The Australian Women's Register

Diane E. Barwick was born in Canada in 1938. She arrived in Australia in 1960, and received her doctoral degree from the Australian National University, Canberra. Her work on the history of Aboriginal communities in Victoria (particularly Coranderrk, Framlingham and Lake Tyers) resulted in a number of publications, including her book Rebellion at Coranderrk, published posthumously in 1998. She contributed many articles, book chapters, pamphlets, manuscripts and photographs to Aboriginal scholarship, and was the co-founder of the journal Aboriginal History, which she also edited from 1978 to 1982. She was also actively involved in a number of Aboriginal issues, and was on the Aboriginal Treaty Committee.

Throughout her career, she worked to make history more accessible to Aboriginal people through genealogies and biographies. In 1984 she published a journal article, “Mapping the Past: An Atlas of Victorian Clans, 1835-1904”, which was a major reference for the compilation of a large Aboriginal biographical index at the AIATSIS. Her work was stopped short by her death in 1986.

Joy Lindrum Gillan is a writer and member of The Society of Women Writers (Australia). Lindrum Gillan was President of New South Wales Branch of the Society, 1984-1986, and Federal President of the Society, 1986-1988.

Florence James (1902-1993) was a novelist, editor and reviewer. She was born in New Zealand and educated at Sydney University where she began her long association with Dymphna Cusack. Together James and Cusack wrote two books, ‘Four Winds and a Family’, a story for children, and ‘Come in Spinner’ which won the Sydney Daily Telegraph prize in 1948.
Florence James went to England in 1927. She shared a bedsitting room with Christina Stead for a short time, and worked mainly as a journalist and independent literary agent until her return to Australia in 1938. James went to England again in 1947 and from 1951 worked as an independent literary agent and reader for Constable and Co. and for Richmond, Towers and Benson Limited. While in London she acted as a talent scout for Australian and New Zealand writers including Mary Durack, Nene Gare, Maurice Shadbolt, David Martin and Sylvia Ashton-Warner.
James maintained a close friendship with many of the women she met at University and with the writers whose work she promoted. In the early 1970s she became an active member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Australia. James married William (‘Pym’) Heyting in 1932. They divorced in 1948. They had two daughters. Florence James died in 1993.

Kathleen Margaret Maria Sherrard, MSc, was a demonstrator and lecturer in geology at the University of Melbourne for over a decade in the years after World War I. She also published articles on palaeontology.

After her marriage and relocation to Sydney she served on a Commonwealth Committee on Nutrition, 1944-1945, and took an active role in many women’s organisations, particularly the Australian Federation of University Women and United Associations of Women, as well as scientific workers organisations.

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.

Lena Santospirito was one of the first Italo-Australian women to assume a leadership role in the provision of welfare and community services to Melbourne’s Italian community. The Australian born daughter of Italian parents who migrated to Australia in the 1890s, Mrs Santospirito was the first woman (and layperson) to be appointed President of the Archbishop’s Committee for Italian Relief. She held this position between 1946 and 1955, a period that coincided with the beginnings of mass migration from Italy to Australia. Her energy and generosity in this role, as she combined it with her responsibilities as a wife and mother, were recognised by the Italian government in 1958 when she was awarded the Italian Star of Solidarity.

After her resignation from the committee in 1955, Mrs Santospirito continued her community work for various religious and charitable organisations. She passed away in 1983 and is remembered for her tireless work, her faith and the generosity she showed to so many people in Melbourne’s Italian community.

Winnie Quagliotti was raised on Coranderrk Aboriginal station in Victoria, and moved to Dandenong in the late 1960s. She was a grand-niece of William Barak, chief of the Wurundjeri (Woiworung). As a spokesperson for her people, she was known throughout Australia. She was chairperson of the Aboriginal Housing Board, a founding member of the Dandenong Aboriginal Cooperative, and a founder of the Burrai Child Care Centre and the Aboriginal Family Aid Support Unit.

Joan Winch grew up in Fremantle, Western Australia. In 1977 she gained a Bachelor of Applied Science in Nursing at the Western Australian Institute of Technology (now Curtin University). She went on to study midwifery and child care, becoming a triple certificated sister.

