The Australian Women's Register

When Mollie Dive was a Sydney schoolgirl, a teacher one day told her ‘Mollie, you spend too much time on the oval.’ Mollie’s reply was a straightforward declaration of love for an activity that would remain a life-long passion. ‘I love sport,’ she said. ‘I just can’t help myself.’

An all-round sportswoman (she tried her hand at netball, squash, golf, tennis and lawn bowls) Mollie was known for her excellence on the cricket oval and the hockey field. She stayed involved with these sports as a coach and administrator long after her playing days were over. She was a New South Wales and Australian selector, President of the New South Wales Women’s Cricket Association and a member of the executive of the Australian Women’s Cricket Association. She was associated with the Sydney University Women’s Sports Association for fifty years

Her achievements and contribution to sport were recognised in 1987 when, as well as being awarded an Order of Australia medal for her services to sport, she was honoured by the naming of a grandstand after her at North Sydney Oval, a ground at which she never played!

Mollie played cricket with her family at home (her father played once for the New South Wales state team) but it was not a game she played formally until she went to Sydney University in 1932. She left university with Blues in cricket and hockey, a science degree and a cricketing reputation that eventually saw her obtain employment at the CSIRO, where she worked for most of her life, and captaincy of the Australian team that had the first ever Ashes win over England in 1948-49.

The City Girls’ Amateur Sports Association (CGASA) was established in Sydney, New South Wales, in 1918 to provide a mechanism by which the young working women of Sydney could participate in organised sport. Founding members, Eleanor Hinder and Margaret Thorp, used the experience and networks they developed while working as welfare officers at large department stores (Farmers and Anthony Hordens) to establish the association, which thrived throughout the 1920s. Membership suffered as the depression hit in the 1930s and the CGASA accumulated debts, but in its heyday, over fifty clubs were affiliated with the organisation, representing a cross section of ‘city girls’ from small and large businesses in the service and manufacturing industries.

Jane Lock was born in Sydney but grew up in Melbourne where she learned to play golf. By the age of 16 she had a single figure handicap, at 17 she won the first of three successive Australian junior championships and in 1975, she achieved the double, winning both the Australian senior and junior championships.

Jane Lock represented Australia more than thirty times and set course records in six countries. She turned professional in 1980 and played on the American circuit.

Lois Quarrell covered women’s sport in Adelaide for The Advertiser for forty years and is credited with doing much to ‘educate public opinion in the value of various sports for girls and young women’. (The Advertiser October 1949). She joined the paper in 1932, at the age of seventeen, and four years later became their first woman sportswriter. In order to gather stories, she would ride her bike to venues, collect information and pedal back to the office to write it up.

Quarrell’s half page column, devoted entirely to women’s sports and the issues associated with them, commenced in 1936 and ran until her retirement in 1970. She used it to inform readers of the variety of women’s sporting achievements and comparing them to women’s efforts overseas in an effort to legitimize them. She also used her influence to encourage women to be involved in sport and to manage their own affairs. In particular, she argued for the inclusion of ‘games’ for girls in the standard school curriculum, against opposition groups who believed that girls playing sport would rob them of their femininity. Quarrell also encouraged debate on issues such as the suitability of rational dress and the early retirement of athletes due to motherhood.

In June 1988, Kay Cottee became the first woman to sail solo, unassisted and nonstop around the world. In the course of her voyage she set seven world records. Cottee was named the 1988 Australian of the Year and was awarded the Order of Australia.

Marie Bjelke-Petersen is best known as a writer, but as a young woman she enjoyed playing sport and was, it has been argued, instrumental in introducing the sport of netball to Tasmania.

She migrated with her family to Hobart, Tasmania in 1891, where her brother, Hans Christian, established the Bjelke-Peterson Physical Culture school in 1892. Marie joined as instructor in charge of the women’s section; she also taught the subject in schools. It was during that time, it is suggested, that the Bjelke-Petersen’s learned about a new game called basketball that was being played in the United States. Marie introduced drills designed for the game in to the Physical Culture program that she taught in the schools.

Unfortunately, injuries prevented her from continuing with her teaching career much past 1910. At this point, she picked up her career as a writer. She published her first novel The Captive Singer, in 1917 to much acclaim; it sold 100,000 copies in English and 40,000 in Danish. In 1935 she won the King’s Jubilee medal for services to literature.

