The Australian Women's Register

Mangiwa Sagiba was born and raised on Goulburn Island in the Northern Territory. She grew up in the bush, speaking the Aboriginal languages and was engaged in traditional activities from an early age. She was educated at the Methodist Mission School, where she learned to speak English. When she was 21, she went to Darwin to do three years’ teachers training, and made visits to Hawaii and Fiji. Later, she attended a university course in Brisbane to learn how to read and write her own language. She became Principal of the school on Goulburn Island, which educates mainly Aboriginal children from pre-school age up to, but not including secondary school standard.

Bessy Cameron was educated at a ‘native institution’ (later known as Annesfield) at Albany, opened in 1852 by Anne Camfield, a teacher and governess. Bessy took her certificate of Proficiency with honours, and was sent to Sydney to attend a ‘model school’, where she became an accomplished pianist. In 1866 she returned to Albany to help Mrs Camfield in the school and was employed as church organist. In 1867 Bessy was sent to the Moravian Ramahyuck mission as a teacher. Not being able to marry a European man of her choice, she was transferred to Lake Tyers, were she married Donald Cameron, a Jupagilwournditch man from Ebenezer in 1868. Bessy lost her initiative and enthusiasm, which was reflected in a marked deterioration in her status. Her married years were spent moving from Ramahyuck to Lake Tyers and back, in a struggle to support her four surviving children. Her marriage deteriorated, and in 1887 Bessy fell seriously ill following another miscarriage. The rest of her life was spent battling to prevent the forceful removal of her children and grandchildren.

Pearl Gibbs was a major figure in Aboriginal political activism from the late 1920s to the 1970s. She was involved in organising the Day of Mourning on 26 January 1938 to protest the invasion; spoke for the Committee for Aboriginal Citizen Rights; supported Northern Territory Aborigines in their conflicts with a frontier ‘justice’ system; called for Aboriginal representation on the New South Wales Board; set up the Dubbo branch of the Australian Aborigines’ League with Bill Ferguson in 1946; became the organising secretary for a new Melbourne-based Council for Aboriginal Rights in 1953; was elected as the Aboriginal member of the Aborigines Welfare Board in 1954 and its only woman member; established the Australian Aboriginal Fellowship (with Faith Bandler) in 1956 and the first hostel for Aboriginal hospital patients and their families in Dubbo in 1960; and continued contributing to Aboriginal conferences throughout the 1970s.

The Melbourne Jewish Women’s Guild was formed in June 1896 at a meeting held in the Melbourne Town Hall. It initial objectives were personal service amongst poor, especially hospital visits, in order to bring relief to the sick and afflicted, without any regard to creed, race or colour. The philosophy adopted was that ‘All are creatures of the same God.’ Its foundation president was Mrs N. Bennett. By 1897 the Guild had 132 financial members. They held fundraising events, and distributed goods and money among Melbourne’s poor, but they discouraged ‘pauperism and idleness’. The Guild became one of the foundation affiliates of the National Council of Women of Victoria in 1902. Dr Constance Ellis, one of Melbourne’s first women doctors, was an active member and as the Guild’s representative to the National Council of Women of Victoria from 1902.

Daisy Bindi was born probably around 1904 on the Western Australian edge of the Gibson Desert. She learned to do housework and to ride and manage horses while working on ‘Ethel Creek’ station from an early age. In the 1940s she organised a strike of Aboriginal workers on the stations near her, despite the threats by the police and Native Welfare Department that she would be removed from the area. Her initiative was largely responsible for spreading the strike to the further inland Pilbara stations; the strike changed the structure of labour relations in the north of the State. In the 1950s Daisy lived with others in a well-ordered collective, the Pindan Cooperative, the first Aboriginal cooperative formed in Western Australia. When she visited Perth for the first time in October 1959, she spent much time lobbying for a school for Pindan. Her later visit to Perth gave her the opportunity to associate with women who supported the Aboriginal cause at the Union of Australian Women.