Since 1975 she has been continually involved in the Perth Aboriginal Medical Service. In 1982 she started up a mobile unit, driving around the Swan Valley fringe dwellers’ camps, servicing medical needs and assisting Nyungars to hospitals. In 1983 she founded the Aboriginal Health Workers Program, Marr Mooditj college, in Perth, integrating traditional Aboriginal approach to health and healing with western medicine.

Joan Winch was awarded her PhD in Aboriginal Studies from the Centre for Aboriginal Studies in May 2011. On the recommendation of each of her examiners, she also received a commendation from the Chancellor. Her PhD was executively approved on the 11th of May, four weeks before her 76th birthday. Her doctoral thesis presented a history of Marr Mooditj using an auto-ethnographic approach.

Dr Winch was named WA Citizen of the Year in 1986, State and National Aboriginal of the Year in 1987, and in the same year received the World Health Organisation Sasakawa Award for Primary Health Care Work on behalf of Marr Mooditj. She served as Director of the Centre for Aboriginal Studies between 1999 and 2001. In 2008 she received Curtin University’s John Curtin Medal for her services to the community.

Ida West was born on Cape Barren Island, Tasmania, in 1919. She attended school at Lughrata, 7 kilometres north of Wybalenna. She married in 1939, and the family moved around the island, living in tents, as her husband had various outdoor jobs with the municipal council. Later, Ida lived in Burnie and Hobart, working as a cleaner while raising the children alone. She became actively involved in community life and acquired an extensive knowledge of Tasmanian Aboriginal culture. She was a board member of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre, and served as its acting president. Her autobiography, Pride against Prejudice: Reminiscences of a Tasmanian Aborigine, was first published in 1984.

Kathy Ware was born in 1949 at Springsure in Queensland. She grew up in Gladstone and Cairns, later working in various offices, as a kindergarten aide and as a teacher’s assistant in a TAFE adult literacy program.

She joined the federal Department of Social Security in Cairns, and later became an assistant to the National Aboriginal Conference (NAC) representative for the Cairns region. After the NAC was disbanded, she worked with the Commonwealth Employment Service for two years.

In 1987 she took up an appointment as the administrator of Deeral Aboriginal and Islander Corporation at Babinda, 50 kilometres southeast of Cairns, and has since worked on the expansion of the corporation’s facilities and enterprises.

Ida Toby, also known as Queen, was born in 1899 at either Walgra or Carandotta station in Queensland. She was of Warluwarra and Wangka-Yutjurru (of Wangkamana group) descent. Her ‘skin’ was Bilarrindji and her Dreaming was Emu; she had a black birthmark on her elbow in the shape of a legless emu. She grew up along the Georgina – on Walgra, Carandotta, Roxborough and Glenormiston stations. She was married first to Deamrah, and then to his younger brother Belia. She had two children and raised three step-children. The family travelled about Carandotta, as the brothers worked together for years poisoning dogs on the station, until they both died in c1962.
Between 1967 and 1975 Ida Toby provided valuable linguistic information on the Warluwarra and Wangka-Yutjurru languages. She also had an acting ability which helped her make up and act out imaginary conversations in those languages.
She died in 1976.

Dosina Nona married Peo (‘Bul-Bul’) Nona of Badu in 1960. A song composed for their wedding has become part of the Islands musical heritage. She nursed her husband until his death from renal disease in 1987.

Dosina is a community worker. She lives on Thursday Island in Torres Strait, where she is president of the Mothers Union, an Anglican church organisation representing Torres Strait women. In 1990 she represented the diocese of Carpentaria at a conference of South Pacific Mothers’ Unions in Papua New Guinea. As a Mothers Union organiser, Nona has been responsible for arranging the catering for many large-scale church festivities, including the consecration of Kiwami Dai as bishop in 1986.

Angelina Noble was born in c1890 near Winton in central Queensland. After being abducted by an itinerant horse dealer, she eventually came under the notice of the police in Cairns, and was sent to Yarrabah mission. An expert horsewoman, she accompanied her Aboriginal missionary husband James Noble, in 1904, on a gruelling overland expedition from Yarrabah to choose the site for a new mission on the Mitchell River, where 1,554 square kilometres of land had been gazetted as an Aboriginal reserve. From there they went to Roper River for three years, to help establish a new church missionary society.

