The Australian Women's Register

Eleanor Wright Gatehouse was born in 1886, the eldest daughter in an eminent Victorian family; granddaughter of one of the earliest white settlers in the Geelong region, Thomas Austin. Described as ‘a born ringleader’ she was a forthright and formidable figure in women’s golf in Victoria. Her refusal to take nonsense from people is well exemplified by a story that tells of the time she responded to a group of men who hit up on her party by hitting a ball right back at them!

It is said that Nellie’s maternal grandmother nearly ended her golfing career before it began. Apparently Nellie arrived home from a mixed foursomes event one Sunday soaking wet and smelling of spirits. Nellie’s grandmother was convinced by her doubtful excuse, that her partner had filled her button-up golf boots with whiskey to ward of the cold, and permitted her to continue playing. After this controversial start, she went on to enjoy a very successful playing career. She won the first of three Australian Championships in 1909 and won five Victorian Championships over the thirty years she was active in the game. In keeping with her personality, she retired a champion, hanging up her golf shoes after winning a veterans championship.

Nellie firmly believed that playing golf had taught her life lessons. ‘After the game is over, forget all about it – especially if you had a rotten time. Live for the next day,’ she advised. ‘In my opinion a sound beating at golf is one of the best medicines you can have.’ It was much more than a game for her, a round of golf was a spiritual experience. ‘Golf is such a wonderful game that the more we can do for her the better is for the whole community,’ she observed. ‘For worshipping at the shrine of this goddess Golf gives us health, happiness and contentment.’

Nellie Gatehouse is best known as a golfer and golf administrator but she was also heavily involved in other activities. She was a Justice of the Peace, and served a term as President of the Australian Women’s National League. She was keenly interested in the rights of children and served seven terms as President of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.

Zali Steggall was the first Australian to win an individual medal in the Winter Olympic Games.

Nova Peris was the first Aboriginal Australian to win a gold medal at the Olympic Games. She is also one of a very few athletes who have represented their country in two different sports at separate Olympic Games. In 1996 in Atlanta she was a member of the gold medal winning Hockeyroos team. In 2000 at Sydney she made it to the semi finals of the 400 meters track and field event. She is a staunch campaigner for Indigenous rights and reconciliation in Australia.

Nova served in the Australian Senate from November 2013 until May 2016. She was the first Indigenous Australian to serve in Federal Parliament.

The Sportswomen’s Association of Australia (S.A. Division) was formed in 1966 in response to a need felt by sportswomen in this state that they should organise in order to better represent their interests and achievements. As well as organising a committee in Adelaide, regional women in South Australia formed a country branch in Waikerie.

One initiative of the association was the establishment of a ‘Sportswoman of the Year’ award in 1966, the inaugural winner of which was athlete Dianne Burge. In February 1979 the S.A. Division set up an interim Australian Executive to form a National Association, and the first national conference was held in November that year. The Association at state and national level was dissolved in 1997.

The National Fitness Council of South Australia was a government advisory body established in 1939 that alerted individuals to the importance of gaining physical fitness, and encouraged community interest in open space and the “Quality of Environment.” In 1976 the Council was taken over by the Department of Tourism, Recreation and Sport.

The South Australian Women’s Amateur Sports Council was established with financial and administrative assistance from the National Fitness Council to promote the interests of sportswomen in South Australia, and to help formulate “a common policy on planning and development for women’s sport”. One of its most important initiatives, in cooperation with the National Fitness Council of South Australia, was the establishment of the Women’s Memorial Playing Fields on the corner of Shepherds Hill Road and Ayliffes Road, St. Marys.

Betty Fisher (nee Dawson) was born 8th September 1925 in Yorkshire, England arriving in South Australia in 1927 on the “SS Benalla”. A feminist and advocate for Aboriginal rights and conservation, Betty was International Women’s Day president for eight years and the first female president of the Conservation Council of SA.