In recent years, Bjelke-Petersen has become a gay and lesbian icon. She lived in an intimate relationship with Silvia Mills, who she met in 1898, and who, it is argued, The Captive Singer was about, for thirty years.

Cara Honeychurch is a tenpin bowler who won the World Cup in 1996, the same year she was awarded the title of Bowler of the Year. In 1998, at Kuala Lumpar, she won three gold medals in the sport.

In 1999 she travelled to the United States, where the sport gets national TV coverage and where over 80 tournaments a year are played. In her first year as a professional, Honeychurch headed the season’s averages and was second on the money earning lists. During this season, she bowled two perfect games, one of them on live TV, and in so doing earned herself a $50,000 bonus. In October 1999 she was voted Bowler of the Month by the American bowling media. In 2000, she won the Professional Women’s Bowling Association (United States) Rookie of the Year award.

In October 2006, after a three year break from competition, she won the United States Bowling Congress Women’s Challenge, defeating the 2005 World Ranking Masters champion, Clara Guerrero, in the final.

Melissa Carlton is a freestyle swimmer who migrated with her family to Tasmania from South Africa at the age of twelve in 1986. At the 1996 Paralympic Games held in Atlanta she won two gold medals, two silver and one bronze. She also held the world record for the 400 meters freestyle. Born with a congenital leg disability, Carlton says ‘I never considered myself to be disabled because this is how I have always been. It’s how I have always swum.’

Considered to be somewhat of an icon of Tasmanian sport, Carlton was named Tasmanian Sportswoman of the Year in 1996. In 2000, she was appointed Executive Officer of the Tasmanian Paralympic Committee.

Priya Cooper was born with Cerebral Palsy and began swimming at a young age for therapy. In 1991, whilst swimming at a school carnival, Priya was selected to represent Wheelchair Sports Western Australia at the 1991 National Wheelchair Games, winning 9 gold medals. Priya debuted internationally at the 1992 Paralympics in Barcelona, winning three gold medals and two silver medals and breaking two world records. Her performances earnt Priya an Order of Australia Medal. She went on to further success at Paralympic Games in Atlanta in 1996 and Sydney in 2000.

In 1995, Cooper was named the Paralympian of the Year, in 1999 she was acknowledged as Young Australian of the Year (Sport) edging out Pat Rafter and Ian Thorpe, who were both finalists.

Daniela Di Toro is a champion wheelchair tennis player who, in 1999, was named the Australian Paralympic Committee Athlete of the Year. She was ranked number one in her sport in 2000.

Di Toro was not born with a disability; she lost the use of her legs in 1988 after a wall collapsed on her while she was participating in a school swimming carnival. She credits her success to a meeting with another wheelchair athlete, basketballer Sandy Blyth, who was a rehabilitation worker at the unit where Di Toro was receiving treatment.

Di Toro is still involved in her sport and works as a youth worker in Melbourne, Australia.

Jessica Crisp was a pioneer in the sport of sailboarding. In 1986, two years after the Olympic debut of the sport, she won the first of two consecutive world youth titles.

In 1986 and 1989 she was crowned world windsurfing champion. In 1993 she became the first Australian, male or female, to win the highly competitive World Cup Sailboarding series. She repeated the feat in 1994.

When Adair Ferguson won the single sculls title at the 1985 rowing World Championships in Belgium, she became Australia’s first female world champion rower. Her performance was excellent enough for her to be named the 1985 Australian Athlete of the Year; in achieving the honour she beat fellow nominees Jeff Fenech and Alan Border. Ferguson proved it wasn’t a fluke when she won a gold medal in the same event the following year in Edinburgh at the 1986 Commonwealth Games.

Ferguson represented Australia eight times at various international competitions but never at an Olympic Games. 1988 was considered to be her best chance of winning a medal but that year the Australian selectors decided not to send any female rowing competitors.

As well as representing Australia as a sportswoman, Ferguson tried her hand at politics. She stood as the Australian Democrats candidate in the blue ribbon liberal seat of Ryan in the 1990 federal election.