On 25 February 2003 Judy Maddigan was elected the 32nd person, and first female, to hold the office of Speaker of the Legislative Assembly in Victoria. She held this position until December 2006. The daughter of William Joseph and Bessie Irene (née Hurley) Todd, Judy was educated at Tintern Church of England Girls’ Grammar School before entering the University of Melbourne. She holds a Bachelor of Commerce, Graduate Diploma of Librarianship and a Masters of Librarianship and Information Services (Conservation and Archives). Prior to entering Parliament, Maddigan worked for the Commonwealth Public Service, was a Branch Services Librarian with the City of Maribyrnong and a Councillor with the City of Essendon. During this time she received the State ‘Clean Air Award’ by leading the campaign to ban incinerators in the City. Maddigan has a long history of involvement in local community groups including Women’s Organisations, the Essendon Historical Society and the Friends of Essendon Library. During the 1990s she was involved with the ‘Defend Public Libraries’ campaign which was organised to protect public libraries from the effects of compulsory competitive tending and amalgamations. An unsuccessful candidate for the Australian Labor Party at the 1992 state election, Maddigan was elected as a Member of Victorian Parliament to represent the Electoral District of Essendon in the Legislative Assembly in March 1996 and was re-elected in 1999, 2002 and 2006. She retired at the November 2010 election.

Ella Simon went to school on Purfleet Aboriginal reserve, New South Wales, until the age of twelve. She then worked in Gloucester and Sydney, but returned to Purfleet in 1932 to nurse her sick grandmother, Kundaibark. She married Joe Simon in the mid-1930s, and they travelled around New South Wales, helping Aboriginal people. In 1957 Ella was granted her ‘certificate of exemption’ from the restrictions imposed by the Aborigines Welfare Board. In 1960 she formed a branch of the Country Women’s Association on Purfleet reserve and became its president. She opened the Gillawarra gift shop selling Aboriginal artefacts. She improved the living conditions on Purfleet, by supplying new stoves and introducing electricity. She continued caring for Aboriginal children and the sick. In 1962 she was named Lady of Distinction by Quota and appointed a justice of the peace. She dictated her life story for the book Through My Eyes during 1976-78.

The Bardon Women’s Club was formed in 1926 with the aim of providing a vehicle for community involvement for the women in this suburb of Brisbane, Queensland, as long as they were not Catholic. The initiative of Mrs. Vera Jones, a local mother and an ex-schoolteacher with a Masters of Science from the University of Queensland, the club was open to non-Catholic women who wanted to ‘widen their own horizons’, who wanted ‘a voice in the community’ and also needed some entertainment and ‘a social focus’. The club amended its constitution in 1996 to allow membership to non-Protestant women, in accordance with State government anti-discrimination legislation. It ceased operation in 1998.

The Women’s Voluntary National Register, Queensland State Council, was established by a gathering of representatives from Queensland women’s organisations at a meeting in Brisbane, Queensland on April 26th 1939. It was part of a federal government scheme to determine how many women would be able to provide ‘manpower’ and national service, if required, when the nation went to war. The list of organizations associated with the register provides evidence of the large number of women who were members of clubs and organizations in the interwar period.

The Australian Women’s Land Army, Queensland Division, was established in July 1942, to help ‘fight on the food front.’ Queensland women comprised almost one quarter of the nation’s enlistees for war on this front. At its peak, 3,000 women were members of the Australian Women’s Land Army, 700 of who came from Queensland.

The ‘Women’s Place Women’s Space’ steering committee was formed in 1989 with the aim of securing a building and funding to resource a women’s centre in Brisbane; a building that would provide ‘a space for women by women for women, in Brisbane’. An ex-director of the University of Queensland Health Service, Dr Janet Irwin, is credited with initiating the concept, which received the public support of 173 women’s organizations, representing 200,000 women throughout Queensland. The then Lord Mayor of Brisbane, Sally Anne Atkinson, gave the proposal her strong support

The Women’s Community Aid Association was established in the 1970s in order to lobby local, state and federal governments for funding to establish a Women’s Resource and Education Centre in Brisbane.