Betty Fisher received a Flinders University medal for services to women, was a 1988 Bicentenary medallist and served on the SA State Schools Organisations State Council. She was a member of the National Fitness Council of Australia. She was also a key witness at the Hindmarsh Island Royal Commission, where she produced notes and tape recordings from the 1960s which confirmed the site was of significant cultural importance to Aboriginal women.

The concept of a Women’s Memorial Playing Fields emanated from the concern from South Australia’s sporting women over the lack of playing areas available to them. Sports field for women had always been in short supply in Adelaide, but the situation was made worse by the rapid growth of women’s participation in sport in the post-war period.

This concern led to the formation of the South Australian Women’s Amateur Sports Council. With the help of the National Fitness Council they lobbied the government for resources and were eventually successful. In 1953 the Premier, the Hon. Tom Playford, granted the Council 20 acres of reserve land on the corner of Shepherds Hill Road and Ayliffes Road, St. Marys for a centre for women’s sport.

From 1953-55 the fields progressed and prospered. In 1956 to honour those who had died during war, a memorial drinking fountain was erected, and the grounds as a whole were dedicated to the South Australia Servicewomen who served in World Wars I and II. A ceremony remembering the nurses and other women in the services is held each February.

The work of early Trust members is commemorated in the naming of the Helen Black oval, the Gordon Brown oval and the May Mills Pavilion.

The Women’s Memorial Playing fields are the only dedicated women’s memorial of this type in Australia.

May Mills was played a prominent role in the development of women’s sport in South Australia. She was President of the South Australian Women’s Cricket Association and the Australian Women’s Cricket Council in the 1960s. Prior to that she was President of the South Australian Women’s Amateur Sports Council, the body that successfully lobbied the then Premier, Sir Thomas Playford, to secure access to playing fields for the dedicated use of women. Trained as a teacher, she taught at Unley High School for thirty years. She became the first female President of the South Australian Institute of Teachers in 1943.

Apart from her interest in women’s sport and teaching, Mills was active in a number of other spheres of public life. She was the first President of the South Australian Film and Television Council, a founding member of the Australian College of Education, a Life Vice-President of the National Council of Women and a Life Member of the Royal Commonwealth Society. She was the first women in South Australia to secure a license to drive a motor car.

May Mills contribution to women’s cricket was recognised in 1984/85 by the creation of the May Mills Trophy for the Under 18 national Championship. This competition ran until 1995/96.

Rosina Raisbeck enjoyed a successful career in London and performed on the club circuit across Australia in the 1960s, before joining the Australian Opera in 1971. She was still singing with the company at the age of 72.

Described as ‘one of our greatest and unluckiest’ athletes, Marlene Mathews set a world record of 10.3 seconds for the 100 yard sprint in 1958. Her best times for the 100 metres and 200 metres, set over forty years ago, would have won both titles at the 2005 Australian Athletics Championships were they repeated.

Having missed selection for the 1952 Olympic Games due to a leg injury, Mathews was selected for the 1954 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Canada, only to be forced to withdraw from sprint events due to injury once again. Two years later, she was able to compete at the Olympic Games in Melbourne and won bronze in the 100 metres and 200 metres behind Australia’s Betty Cuthbert and Germany’s Christa Stubnick – though many expected her to win. Disappointingly, Mathews was not selected for the 4x100m relay team that year. The team, comprising Shirley Strickland, Norma Croker, Fleur Mellor and Betty Cuthbert, won gold. At a post-Olympics meeting, Mathews was part of a relay team that broke world records for both the 4×220 yards and 4×200 metres.

In 1957, Mathews set the inaugural world record times for the 440 yards and 400 metres. The following year she set her world record of 10.3 seconds for the 100 yards sprint (breaking the 10.4 second record held jointly by Betty Cuthbert and Marjorie Jackson) and of 23.4 seconds for the 220 yards (breaking Cuthbert’s 23.5 second record). She is reputed to have run a ‘wind-assisted 10.1 seconds’ in the 100 yards at the Australian titles. Mathews went on to win the 100 yards and 220 yards at the British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Wales in 1958. She ran in the relay team that won silver in the 4×110 yards relay. After making the semi-finals in the 100 metres at the Olympic Games in Rome in 1960, Mathews retired from competition and took up an administrative role. She was an Assistant Manager of the Australian Olympic Team at the Olympics in Munich in 1972.