Joan Hartigan was Australia’s number one ranked women’s singles tennis player between 1933-36 and was, quite possibly, the first Australian woman to make her mark internationally when she made self funded tours of Europe in 1934 and 1935. She won three Australian Open singles titles (1933-34, 1936) and reached the semi finals at Wimbledon twice, in 1934 (losing to Helen Jacobs) and 1935 (she lost to the legendary Helen Wills Moody.) She remained near the top of Australian women’s tennis until the war years, achieving a ranking of eighth after her efforts at Wimbledon. Tall and athletic, Hartigan was renowned for her power game, rather than as s serve and volley player.

In 1959 the U.S. Congress authorised and requested the President of the United States to proclaim the third week in July as Captive Nations Week. The Captive Nations Week Committee was founded in Sydney in 1965 to organise the inaugural, and subsequently annual, commemoration of Captive Nations Week in Australia. In 1971 the Committee changed its names to the Captive Nations Council of New South Wales to reflect, in part, its broadening scope of activities. Foundation member organisations comprised the Byelorussian Association of N.S.W., Central Council of Croatian Associations in Australia, Estonian Society of Sydney, Hungarian Council of N.S.W., Latvian Federation of Australia and New Zealand, Australian Lithuanian Community (Sydney District), Polish Association in N.S.W., Australian Romanian Association, Association of Australian Slovaks, Agency for Free Slovenia and Ukrainian Council of N.S.W.; by 1982 the Afghan Association in Australia and the Vietnamese Volunteer Youth in N.S.W. had become member organisations. In 1988 the Council made a submission to the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs on the War Crimes Amendment Bill, 1987. The work of the Captive Nations Council of New South Wales wound down after the fall of Communism in Central and Eastern Europe.

The United Council of Migrants from Communist Dominated Europe in Australia was established in Sydney in September 1953. Representatives from various national organisations made up the Council. It sought to co-ordinate the groups’ anti-Communist activities and actions aimed at liberating their respective homelands from Communist control. The Advisory Committee was composed of Australian representatives, including State politicians, Douglas Darby and Eileen Furley, and Federal politician, W. C. Wentworth.

The Joint Baltic Committee was formed by representatives of the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian communities in Sydney in 1952. Estonian-born Lia Looveer was the founding Secretary and served in that position until 2002. In June 1940 the respective homelands of Looveer and her Committee members had been occupied and annexed by Soviet Russia. A year later began the mass deportation of thousands of people from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to remote regions of the U.S.S.R.. The Committee held an annual Commemoration Concert, organised to pay tribute to their compatriots who were deported and suffered under Soviet oppression for more than 50 years. The Committee liaised with Federal and State politicians to campaign for the defence of human rights and fundamental freedoms in, and independence of, the Baltic States. In 1986 the House of Representatives passed the Baltic Resolution which, in part, ‘reinforced Australia’s non-recognition de jure of the incorporation of the Baltic States into the Soviet Union’.

Established in 1979, the Federation of Ethnic Communities Councils of Australia (FECCA) is the peak, national body representing Australians from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. FECCA is a non-political community-based organisation that advocates, lobbies and promotes issues on behalf of its constituency to government, business and the broader community. Apart from its national office professional staff, it is supported by the work of a voluntary Executive Council.

FECCA strives to ensure that the needs and aspirations of Australians from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds are given proper recognition in public policy. The organisation works to promote fairness and responsiveness to its constituency in the delivery and design of Government policies and programs. FECCA promotes Multiculturalism as a core value that defines what it means to be Australian in the 21st century. FECCA works to protect the fundamental rights of all Australians, regardless of cultural, spiritual, gender, linguistic, social, political or other affiliations or connections.

Margaret Jones was Literary Editor for the Herald and worked as a journalist in the London and New York bureaus of John Fairfax Ltd, before becoming Foreign Editor for the Sydney Morning Herald in the 1970s. She reported from North Korea and North Vietnam, and was staff correspondent in Peking, China. Described as a ‘trailblazer for women journalists’, Jones wrote for the Herald newspaper for a total of thirty-three years.

According to her Sport Australia Hall of Fame citation, Evelyn Tazewell was the finest women’s hockey player of her time. She enjoyed a career in the sport as player, coach, umpire and administrator that spanned four decades to the 1960s. Among many important contributions to the sport, she was instrumental in the establishment of the Women’s Memorial Playing Fields at St Mary’s, Adelaide.

