no profile at all, into one that was respected by the medical community and by the community at large.” She was later appointed Patron of the Australian Federation of Family Planning Associations (AFFPA), and in 1976 was awarded the Order of Australia in recognition of her pioneering work in family planning. Between 1976 and 1997, Vimy held the Presidency of the NSW Committee of UNICEF and was elected a Life Member in 1994.

After leaving UNICEF in 1997, Vim, at the age of 78, immediately offered her services to the University of New South Wales alumni association as a volunteer.

Gabrielle Pizzi, fanatical Collingwood Football Club supporter and granddaughter of the colourful Melbourne, Australia, identity John Wren, was one of the driving forces behind the acceptance of indigenous art in the wider community. In the early 1980s, Pizzi argued that Aboriginal art should not be trivialised as ‘tribal’ or ‘primitive’ but, instead, should be regarded as an integral part of the modern movement. She made it her life’s mission to have Aboriginal art accepted as powerful contemporary art, bringing the dynamic works of artists including Ronnie Tjampitjinpa, Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri and Emily Kam Kngwarray to world audiences by organising exhibitions in such unlikely places as Bangalore, Kiev and Jerusalem.

Pizzi began exhibiting Aboriginal art in Melbourne in the early 1980s, when there was still resistance to accepting it as a valid form of contemporary art. In 1987, she opened the Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi on Flinders Lane with an exhibition of cutting-edge Western Desert art. Unlike some later, exploitative dealers who capitalised on the boom she helped to create, Pizzi was known for her integrity. She always worked with art advisers from community art centres, ensuring that artists were paid correctly and new artists supported.

Nancye Enid Kent Perry was born in Killara on 16 December 1918. She graduated in science from Sydney University and did postgraduate entomological research work in England. Perry later concentrated on her painting, working with the Heidelberg Art Group and others.

Studied Sydney University 1939-42; worked National Standards Laboratory, Sydney, 1943-4; postgrad. In agricultural economic entomology 1945; DSIR England 1947-50; CSIRO Melb. 1950-51; Walter and Eliza Hall Institute 1951-2; Fisheries and Game 1953-5; C’wealth Dept. of Health, Canberra and Tasmania 1955-7; married Warren Perry 16 November 1957; demonstrator in zoology for medical students at the University of Melbourne, 1958.

Lorelei Emmeline Booker (1906-1994) was born in Brisbane, daughter of Sidney North Innes and Caroline Matilda Noble. She was President of the League of Women Voters of New South Wales, 1964-1976, and founder and honorary editor of the League’s newsletter, Equality. The League was a state affiliate of the Australian Federation of Women Voters, formed in 1922 and dissolved in 1983. She was N.S.W. Board member of the A.F.W.V., 1945-1983, and both Honorary Secretary, 1963-1966, and President, 1976-1983, of the A.F.W.V. She was also honorary editor of the Federation’s journal, The Dawn.

Addie Viola Smith, lawyer and feminist, held various offices with the Australian Federation of Women Voters and the League of Women Voters (New South Wales) from the late 1950s until her death in 1975. She was Liaison Representative for the International Federation of Women Lawyers to the United Nations, 1952-1966. She was a member of the Australian delegation that attended the International Alliance of Women Congresses in Dublin, 1961, and Trieste, 1964. She served as Vice-President, 1968-1970, and was made an honorary life member in 1972, of the Australian Local Government Women’s Association.

Caroline Chisholm was famous for her work with new immigrants to New South Wales during the 1840s and 1850s, and later in the goldfields region of Victoria. She lobbied to ensure these people were provided with adequate accommodation and personally organised the often destitute young women to journey to rural areas in order to secure employment. Her benevolent crusade to better the lives of immigrants earned her the title ‘The Immigrants’ Friend’.

Charlotte Groom was a member of the Red Cross Women’s Service Corps in Western Australia for approximately 52 years.
She was also a short-term member of the Voluntary Aid Detachment and one of Adelaide’s first female stenographers.

In 1950, at the age of 83, Charlotte received a concussion in a bus accident, which saw a fellow Red Cross worker killed.

Ivy Lavinia Weber was the first woman to be elected to the Victorian parliament in a general election in 1937. She stood as an endorsed candidate for the Women Electors’ League of Victoria for the seat of Nunawading. As an active member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, she was encouraged to stand for parliament as an independent candidate to represent women. She was re-elected on two occasions, but resigned her state seat in 1943 to contest the federal seat of Henty as part of the League of Women Voters Women for Canberra Movement. She was unsuccessful on that occasion and in 1945 when she again stood for state parliament. She retired from politics after the second defeat.