Marlene Mathews became a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 1979 for her services to athletics, and an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 1999. A Trustee of the Sydney Cricket Ground, she is recognised in its Walk of Honour. Mathews was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 1985.

After nine years playing for both Victorian and Australian netball teams, Lorna McConchie coached Australia to victory at the first netball World Tournament in 1963. A member of the International Federation of Netball Associations for twenty-five years, McConchie was added to the Victorian Honour Roll of Women in 2004.

Eunice Gill was an All Australian netball player who had a long term and profound influence on the development of Australian women’s sport and sports administration in general. A graduate of the University of Melbourne (B.A. 1940, Dip. Phys. Ed. 1945), her views on the importance of sport and physical education were influenced by another netball player, Lorna McConchie, who helped to establish the physical education course at the University of Melbourne, and who was one of Gill’s teachers at university.

It became obvious very quickly that Gill not only had a talent for sport, but for teaching, coaching and administration, talents that her paid work and community interests allowed her to express and explore to the maximum. Gill eventually went on to obtain a permanent position teaching in the Department of Physical Education. She used study leave in 1972-73 to undertake a Master of Arts coursework degree in physical education at Leeds University, from which she graduated in July 1973.

While studying and teaching, Gill remained closely associated with the game of netball. She was appointed coach of the Victorian team in 1954, the same year she was appointed president of the All Australia Women’s Basketball Association. In 1960, she was appointed coach of the Australian team, while still being the coach of the state team. She served on the executive of the International Federation of Netball Associations through the 1960s, 70s and 80s, contributing to the drawing up of an international code for the game in 1960.

She was influential outside of netball, too. Her reputation and qualifications led, among other things, to her appointment as a foundation member of the board of directors of the Confederation of Australian Sport in 1976. The following year she was the only woman on the Sports Advisory Council established by the Federal Government. In 1980 she was appointed to the committee established by the Victorian government to investigate the teaching of Physical Education in schools. As chair of the Australian Council in the early 1980s, she was responsible for the polices and procedures of the National Coaching Accreditation Scheme overseeing 33,000 registered coaches.

Eunice Gill died in 1987 and was posthumously honoured by the Australian Sports Commission, who created and named an award for excellence in coaching and coach development after her. Most recently, she was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame as an associate member. Those who knew her well praised her for her personal qualities of ‘charm’, ‘dignity’, ‘diplomacy’ and ‘her delightful sense of humour’ along with her legacy of improving the standard of coaching and administration and ‘rais[ing] the profile of women in the community.

A national body for netball in Australia was founded at a meeting on August 26-27, 1927 when the All Australia Women’s Basket Ball Association was formed in conjunction with an interstate basketball carnival. Foundation Members of the association included:

• The City Girls’ Amateur Sports Association in New South Wales
• The Adelaide Women’s Basket Ball Association in South Australia
• The Melbourne Girls’ Basket Ball Association in Victoria
• The Australian Ladies’ Basket Ball Association in Queensland
• The Basket Ball Association of Perth in Western Australia

Tasmania affiliated soon after, competing in carnivals since 1933. The Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory became full members in 1975 and 1977 respectively.

In 1970, in accordance with the change of the game’s name to ‘netball’, the association became known as the All Australia Netball Association. In 1993, the name changed again to Netball Australia.

The Sydney University Women’s Sports Association (SUWSA) was established on August 5, 1910 when twenty-four women committed to ‘further the interests of sport among University women’ by becoming ‘full active members during the season 1911’. The action was prompted by the continual refusal of the Sydney University (men’s) Sports Union, founded in 1890, to admit the women rowers, tennis and hockey players, to their membership.