Barbara Fawkes was chief education officer and examiner for the General Nursing Council for England and Wales; principal tutor sister at the Middlesex Hospital, London; and president of the International Council of Nurses. Granted a fellowship by the Red Cross to study in America, Fawkes obtained a BSc in Nursing at Columbia University. Sponsored by the Florence Nightingale Foundation she toured Australia and New Zealand in 1953 studying Australia’s hospitals and nurse training methods. She was made a Fellow of the New South Wales College of Nursing and a Life Governor of the Royal Melbourne Hospital in 1984. She received an OBE for her services to nursing. Fawkes visited Australia on many occasions and lived in Melbourne in her retirement in the 1980s, while continuing to serve on medical boards and participate in conferences.

The Lady Musgrave Lodge Committee was the initiative of a group of Brisbane women who felt that there was a need to provide a good home for working women and girls in Brisbane. The committee raised and administered funding to support the lodge where respectable young women could ‘take rest or board while waiting a new situation.’ Primarily designed to be a first port of call for young emigrant women arriving in the colony, it was also a place to stay for local working women and girls between jobs. It was named for its first patron, Queensland Governor’s wife, Lady Lucinda Musgrave.

The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union of Australasia (later renamed the National Women’s Christian Temperance Union of Australia) was formed in May 1891 at a meeting held in Melbourne for the purpose of federating the existing Colonial Unions. This was probably the first interstate gathering of women’s organisations held in Australia and the Union was the first national women’s organization in the country. The first branch of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) had been formed in Sydney in 1885. Although the primary objective of the organisation in Australia, and worldwide, is the prohibition of, and/or individual abstinence from, alcohol, the Union has been involved in a broad range of social and political reform activities. It was particularly active in the campaign for women’s suffrage in Australia from the 1880s, and the National Union included a Suffrage Department from its inception. The National Union functions as a coordinating body for the various State Unions, and sends representatives to international gatherings of the World’s Woman Christian Temperance Union.

The Ithaca Benevolent Society was established in 1900 by a group of Brisbane women to relieve poverty and hardship amongst the ‘deserving poor’. With the passage of time, the interests of the society evolved to encompass more women-centred interests. They were particularly concerned with the interests of mothers and their children, and spokespeople at the time claimed the association was instrumental in campaigns that sought to set up systems of state aid for mothers.

The Australian Women’s Ski Club was founded in Sydney in September 1932 and a Victorian branch was formed in November of the same year. The New South Wales branch was disbanded in March 1963. The Victorian branch continues to operate at Mt Buller, Victoria.

Cootamundra Home began as the Cootamundra hospital, in operation from 1897 to 1910, and reopened in 1911 as the Cootamundra Domestic Training Home for Aboriginal Girls. It was maintained by the Aborigines Welfare Board until 1968. This was the place where Aboriginal girls were placed after forcible removal from their parents under the Aborigines Protection Act of 1909. The idea was to segregate ‘part-Aboriginal’ children from their families and assimilate them into the mainstream community. The girls were not allowed to remain in any contact with their families, and were later sent to work as domestic servants. The building that housed the Home was later taken over by the Aboriginal Evangelical Fellowship as a Christian vocational, cultural and agricultural training centre called Bimbadeen College.

Merle Jackomos, of Yorta Yorta descent, grew up at Cummeragunja, New South Wales. During the famous walk-off of the Cummeragunja people who crossed into Victoria in 1939, Merle and her family were amongst those who stayed to make sure that the station was not closed and sold off by the government. She married Alick Jackomos in 1951, and became involved with the Aborigines Advancement League of Victoria. She helped found the National Aboriginal and Islander Women’s Council of which she became Victorian vice-president, and the Northcote Aboriginal women’s refuge. In 1972 she was elected to the Aboriginal Affairs Advisory Council. She was later appointed director of Aboriginal Hostels Ltd, and in 1981 was elected to the National Aboriginal Conference, of which she remained a member until its abolition in 1985.

