The Australian Women's Register

Valerie Callister served as the Member for Morwell in the Legislative Assembly of the Victorian State Parliament from 1981-88. A member of the Australian Labor Party from 1976, she was secretary of the Parliamentary party from 1982 and served on the Privileges Committee of the Victorian Parliament from 1982. Before her election to parliament she had a career as a technical school teacher from 1975-81.

Mary-Ellen Passmore-Edwards is an Aboriginal child welfare worker who believes that ‘if anything is going to change for Aboriginal society, it has got to happen with the children. She advocates alternative methods of treatment and healing of sexually abused indigenous children. She has also worked with abused women in Queensland and with Yorganop, the Aboriginal child care agency in Perth.

Passmore-Edwards was Treasurer of the Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care, and represented this body at an international indigenous forum in 1995.

Joan Chambers joined the Mortlake branch of the Liberal Party in 1969 and was elected Member of the Legislative Assembly for the seat of Ballarat South in the Victorian Parliament in 1979. She served on the Subordinate Legislation Committee in 1979 and the Public Review Committee, 1980-82. She suffered defeat at the 1982 election, but was an unsuccessful candidate again in the 1988 election. In 1992 she stood as an Independent candidate in the Legislative Assembly seat of Ballarat West.

Christine Choo, a historian, qualified social worker, social researcher and a migrant from Asia, has published widely in race and gender issues. She is currently an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia and is involved in a number of community based projects. Christine’s current (2008) research interests are Western Australian history, particularly of women and minority ethnic groups; Aboriginal-Asian connections in Australia; Life Writing and personal family history. Her PhD in History entitled Aboriginal Women on Catholic Missions in the Kimberley, Western Australia, 1900-1950, published as Mission Girls (2001), received the inaugural Margaret Metcalf award in 2003 for excellence in the use and application of archival materials from the State Records Office of Western Australia. In 1990 Christine was the recipient of the Archbishop Goody Award to explore the integration of Christianity in the lives of Aboriginal people in the Kimberley. Aboriginal Child Poverty, written under the auspices of the Brotherhood of St Laurence and the Secretariat of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Care ( SNAICC), was published in 1990. Christine co-edited History and Native Title a volume of Studies in Western Australian History in 2003. She has also published refereed journal articles, book chapters and book reviews.

Eleanor Jessie (Nellie) Stewart, of Wergaia descent, was born Eleanor Pepper at the Ebenezer Mission in western Victoria. Her family travelled widely, spending some time at Coranderrk before settling at Lake Boga near Swan Hill. There Eleanor learnt housekeeping and cooking skills from the wife of the local baker, A.C. Stone, who was friendly with Aboriginal people.

Nellie married Jackson Stewart, of Wemba Wemba descent, and they lived and worked around the Riverina and raised a large family. Nellie worked as a shearers’ cook, and was able to save enough money to buy a house in Swan Hill. In about 1960 she was visited by Alan Marshall, a well-known author, and they planned to write about the early days in the Wimmera. Eleanor also remembered and recorded in writing some Wergaia words, the lists of which are now deposited with the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies in Canberra. The Institute also holds audio-tapes of the stories and vocabulary she recounted for C.J. Ellis and Luise Hercus.

Jane Hill, a member of the Australian Labor Party from 1978, served as the Member for Frankston in the Legislative Assembly of the Victorian Parliament from 1982-85 and as member for Frankston North from 1985 until 1992, when the seat was abolished. She was an unsuccessful candidate in the Legislative Assembly seat of Frankston East at the Victorian state election, which was held on 3 October 1992.

Roberta (Bobbi) Sykes was born and brought up in Townsville, Queensland. She left school at 14 and trained as a nurse. In 1971 she moved to Sydney, and in 1972 helped establish the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra. She worked as Education and Publicity Officer for the newly founded Aboriginal Medical Service in Redfern, and began a ten-year career as a freelance journalist. She has written poetry and film reviews, and contributed to contemporary discussions on a wide range of indigenous issues.

From 1975 to 1980 Bobbi Sykes was an adviser on Aboriginal health and education to the New South Wales Health Commission, following which she moved to the United States and completed her doctorate on Aboriginal education at Harvard University. Upon her return to Sydney, she continued writing and lecturing. She has held appointments at Charles Sturt and Macquarie universities and has worked as a consultant.

Thancoupie was born at Napranum in Queensland, on the land traditionally occupied by her ancestors. Her father was killed in war. Thancoupie attended the local school before being sent to Brisbane to train as a preschool teacher. Upon her return to Napranum she established a preschool but was unhappy with the situation and resigned.

Thancoupie began writing down and illustrating (with paintings on bark) stories her grandmother had taught her, and had a number of exhibitions of her work. Her application to study at a Sydney art school was rejected because she lacked formal qualifications, however she came across a pottery school which accepted her as a student. Thancoupie then went to America and Mexico and worked with indigenous potters. This helped her develop her own style, and she has since been creating pots and tile murals at her studio in Cairns where she moved in 1976, after the Comalco mining company refused to allow her a house at Napranum because she had left the community. Thancoupie still visits her hometown on a regular basis.

Doris Pilkington is the author of Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence; the story on which Phillip Noyce’s celebrated feature film is based.

Isabelle Procter was born in Cairns, Queensland. Her family moved to Darwin, where she completed her schooling before training in Perth as an early childhood teacher. She taught in preschools and primary schools in Western Australia. Later, she tutored in tertiary institutions, and worked as a curriculum officer, project coordinator and educational consultant whilst completing Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Education and Master of Education degrees at Murdoch University.