Further pioneering work began in 1913 when Reverend E. Gribble requested their assistance in establishing a new mission at Forrest River (Oombulgurri) in Western Australia. They stayed there until 1932, before returning to Queensland to assist with work on Palm Island. Angelina was widowed in 1941 and, after a short period at Palm Island, died at St Luke’s Hospital in Yarrabah in 1964.

Shirley McPherson was born in 1948 in Perth, Western Australia. A champion schoolgirl athlete, she also excelled academically and won a teaching bursary on completing her leaving certificate at Dominican ladies college, Dongara. She completed a three-year accountancy course at the Western Australia Institute of Technology in 1967 and, in 1974, opened her own tax consultancy business in Perth. When the family moved to Geraldton, she worked as a tax agent there.

She was appointed a commissioner of the Aboriginal Development Commission in 1983 and became full-time chairperson in 1986. Despite the commission’s growing budgets and staff levels, McPherson’s nine fellow commissioners were dismissed by Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Gerry Hand, in 1988, and she only retained her position because it was an appointment made by the Governor-General. The new commissioners twice passed motions of censure against her.

Disappointed, McPherson resigned in 1989 and returned to Western Australia. She resumed accountancy and also worked as a consultant on Aboriginal affairs to the state government.

Monica Clare was the daughter of an Aboriginal shearer and an English women who died in childbirth when Monica was two years old. Taken into care at the age of seven, she and her brother grew up in a variety of foster homes in Sydney. After learning the finer arts of domestic service, Monica went out to work as a waitress and a factory hand.

In the 1950s, Monica became interested in Labor Politics. Her second husband, the trade unionist Leslie Clare, encouraged this interest and also encouraged her to be active in Aboriginal politics. She became the Secretary of the Aborigines Committee of the South Coast at Wollongong during the 1960s and, subsequently, of an Aboriginal committee called the South Coast Illawarra Tribe, from 1968 to 1973.

Monica Clare worked tirelessly for the political and social equality of Aboriginal people, and their independence. She died suddenly on National Aborigines Day, 13 July 1973.

Catherine (Cathy) Freeman was born in Mackay in Queensland in 1973. As a very good runner, she won a scholarship to boarding school where she was able to have professional coaching. In 1994 she became the first Aboriginal sprinter to win a gold medal at the Commonwealth Games, going on to win a silver medal in the 1996 Olympic Games and then gold at the Sydney Olympics in 2000.

She is very proud of her Aboriginal heritage and has carried the Australian and Aboriginal flags around the track after winning a race, which at times has resulted in public controversy.

She was made Young Australian of the Year in 1990 and Australian of the Year in 1998. She is the first person to receive both awards.

Val Bryant was the first Aboriginal person to work in the Department of the Prime Minister. She is an Aboriginal health worker with both practical and academic understandings of the health issues confronting indigenous communities. She has published extensively on the problems of substance abuse in Aboriginal communities and has established and run rehabilitation centres in Sydney and Western Australia.

Hetty Perkins was an Aranda woman from Central Australia. From the age of 14 she worked as a kitchen-hand at a hotel in Arltunga, and rode out mustering and watering cattle for the hotel owner. She had eleven children, and her son Charles Perkins became the first Aboriginal person to hold a senior public service appointment. Hetty worked on a cattle station for some time before moving to Alice Springs to work as a nursemaid in a European family. She later lived on Telegraph Station near Alice Springs, and worked in Alice Springs as a cook. Later, she moved to Jay Creek Settlement. She looked after many children as well as her own, and urged Aboriginal children to keep out of trouble.

Caroline Archer was born in 1922 and is best known for her leadership in the 1970s of the One People of Australian League (OPAL), an organisation that sought to promote the interests of Aboriginal people. She was appointed executive officer of OPAL in 1972, becoming the first Aboriginal person to hold the position.

Fanny Reading, medical practitioner and activist for Zionist and Jewish women’s causes, was born near Minsk in Russia in 1884. After her family migrated to Australia, Reading taught Hebrew to private students before entering the University of Melbourne to study music and later medicine. Graduating in 1922, she moved to Sydney to join her brother’s medical practice. In 1923, inspired by the visit of Zionist emissary Bella Pevsner, she founded the Council of Jewish Women – a Zionist organisation which was also active on a range of women’s issues, both Jewish and non-Jewish.