Effectively, this meant that the women had no access to facilities, including University playing fields; the men did not want any ‘Newtown Tarts’ using the Sports Union’s Oval. Consequently, the concerned women undergraduates, who included Jessie Lillingston (Street) amongst their number, decided that a united body of sportswomen, speaking as one, would have a louder voice and therefore more chance of acquiring the facilities they needed. Once incorporated, the organisation received moral and financial support from senior women in the University and some interested men amongst the lecturing staff.

From these beginnings, the SUWSA grew in membership and effectiveness, always retaining its underlying aims of :

• providing women with a democratic, balanced schedule of physical activity,
• responding to the needs of its members,
• providing facilities and equipment to support all women, not just elite athletes,
• creating opportunities for all students to exercise and maintain a healthy lifestyle.

Changing social, political and economic contexts that accompanied the new millennium made it difficult for the SUWSA to continue in its historic form. The year 2002 marked the end of the SUSWA and the beginning of a new era for Sport at Sydney University. In a meeting on 3 September 2002, members agreed to combine with the Sydney University Sports Union to create a new body called Sydney University Sport. Said the Executive Director at the time, Ann Mitchell, ‘some may have had regrets [about the decision] but combining resources was seen as the best way forward.’

When Anne Sargeant was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 1987, she was only the third netballer to be accorded the honour. For the woman who began her netball career at the age of seven playing with the Forest Club in New South Wales, ‘there was not greater honour…To be considered an all-time sporting great and to be counted alongside people you have admired and looked up to all your life is the greatest accolade.’

Sargeant thoroughly deserved the accolade. From the age of 10, Sargeant represented her district, Manly-Warringah in New South Wales, where she captain/coached the team to six NSW titles in six years. She played for the NSW Open team from 1978, and was captain from 1982 until 1988, during which time the team won the national championships in 1984, 1985, 1987 and 1988.

A top rated player, in 1978 Sargeant was selected in the NSW and Australian teams, touring England with the undefeated national squad.

Sargeant played in three World Championships, the last two as captain. In 1979 she helped Australia to equal first place with New Zealand in Trinidad and Tobago, and in 1983 Australia defeated New Zealand in Singapore. 1987, in Glasgow, Scotland, Australia finished third behind New Zealand and Trinidad & Tobago.

Sargeant played in the Tri-Test series against England and Trinidad and Tobago in 1981, and in 1986 led the team in another Tri-Test series against Jamaica and New Zealand.

Among many highlights of Anne’s career was a tour of Wales in 1985 when she captained an undefeated Australian side and posted a career personal best of three consecutive 100% shooting games. In that year, she was named the New South Wales Sportswoman of the Year. She was inducted into the NSW Hall of Champions in 1988 and awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia that same year for her service to netball.

After she finished playing and coaching, Sargeant continued to promote the sport as a writer and media commentator. Her talents as a public speaker are well known and recognised when she was awarded the 1992 Communicator of the Year Award by the Public Relations Institute of Australia.

In 2004, Anne Sargeant was named Sydney’s Greatest Ever Netballer.

Anne Clark was a foundation member of the New South Wales Women’s Basket Ball Association (NSWWBAA) in 1929, remaining an active member until her death in 1983. An all-round sportswoman, Anne participated in basket ball, hockey, physical culture from an early age, as a member of the City Girls’ Amateur Sports Association (the predecessor organisation to the NSWWBAA), which she joined in 1924. Her membership led to a lifelong association with the development of women’s basket ball (now netball) at local, state and national levels. Throughout her long career in netball, she held a range of executive positions on the board of the New South Wales Association (including the presidency for twenty-nine years) and the All Australia Netball Association. She received an All Australia Service Award in 1964.

In 1976, the Anne Clark Service Award was introduced in her honour. The award recognises individuals who have given at least ten years of outstanding service to netball in N.S.W. In 1983, the NSW State Netball Centre was named after her, in her honour.