Elizabeth Evatt was the first Chief Justice of the Family Court of Australia and the first woman to preside in an Australian Federal Court.

In August 2020, a specialist domestic violence resource was established and named in her honour. The Evatt List, operating in the Federal Circuit Court of Australia across selected registries, will identify high-risk cases, enabling them to be fast-tracked with appropriate security arrangements in place.

Mary Windeyer was president of the Women’s Suffrage League of New South Wales from 1891-1893, and co-founder of the Ashfield Infants’ Home and the Temporary Aid Society.

Gyzele Osmani fled Kosovo in 1999 with her husband and five small children. Accepting temporary refuge in Australia she was housed in the Bandiana Safe Haven where her youngest daughter received medical treatment for a dislocated hip. Refusing repatriation in March 2000 because the situation in the Presevo Valley was unsafe and her daughter needed further medical treatment, the family was interned for seven months in the Port Hedland Detention Centre before being released to settle in Canberra. Now an Australian citizen, Gyzele is studying Business Administration and her story is the subject of a prize-winning essay and radio program.

Born in Estonia in 1920, Lia Looveer came to Australia with her husband and daughter in 1949, settling in Sydney in 1952. She was an active member of the Estonian community in Sydney and was office manager for the Estonian weekly newspaper Meie Rodo, between 1956-1966.She was Secretary of the Captive Nations Council of New South Wales and Secretary General of the United Council of Migrants from Communist Dominated Europe in Australia in 1968.

Looveer joined the Liberal Party of Australia, New South Wales division, in 1955, and was a member of its Migrant Advisory Committee and of the federal Liberal Party’s Advisory Committee on Ethnic Affairs, 1976-1981, as well as a member of the State Council over the same period. She is a foundation member of the Ethnic Communities’ Council of N.S.W. Looveer was awarded the British Empire Medal in 1978 and received a Heritage Award from the Liberal Party of Australia, N.S.W. Division, in 2002.

In the nineteenth century Italians priests performed missionary work in Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory and the Italian linguist Raffaello Carboni played a significant role in the Eureka Stockade revolt of 1854. Small Italian communities catered to miners on the goldfields of Victoria and Western Australia. In 1885 a group of some 300 migrants from northern Italy established a traditional Italian community called ‘New Italy’ in northern New South Wales (NSW). Italian fishermen also established communities along the south coast of NSW, Port Pirie and Fremantle. During this period Italian labourers arrived in Queensland to work on the cane fields. By the late 1930s, one third of all Australia’s Italian migrants lived in the cane-growing regions of Queensland. Italians also became involved in market gardens, comprising about 40 per cent of Queensland’s
market gardeners.

In 1947 the population of the Italy-born was 33,632 persons and by 1971 the number had increased to 289,476 persons. Most of the Italian migrants came from Sicily, Calabria and Veneto and settled in metropolitan areas. Italy experienced economic buoyancy after 1971, and this prompted many Italians to leave Australia and return to Italy. This led to a decline in the size of the Italian population in Australia. The 1996 Census recorded a drop in the number of Italy-born persons to 238,216.

From the time of her election to parliament, Franca Arean was hopeful of forming a “network” of women of all backgrounds who could meet informally, exchange ideas and help and support each other. In January 1984, she sent a letter to twenty to thirty women asking them to come to a meeting at Parliament House. They met in Feb 1984 for the first time, and the Women’s Network – Australia was born. The first Women’s Network guest was Frederika Steen, the head of a newly established Women’s Desk at the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs in Canberra.

Mara’ was born in Daugavpils, Latvia. Her parents lost contact with one another during the Second World War and her mother brought the family to South Australia in 1949. Mara and her sister were placed at the Goodwood Orphanage and their brother at the Brooklyn Park Orphanage for three and a half years while their mother worked as a nurse’s aid and established a new home. Mara learnt to speak English at the orphanage. She found many of the routines and regulations incomprehensible at first and her perspective as an ‘outsider’ provides different insights into the institution.

Lithuanians came in large numbers to Australia in the late 1940s and early 1950s as part of the wave of refugees from the Soviet-occupied Baltic states.