In 1925 she travelled to the United States, Europe and Palestine, and helped organise a conference for the International Council of Jewish Women. In 1929 she organised a conference in Sydney at which the National Council of Jewish Women was formed.

Franca Arena was born in Genoa, Italy, and migrated to Australia in 1959. She was the founding member of the Migrant Women’s Association, president of the National Italian-Australian Women’s Association, founder of the New South Wales Ethnic Community Council, won a Churchill Fellowship, and was Commissioner of the Education Commission of New South Wales. In 1981, she was the first woman from a non-English speaking background to be elected to the New South Wales Parliament, where she served for seventeen years. Arena resigned from the Australian Labor Party in November 1997, remaining in parliament as an Independent until her resignation from Parliament in March, 1999.

Dora Hunter was raised by two missionaries, Miss Hyde and Miss Butler, firstly at Quorn and then at Eden Hills, South Australia. She started working as a servant in a private home, and later got a job in a kindergarten. Following that, she worked as a Child Care Worker at the Central Methodist Mission in Adelaide for nine years. She did two years’ training in the Aboriginal Task Force at the Institute of Technology in Adelaide, and worked in a Government position as an Aboriginal Community Worker. She has been involved with the Aboriginal Evangelical Fellowship and the Young People’s Branch of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. She enjoys playing music, and has often played in old people’s homes and children’s homes as well as at church meetings.

Roslyn Watson is an Aboriginal Australian ballet dancer and choreographer of international renown. Born in Brisbane of Biri descent, she has danced in a number of Australian companies since beginning her career in the early 1970s. She has danced internationally, and with international companies, including the prestigious Dance Theatre of Harlem.

Maureen Watson was born in Rockhampton in 1930. Of Biri descent, spent her early life in rural Queensland, moving to Brisbane with her five sons in 1970. She became heavily involved in the struggle for indigenous right and justice throughout the 1970s and 80s, as her participation in protests at the Brisbane Commonwealth Games testified to. She developed a well deserved reputation as a storyteller, her major medium for the promotion of Aboriginal culture.

Maude Tongerie was born in 1927 at Anna Creek, about 80 miles west of Oodnadatta in South Australia. She lived with her people (Arabunna) until the age of nine, when she was taken to the Finke River Mission for an eye treatment. She then went to live with an aunt in Oodnadatta so that she could learn English, and from there she went to Colebrook Home, a non-Government Aboriginal mission, in Quorn. At the age of 15 she started to work as a domestic with a family near Adelaide. She married George Tongerie, a young Aboriginal man who served in the Air Force during the war. In the early 1970s Maude became involved with the Department for Community Welfare, and has worked as a Social Worker with Aboriginal families, particularly in the Juvenile Courts.

Patricia O’Shane was born in Northern Queensland in 1941. A noted activist for Indigenous rights, her achievements in the public sphere have been remarkable. She was the first Aboriginal Australian barrister (1976) and the first woman to be appointed to the New South Wales Metropolitan Water, Sewerage and Drainage Board (1979). When she was appointed permanent head of the New South Wales Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs in 1981, she became not only the first Aboriginal person but also the first woman to become a permanent head of ministry in Australia.

Eleanor Mary Hinder (1893-1963) was a pioneer in the field of industrial welfare in Australia with her appointment as Superintendent of Staff Welfare for the department store, Farmer & Co. Ltd, in Sydney during WWI. She later achieved international prominence in this field. From 1926 to 1928, Hinder assisted in the development of the new industrial department of the National Committee of the Young Women’s Christian Association of China, in Shanghai . She held the position of Chief of the Industrial and Social Division of Shanghai Municipal Council from January 1933 until August 1942, when the Japanese occupation of Shanghai forced her repatriation to Britain. Hinder’s next appointment, from December 1942 to October 1944, was to the International Labour Organisation. in Montreal where she served as Special Consultant on Asian Questions., and she subsequently held several other positions with the United Nations. Outside of her professional life, Hinder was also involved with a numbers of women’s organisations.