Kerry Saxby became the most prolific world-record breaker in athletic history in Melbourne in February 1991 when she set a new record of 11 minutes 51.26 seconds in the 3 kilometer walk event. This took her number of world bests to thirty, which was one better than the previous mark, created by the distance runner Paavo Nurmi. Her world records have been established across a range of distances and venues, sometimes at mixed competitions. Saxby regularly trained with and competed against men and believes this contributed to her success. In the decade of competition when she was at her peak, she never finished outside the top five, and was only disqualified for losing foot contact with the track once.

Saxby’s sporting achievements include representing Australia 24 times in major international competitions. She won 13 individual international medals, won a record 27 Australian National Championships, set 32 world records or world bests, and at 38 years of age she was the oldest athlete to win a medal at world level in 1999. She retired from competition in 2001, but not before achieving a very creditable 7th place in the 20 kilometer walk at the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000. In 2006, the Australian Institute of Sport selected her as one of their twenty-five ‘Best of the Best’.

Vicki Wilson started playing netball in 1972 at the age of seven. By the time she had hung up her skirt in 1999, she was one of Australia’s most decorated and successful players, having earned 104 test caps over the journey, more than any other Australian player. She represented Australia for fifteen years with the last four as captain. She played in four World Championship tournaments (the most of any Australian player), was a member of a victorious team three times (1991, 1995, 1999), and captained the world champion team in her last game in 1999. She was captain of the team that won the first ever gold medal for netball in the Commonwealth Games at Kuala Lumpur in 1998, although she says the most memorable moment of her career was winning the 1991 World Championship in Sydney. Arguably the best goal shooter in the world in the 1990s, when asked by a junior netballer in 1999 why she had such great shooting accuracy, her response was, ‘200 shots a day x 6 days a week, and that’s 200 shots that go in. I have been doing that since I was 20 years old’.

A trained physical education teacher, Wilson continued to teach while playing netball, moving to the position of Schools Sports Promotions Officer with the Department of Education in Queensland in 1992. Since then she has held a number of board member ships and government advisory positions, including membership of the Board of the Queensland Academy of Sport. She continues to coach and mentor talented players and works as a senior project manager with Sport and Recreation Queensland in the Queensland Department of Premier and Cabinet.

Leonora Wray became an associate member of the Australian Golf Club, and a council member of the New South Wales Ladies’ Golf Union (NSW L.G.U.), in 1904. She won the State ladies’ amateur championship every year from 1906 to 1908, and the Australian title in both 1907 and 1908, before a diagnosis of typhoid fever in 1909 took her away from the game for a decade. She made an impressive come-back in 1929, winning the national title and the mixed foursomes championship (with F.G. Murdoch). The following year she won the New South Wales championship, before winning the western open in 1931, and the northern open in 1931-32. Between 1907 and 1938, Wray was champion woman player of the Australian Golf Club ten times; and between 1924 and 1933, she was champion of the Royal Sydney Golf Club five times. She attended the inaugural meeting of the Australian Ladies’ Golf Union (A.L.G.U.) in 1921, serving as its secretary until 1923, and later, in 1954-59, as its president.

Wray’s administrative skills were drawn upon frequently. She was captain-manager of the Tasman Cup touring team in 1937, and manager of the women’s team touring Great Britain in 1950. As well as president of the A.L.G.U., she was president of the NSW L.G.U. in 1957-65, and associates’ president of the Australian Golf Club.

Isabel Letham is renowned throughout the surfing world as ‘the first Australian to ride a surfboard’, although she disputed this, preferring to describe herself as an early Australian female surfer who experimented with riding a board in the Hawaiian tradition. She did this in 1915 at the age of fifteen when the visiting Hawaiian surfer, Duke Kahanamoku, who was giving a surfboard riding exhibition at Sydney’s Freshwater Beach, invited her to ride tandem with him. Since then, her name has become legendary within the surfing world. She has been a source of inspiration for subsequent women surfers; Australian world champion, Pam Burridge, even named her first daughter Isabel in her honour.

