The Australian Women's Register

The Sydney University Women’s Association was renamed the Sydney University Women’s Union in approximately 1910.

Judy Hall (nee Baillie) was born into a musical family in West Gippsland in 1922. Although she did not begin formal piano training until she was twelve, she has been an inspiring and influential piano teacher for over seventy years. Her focus and expertise has been on the foundations of good technique and she has been an authoritative voice in music education across Australia. Her teaching and commitment to music education has been recognised through a number of awards and honours including an OAM in 1996.

The Young Women’s Christian Association was established in Queensland in 1888 at Rockhampton.

In 2011, three Queensland branches amalgamted to form YWCA Queensland. These branches were Brisbane, Townsville, and Downs and SW Queensland (based in Toowoomba).

The New Hospital for Women was renamed the Rachel Forster Hospital for Women and Children when it was relocated to Redfern in 1925. The original hospital was co-founded by Dr Lucy Gullett and opened in January 1922. The Hospital was recognised as a public hospital in 1931.

In 1963 the name was changed to the Rachel Foster Hospital and four years later the first all-male ward was opened.

Arachnologist Barbara York Main was fascinated with spiders since she was a small child, living on the West Australian wheatbelt in the 1930s.

Barbara completed a PhD in zoology at the University of Western Australia in 1956, becoming the first female PhD in the Department of Zoology at the University.

During her career, Barbara received several awards, including Medal of the Order of Australia in 2011 ‘for service to science and conservation as a researcher and educator in the field of arachnology, and to the community of Western Australia.’

Petersham Girl’s Intermediate High School was opened in January 1913. However, the school closed in December 1938 and was converted to a public school the following year.

In January 1965, Petersham was once again converted to a girls’ high school. Petersham amalgamated with Newtown Boys’ High School in 1990 to form the Newtown High Scholol of Performing Arts.

Nat Grant is a composer and sound artist working across live performance, installation, and sound design: a percussionist and drummer who creates devised, notated, electroacoustic, and improvised works for recordings and live performance.

Nat has created original music for theatre, dance, film, and live art, holds a PhD in composition from the Victorian College of the Arts, and in 2018 received the Age Music Victoria award for best Experimental/Avant-Garde Act.

Nat has taught instrumental music to people of all ages and is invested in creating community around music and sound making.

Mary Mitchelson was the first woman to fish commerically in the Gippsland Lakes. After her children left chool she joined her husband, Kevin, in the family business, working fulll time as Kevin’s deckie in the Gippsland Lakes.

The used seine nets to catch patches of mullet, trout and bream.

Kevin and Mary were inseparable and fished together for over 50 years, starting on the “Mary M”, a 26″ boat built by Kevin and named for her.

Tintern Ladies College was renamed Tintern Girls Grammar School in 1911. The School was purchased by the Church of England in 1918 and was thus renamed the Tintern Church of England Girls’ Grammar School.

In 1999 Tintern Schools was formed with two campuses: Tintern Anglican Girls Grammar School and Southwood Boys Grammar School.

At a General Meeting on 9 July 1959, a motion was passed to change the name of the Sydney University Women Graduates’ Association to the the N.S.W. Association of University Women Graduates. The change of name was not reflected in the Sydney University Calendar until 1961.

According to the 1961 Calendar, the ‘N.S.W. Association of University Women Graduates exist[ed]… to co-operate, through the Australian Federation of University Women, with the International Federation of University Women’ as well as to ‘further such interests as university women in N.S.W. have in common and to encourage women graduates to take an active interest in the universities in N.S.W.’

At the General Meeting on 28 June 1974, a decision was made to change the name of the Association to the Australian Federation of University Women – New South Wales.

In mid-1974 the N.S.W. Association of University Women Graduates was renamed the Australian Federation of University Women – N.S.W.

Presumably, the New South Wales branch of the Australian Federation of University Women changed its name in 2009, at the same time the national body became the Australian Federation of Graduate Women (AFGW).

Janet Cosh was the only child of Dr John and Louise Cosh (née Calvert). Janet attended the University of Sydney, where she studied English, History and the Classics. She moved to the Southern Highlands in 1934, where she took a keen interest in local history and the natural environment. In her late sixties, Janet devoted her life to the study of the native flora of the Southern Highlands, New South Wales and became a highly respected amateur botanist. After Janet’s death, her bequest to the University of Wollongong provided funds and botanical resources which were used to establish the Janet Cosh Herbarium.