Procter has written widely on Aboriginal literacy and preschool education, and has worked on many project teams and committees. She was responsible for producing an Aboriginal employment and training management plan for the Western Australian Department of Conservation and Land Management; a study of community education for disadvantaged consumers for the Western Australian Ministry of Consumer Affairs; and a strategy for achieving social justice through Aboriginal education for the state’s Ministry of Education. She helped write the National Aboriginal Education Committee’s policy guidelines in 1989, and served as a member of Murdoch University’s Aboriginal studies management committee, and the Western Australian Ministry of Education’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander career and employment working party. She chaired the AIATSIS research advisory committee and the Western Australian government’s Aboriginal Advisory Council.

Procter’s varied career has also seen her work as a Western Australian Ministry of Education district superintendent, responsible for 41 government schools and preschools in the south Perth district.

In 1979, Gracia Baylor became the first woman member of the Liberal Party to be elected to the Victorian Legislative Council when she was electedthe member for Boronia. That year, she was one of the first two women to be elected to the Upper House, the other being Joan Coxsedge of the Australian Labor Party. Baylor held her seat until 1985 when she resigned to contest (unsucessfully) the Legislative Assembly seat of Warrandyte.

Dorothy Leila Rankine, of Ngarrindjeri and Kaurna descent, grew up at Raukkan (Point McLeay) on Lake Alexandrina in South Australia. Her lifelong involvement with music and singing began with her family and the local Salvation Army church. She later became a soldier of the Salvation Army. After completing only primary education she moved to Adelaide in 1965, where she joined the Aboriginal Women’s Council and later the Port Adelaide Aboriginal Friendship Club.

In 1972 Rankine became a founding member of the Adelaide Aboriginal Orchestra, which later developed into the Centre for Aboriginal Studies in Music (CASM), of which she was chairperson until her retirement in 1986. She acted as counsellor, liaising with the local Aboriginal community and organising annual camps and concerts. She edited and contributed poems to the journal Tjungaringanyi; was elected chairperson of the urban committee; and was an active singer, trombonist and speaker. She appeared in the films Sister, If You Only Knew (1975) and Wrong Side of the Road (1980).

Dorothy Leila Rankine served on the boards of the Aboriginal Community College, the Aboriginal Community Centre, and the Aboriginal Sobriety Group. She was a member of the Australia Council, the Aboriginal Artists Agency in Sydney, and the Aborigines Advancement League of South Australia, and was a life board member of Warriappendi Alternative School. She contributed to Aboriginal education curriculum materials for South Australian schools, told Ngarrindjeri stories on ABC television, and was one of the founders of Camp Coorong, a Ngarrindjeri cultural centre.

Elsie Roughsey (Labumore), of Lardil descent, was born on Mornington Island in Queensland. She was taken from her parents and placed in the local mission school at the age of eight. She stayed there until World War Two, not knowing that her own brother and sister were living in the same dormitory. When the missionaries were evacuated during the war, she returned to her family and lived in the bush learning Lardil customs.

In 1946 Elsie married Dick Roughsey, then a stockman but later an artist and author. She worked as a nursing aide, teacher’s assistant and voluntary community worker on Mornington Island.

In 1984 she published her autobiography, which became a best seller, and her visits to southern capitals to promote it attracted widespread media interest. She was an authority on the local history of Mornington Island and a famed maker of cottonwood dolls.

Justine Saunders was a member of the stolen generations of Aboriginal people. She became a professional actor in 1974 and was important to the establishment of Aboriginal theatre groups in the 1980s and 1990s.

Sally Morgan is a renowned Aboriginal artist and author of the award-winning My Place.

Lorna Schrieber (Balurr Wuppi), a descendant of the Gungganyji group of Yidinjdji people, was brought up in the girls dormitory between the ages of ten and sixteen, until 1942, when Yarrabah parents successfully appealed to the bishop of north Queensland to allow their children to live at home.

Lorna married Steven Schrieber, who became Yarrabah overseer while she worked in the welfare clinic. They moved to Cairns to give their children better schooling opportunities. They were given a large government house and fostered Aboriginal children from the outback who could then attend school.

In 1977, at the insistence of her people, Lorna was anointed Queen of Yarrabah by the bishop of north Queensland. She was one of the last Gungganyji speakers and custodians, and helped record traditional songs and stories. She paid regular visits to Yarrabah, encouraging children to speak the language and preserve the knowledge of their ancestors.

Kay Mundine, of Bundjalung descent, was born in 1947 in Grafton, New South Wales. In the 1960s she was employed at the State Bank of New South Wales before joining the Australian Public Service (APS). In 1975 she became editor of the magazine New Dawn (http://www.aiatsis.gov.au/dawn.htm), published by the New South Wales Department of Youth, Ethnic and Community Affairs. In 1980 she established the first Aboriginal clerks recruitment program in the Australian Public Service.

Between 1984 and 1987 Mundine was, simultaneously, commissioner for the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, head of the Victorian section of the equal employment opportunity branch of the Australian Public Service Board, and largely responsible for the Pope’s 1986 visit to Alice Springs.

In 1987 she was transferred to the equal employment opportunities unit in the new Public Service Commission in Canberra. She served as a commissioner on the Toomelah Inquiry and was regional director of the Queensland office of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission from 1988 to 1990. She also worked as a private consultant. In 1991 she acted as an advisor on multicultural affairs to the Chief Minister of the Australian Capital Territory government, and was an official visitor to the state’s Corrective Services. In the same year she was also elected a regional councillor of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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