Letham is less well known for the important role she played in teaching swimming to hundreds of young people in Australia and in the United States. In the 1920s she lived in San Francisco where she first taught swimming at the University of California and was eventually appointed to the position of Director of Swimming to the City of San Francisco in 1924. She returned to Australia to live in 1929, where she continued to teach swimming at Freshwater and Manly for many years. Letham was also important for introducing water ballet to Australia.

Pam Burridge was born in Sydney into a sport loving family who were active in the surf living saving movement at Sydney’s Bondi Beach. Her mother and sister, Donella, loved to swim, her father was an accomplished distance runner but Pam loved surfing. She was given her first (homemade) surfboard in 1975 at the age of ten, entered her first competition (which she won) in 1977 at the age of twelve, won her first New South Wales State Championship in 1979 aged fourteen and was national champion the following year when she was only fifteen.

At this point, Pam was deemed a professional by virtue of the fact that she had been invited to surf in the elite Hawaiian North Shore events; the strict rules of the governing amateur body offered no leeway. So Pam went on the international circuit when she was sixteen and by the age of seventeen had earned her first of six runner-up finishes in the world championships. She eventually broke through in 1990, winning the world championship by what was then a record margin and becoming the first Australian woman to do so.

The consistency of Pam’s performance throughout the years prior to her claiming the title are even more remarkable when one considers what she overcame to achieve them. She spent the better part of the 1980s battling one personal crisis after the next, crises which can, arguably, be attributed to the unique challenges that confronted young women who dared enter the macho world of 1980s surf riding. She faced plummeting self confidence, which led to drug and alcohol abuse and an eating disorder. The fact that she was able to maintain an overall ranking of number two in the world throughout the 1980s, despite never being ‘at her best’ is testament to her extraordinary talent.

Burridge retired from competition in 1993 made a brief comeback in 1996, retiring again in 1999, ranked eighth in the world. Whilst the result was not one for the record books, Pam was nevertheless satisfied with the result; it proved that she still has it in her to match it with the best in the new world of women’s surfing.

The Victorian Ladies’ Golf Union (VLGU) was established in 1906 after the golfing women of Geelong, in 1905, had initiated moves to create an organisation to further the development of golf for women in Victoria. There were six foundation clubs – Caulfield (later known as Metropolitan, Colac, Kew, Essendon (Northern), Geelong and Surrey Hills (Riversdale) – with a total of 278 members.

The women of the union immediately established themselves as women of action. Within its first six months, the Union had undertaken a standardised handicapping system, decided to introduce pennant competition, held a number of friendly interclub matches and initiated a silver medal competition, a competition that is still played as the Silver Spoon event. Since those early days, the VLGU has overseen metropolitan and country competitions, junior development and the emergence of some exceptional talent. Jane Lock, for instance, began her international career playing junior golf in competitions overseen by the VLGU.

Needless to say, the VLGU has undergone change and development throughout its 100 years of existence. Competition stopped, for instance, during the first and second world wars and the members put their considerable skills and networks to use to raise funds for the war effort. The Equal Opportunity Act of 1985 had a huge impact on the way clubs operated and laid the foundations for the way the sport is organised today.

The 1990s were a time of great change for the Union, with the most important issue being that of constitutional change. Over the years, the development of the sport in Victoria had outgrown the ability of the governing structure to operate efficiently and democratically. Between 1992 and 1994 the board worked to develop a new constitution that would take the Union into the new millennium. As a reflection of this new direction, a new name was adopted. In June 1995 the Victorian Ladies’ Golf Union became Women’s Golf Victoria.

In November 2010 Women’s Golf Victoria amalgamated with the Victorian Golf Association to form the umbrella organisation Golf Victoria.