Bronwyn Bancroft completed a Diploma in Visual Arts at the Canberra School of Arts in 1980, and then moved to Sydney where she became involved with the Aboriginal Medical Service’s Fashion Show in 1985. Following the success of the fashion parade, she opened the shop ‘Designer Aboriginals’ in Rozelle, as an outlet for her own designs and the designs of other Aboriginal artists. In 1990 she moved from retail to wholesale production of fabrics in order to concentrate on painting and design. Her work was exhibited in Paris at the Printemps Fashion Parade in 1987, and also in London at the 1989 Australian Fashion: The Contemporary Art exhibition. In 1989 her paintings were included in nine exhibitions. Her first solo exhibition of paintings was held in Sydney in 1989, and in 1991 she collaborated with Sally Morgan to produce an exhibition of prints at the Warrnambool Art Gallery, Victoria.

Queensland Rural Women’s Network Inc (QRWN) was formed in 1993 to meet the needs of women in rural communities throughout the state. Since then it has grown considerably and runs a series of programs in regional centre’s as well as being involved at a national and international level.
The membership of QRWN is not restricted to women in primary industries. Members include those who work in related roles in the rural and regional communities, such as Department of Primary Industries and Queensland Health Department. We actively seek, and have, a large number of members who undertake a huge variety of activities in their communities.
“Our focus is on all rural women and their families”
QRWN aims to provide opportunities for the self-development of rural women as well as being a lobby group that undertakes action in all areas affecting rural women and families, when the necessity arises
Vision
“To bring together women to support and enhance rural families and communities by building networks of information, friendship and resources.”
Mission
Is to help all rural Queensland women, whether living on the land or in the towns, to contribute more effectively to their communities.
Aims
• provide a stimulating and interesting forum for discussions and debate on all issues affecting women
• provide a support system through networking in all areas of our state network with other groups throughout Australia and the world to improve country-city relationships
• encourage provision of services by government agencies and private organisations
• praise the status of all rural women
• promote the value and diversity of rural industries and communities
• encourage personal development and education in rural communities
Structure
QRWN extends over six regions under the management of Regional Directors – Northern, Western, Central, Wide Bay Burnett, South East and Border. The Management Committee, with representatives from all over Queensland, meets. There are a number of local branches operating.

Australian Women in Agriculture (AWiA) was founded on St Valentines Day, February 14, 1993, and by 2004 was a national body of around 500 members. Members come from a large cross section of industries and include farmers, scientists, educators, communicators and others. All members bring a wealth of talents to the organisation and to agriculture. The group is represented on government boards as well as at local levels where industry and rural issues are addressed.
Australian Women in Agriculture is committed to promoting the advancement of women in agriculture by:
• uniting and raising the profile of women in agriculture;
• addressing rural and agricultural inequalities;
• working to ensure the survival of agriculture for future generations;
• securing local, regional, national and international recognition; and,
• achieving the status of a political and economic force.

The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) of Tasmania is primarily dedicated to promoting total abstinence from alcohol and other harmful drugs and all members sign a pledge to this effect. Under its broader agenda of ‘home protection’ and the promotion of a healthy lifestyle, however, it has been involved in wide range of social and political reform activities mostly relating to the welfare of women and children. Importantly, influenced by its sister organisation in the United States, the WCTU became a major supporter of the campaign for women’s suffrage in Tasmania as it was believed that power at the ballot box was the only way to achieve their goals. While at its most influential in the years up to WWI, the movement continues today.

The Sydney District Nursing Association was established in 1900 on the initiative of the Anglican Christian Social Union, which considered the care of the sick to be part of its Christian responsibility. It supplied trained nurses to visit the sick and poor in their own homes. In 1906 it made the decision to co-operate with other religious organisations, thereby becoming a non-denominational association. By 1935 the Association was incorporated as a second schedule hospital, governed by a board of directors appointed by the Government. The Association expanded rapidly after 1956 with the passing of the Home Nursing Subsidy Act with the result that by 1967 decentralisation of the service was a priority. The name was changed to the Sydney Home Nursing Service in 1967. The Sydney Home Nursing Service is the largest single organisation in New South Wales delivering community nursing care.