Artist and feminist, Portia Geach was born on 24 December 1873 in Melbourne, Victoria. She studied design in 1890-92 and painting from 1893 to 1896 at the Melbourne National Gallery schools. Late in 1896 she won a scholarship to the schools of the Royal Academy of Arts in London, where she studied for four years. She also worked in Paris and exhibited in England, Paris and New York. On her return to Australia she held numerous exhibitions first in Melbourne and then in Sydney when she moved there with her family in 1904.

On her return to Sydney from a visit to the United States of America in 1917 Portia, influenced by a meeting of a housewives’ association she had attended in New York, founded and was president of the New South Wales Housewives’ Association. It aimed to educate women in the principles of proper nutrition and to aid them in their struggles against profiteering and rising food prices. In 1928 she reorganised the association as the Housewives’ Progressive Association. For many years she was also president of the Federated Association of Australian Housewives.

Elsie Morgan, wife of Theodore Herbert Morgan, a prominent member of the Australian Labor Party, was elected to the Sugar Board of Inquiry in 1930-1931 as the representative for Western Australia. At that time, she was the founder of the Housewives Association of W.A., President of the Consumers’ Vigilance Committee, and a member of the Executive of the Women’s Service Guild.

Jennie Baines was a prominent feminist and socialist in both Britain and Australia. Born in Birmingham, the daughter of a gunmaker, she was sent to work in a factory when she was just 11. She soon joined her parents in their Salvation Army work. She married George Baines in 1888 and had five children. In 1905 she joined the Women’s Social and Political Union, becoming a full-time organiser. She was imprisoned 15 times and in 1913 was smuggled out of the country to Melbourne with her family. Once there, she worked for the Women’s Political Association and joined the Women’s Peave Army. With Adela Pankhurst Walsh she campaigned tirelessly against the war and conscription. She also joined the Socialist Part in 1917. In the years after World War One she continued to work in both the Labor and Socialist parties.

Eva Pethybridge was a women’s activist and advocate for peace with enduring associations with numerous women’s organisations. In 1946, she became Honorary Secretary of the Australian Women’s Charter, a group that was created in 1942 to consider problems concerning women in wartime. The charter was intended to embody the aims of women’s organisations and to establish equal opportunity, public welfare, status and remuneration. During the following decades Eva Pethybridge was President of the League of Women Voters of Victoria, committee member of the Australian Federation of Women Voters, member of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and the United Nations Association of Australia.

Christina Brown arrived in Western Australia in 1896. She was one of the first students at Claremont Teachers’ College, graduating in 1902, and married Thomas Blake in 1906. After his death, she became Western Australian’s first woman sworn valuator, first woman to be a commissioner for declarations, and unsuccessfully stood for parliament as an independent candidate for Leederville-North Perth in 1927. In 1928, she married Augustus Robert Sewell, son of Frederick Sewell. She was an active member of numerous societies, most notably the Travellers Aid Society of which she became national president, and was awarded the Coronation Medal for social work in 1953.

Edith Moore was the daughter of Sir Thomas a’Beckett, Judge of the Supreme Court of Victoria, and Isabella, daughter of Sir Archibald Michie. She married Sir William Harrison Moore, Professor of Law in the University of Melbourne and Constitutional Advisor to the Victorian Government in 1898. She was prominent in numerous organizations: the Travellers’ Aid Society of Victoria; the Country People’s Holiday Camps Association; the National Council of Women; the Housewives’ Association; the Women’s Rural Industries Company; the League of Women Voters of Victoria and other bodies. She continued to be active after the death of her husband in 1935. She died in 1974.

Marie Kirk was a leading figure in the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union both in Victoria and nationally and helped to establish the Victorian Union in 1887. She held numerous executive positions in the organisation. She was also a strong supporter of women’s rights, a member of the Victorian Women’s Franchise League, and helped to establish the National Council of Women of Victoria in 1902. She supported equal pay, raising the age of consent for girls, and also took a keen interest in the welfare of women prisoners and in the kindergarten movement.

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.

Mavis Thorpe Clark was a prolific writer of children’s fiction who, in late life, also wrote for adults. In the process of researching her first adult book, Pastor Doug, the biography of Sir Douglas Nicholls, she created a large archive of letters and correspondence of relevance to indigenous scholarship.