Edith ‘Edie’ Robinson made Australian Olympic history in Amsterdam in 1928 when she became Australia’s first female Olympic track and field athlete. She took up running at the age of 14 (she ran for the St George Athletic Club in Sydney, New South Wales.) Selected to compete in the 100 meters, she did not make the final, but did run a personal best time in the semifinal, which she finished in third place. Robinson also ran in the 800 meters, but did not complete the race. Given that she had never trained for the event before, let alone competed in it, the fact that she made the 600 meter mark before withdrawing was an extraordinary effort.

Edith was a very popular member of the small team that travelled to Amsterdam, and because she had a background in dressmaking, she was popular and much in demand by male athletes who needed badges sown to their shorts!

She officially opened the Olympic athletes village in Homebush, Sydney on September 2, 2000.

Eileen Wearne became the second woman to represent Australia in athletics at the Olympic Games when she competed in the 100 meter sprint at Los Angeles in 1932. Unfortunately, she did not compete at her best in Los Angeles; she finished fourth in her heat in the time of 12.5 seconds which meant that she did not make the finals. On her return to Sydney, however, she continued to compete and won state and Australian titles throughout the 1930s. She and the first woman to represent Australia in athletics at the Olympic Games, Edith Robinson, enjoyed a healthy rivalry. In 1938, she represented Australia at the British Empire Games where she won a gold medal in the 4 X 100 yard relay and a bronze medal in the 200 meter sprint.

An extremely attractive young woman, so much so that, whilst in Los Angeles, she caught the eye of the U.S. media. In an article entitled ‘Future Weissmullers, Beautiful Amazons Keenly watched by Scurrying Studio Scouts’, a journalist noted that ‘scouts from the picture camps have been roving the practice fields ever since the first boatload of athletes was unloaded.’ One of those at training who they noticed was ‘Eileen Wearne of Australia’ who had ‘ a beautiful figure, a great deal of poise and a nice voice.’ Wearne’s looks, according to her teammates, were ‘ proof that athletic competition does not detract from the beauty or femininity of women.’

Wearne retired from athletics in 1940 but remained involved in the Olympic movement. She was an active member of the New South Wales Olympian Club and loved attending reunion lunches.

Faith Thomas was the first Aboriginal woman to play international cricket for Australia; indeed, she was the first indigenous woman to be selected to play any sport for Australia. In 2004, she was still the only Aboriginal woman to represent Australia in cricket.

Thomas played cricket, along with hockey and squash, while training in Adelaide to be a nurse. (She was one of the first Aboriginal nurses to graduate from the Royal Adelaide Hospital; she went on to be the first to run a hospital.) Thomas was selected into the South Australian cricket team after playing only two grade games and was selected for the Australian team in 1958. She recalls receiving a fair deal of publicity at the time. ‘I was a bit of a curiosity,’ she said in an interview in 2004. ‘It was a “native nurse”, this. You know, I wasn’t a cricketer, I was a native nurse cricketer, You know?’

Thomas also played hockey for the Northern Territory and admits that hockey was always more important to her than cricket. She was a member of the Aboriginal Sports Foundation, patron of the Prime Minister’s XI versus the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) Chairman’s XI.

Betty, adopted as a baby, grew up in a dysfunctional home in a small country town in South Australia, and experienced difficult and stressful formative years. She later moved to Canberra, where she felt welfare was available to young people with problems of all kinds. In Canberra, Betty established a home for her rapidly growing family – in the space of two years, she went from having two children to six. Betty’s many activities included setting up the first secretarial agency in Canberra, from her home.

When Robyn, a profoundly deaf daughter, was born, the family struggled to communicate with her. Robyn eventually trained to become a teacher, and became the first deaf teacher of the deaf in Tasmania.

Betty took an active role in social justice issues, including actively fighting for justice for Lindy Chamberlain and other victims of injustice. She was elected to the House of Assembly on the Family Team before ACT self-government.

Later, as she was living in Queensland in retirement, Betty continued to champion causes for those who could not fight for themselves.