The Zonta Club of Perth Nothern Suburbs was established on 22 June 1981.

The Sydney University Women’s Union was founded in 1914 to ‘manage the affairs of University women’. Their constitution was adopted by the Senate in 1915, but the Union did not start its work until March 1917.

This was the second group with the name ‘Sydney University Women’s Union’ at the University. The first Women’s Union was founded in c.1891 as the Sydney University Women’s Association. The Association was renamed in c.1910 to the Sydney University Women’s Union and again in 1915, to the Sydney University Women’s Council. This decision was made ‘in order to leave the latter name free for adoption by the new women’s organisation to be formed within the University.’

Joyce McGrath is a 92 year old portrait painter. She was the first arts librarian at the State Library of Victoria, and received a Churchilll Fellowship to travel to arts libraries around the world and investigate their collections. Joyce spent years in hospital as a child with tuberculosis – she emerged with a lfelong love of colour, an incredible sense of humour, and enormous passion and drive for the arts.

Performance artist Robin Laurie was heavily involved in the infamous Melbourne Pram Factory in the 1960s and 70s, was a founding member of the first Women’s Circus in Victoria, as well as Circus Oz. She’s a trombone playing, Feldenkrais practicing legend who believes comedy is vital for survival.

Feminist playwright, actor, and teacher Sandra Shotlander is a regular feature at Melbourne’s La Mama Theatre, and at Women Playwrights International conferences around the world. She has founded several theatre companies including Mime and Mumbles deaf theatre group, and believes strongly in the importance of women creating their own narrative and telling their own stories.

Born in New Zealand, Jo Jo Smith is a soul singer, songwriter, guitarist, and drummer. She was the first woman to perform at the Byron Bay Blues and Roots Festival in the 1980s. In 2017 she performed 50 show with fellow songwriter Lucy Thorne, celebrating 50 years as a professional performing artist.

Shirley McKechnie is a dancer, choreographer, and educator. She founded the first tertiary dance course in Australia at Rusden College (Deakin University) in 1975 and has written extensively on dance and dance education. She was a co-founder of the Australian Association for Dance Education (AADE), now Ausdance, has been a professorial fellow at the Victorian College of the Arts, and in 1987 was awarded an Order of Australia.

Classical pianist and composer Elizabeth Drake creates original music for theatre, film, dance, and radio. She was the first woman to win an AFI award for screen composotion, for her score from the 2003 film ‘Japanese Story’.

Actor and teacher Dr Elizabeth Jones has been the Artistic Director of La Mama Theatre since 1976. For 20 year prior she was a teacher of English, History, Drama, and Politics in Australia and Indonesia. She has worked over many years as an advocate for refugees and First Nation’s peoples, and is invested in La Mama being a place of support for minority and independent artists.

Writer, actor, comedian, architect, and celebrant Suzanne Ingleton comes from a tradition of theatre, sacred ritual and spiritual shamanism. She has created solo and collaborative performance works in Australia and overseas for more than 40 years and is particularly vocal about the constant erasure of women’s stories and the work they are required to do consistently to overcome adversity.

The aim of the pretigious Nita B Kibble Literary Awards (also known as the Kibble Awards) is ‘to encourage Australian women writers to improve and advance literature for the benefit of our community.’

The Kibble Awards are presented to established authors, for both fiction and non-fiction works which fall in the genre of ‘life writing’.

Established in 1875, Brisbane Girls Grammar School is one of Queensland’s original grammar schools.

The Labor Women’s Anti-Conscription Committee was formed on 13 September 1916, in response to Prime Minister Bill Hughes’ attempts to introduce conscription during the First World War. The initial meeting, which was held at the Trades Hall, was attended by over 300 women. The aim of the newly-formed Committee was to ‘work in conjunction with the National Executive to fight against conscription of human life.’ Their campaign was to include house-to-house visits, literature distribution and factory mid-day meetings. Mrs Bella Lavender was elected president and Mrs Elizabeth Wallace as secretary.

After the conscription referendum on 28 October 1916, several members of the Women’s Anti-Conscription Committee formed the Labor Women’s Political, Social and Industrial Council.

A second Anti-Conscription Committee was established approximately six weeks prior to the second conscription referendum, which was held on 20 December 1917. Mrs M. Felstead was the president of the second Committee, and Mrs V. O’Brien the secretary.