The Australian Women's Register

As a young parent with children growing up in Canberra, Lyndsay Connors was one of many whose lives were enriched by the philosophy of Jean Blackburn. Along with many other active members of the public education community and the feminist movement at that time, Lyndsay Connors found in The Karmel Report, Schools in Australia, and, in particular, in Girls, Schools and Society a set of directions for the continuing struggle for quality and equality in education.

Having served on the ACT Schools Authority as a parent member, Lyndsay Connors was then appointed as a full-time Schools Commissioner. Her later appointments included Chair of the Schools Council of the National Board of Employment, Education and Training; and Deputy Chair, Board, Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Following a period of 8 years as a director with the New South Wales Department of Education and Training, she was appointed in 2000 to chair a Ministerial Working Party Review in Victoria, ‘Public Education: The Next Generation. She was the Australian College of Education Medallist, 2001.

In 2017, Lindsay Connors was awarded an Order of Australian in the General Division for ‘distinguished service to national public education policy, to improved school performance and equitable funding delivery, and as a role model and mentor of young women.’

(Source: Biography supplied by Dr Shirley Randell AM)

Ruth Crow and her husband Maurie, long term members of the Communist Party, were active in various progressive movements, in later years becoming especially involved with the North Melbourne Association.

(Source: Historical Note Melbourne University Archives)

Emily Cruickshank was married to F. Cruickshank until 1902 when he died. She was the sole breadwinner for her family of three children.

(Source: Historical Note Melbourne University Archives)

Grace Cuming was the wife of W.J. (Bill) Cuming, of the Cuming, Smith & Co. family.

(Source: Historical Note Melbourne University Archives)

Dorothy Derham was the daughter of H. and Grace Derham (née Taylor and one of four sisters including Mrs Aeneas Gunn), graduated at the University of Melbourne (B.A. 1919, Dip.Ed. 1920, M.A. 1921) and taught English and French to the examination forms at Ruyton Girls’ School. She was first cousin to Alfred and Enid Derham, and a close friend of the latter.

Enid Derham was a poet and an academic who photographed her travels to Egypt, the Mediterranean, Europe, and England during 1927.

Frances Derham was born in Melbourne in 1894 and married Alfred Derham. As a trained artist and qualified art teacher, she taught and lectured for over sixty years and had a profound influence on early childhood art in Australia. After teaching at Preshil in Kew, Frances Derham tutored at the Kindergarten Training College. She was closely involved with Christine Heineg in the establishment of the Lady Gowrie Child Centres in 1939. A former President of the Art Teachers’ Association of Victoria, Vice-President and founding member of the Australian Society for Education through the Arts, Derham died in 1987.

An illustrator of many books on Australian plants, Betty Maloney and her sister, Jean Walker, studied art at Melbourne Technical College (now RMIT).

After teaching art at the National Fitness Council, Melbourne Church of England Grammar School and St Catherine’s School in Melbourne, she travelled to Europe.
With her sister she wrote Designing Australian Bush Garens and Australian Bush Gardens in 1966 and 1967.

The 86 watercolour illustrations used for the publication Proteaceae of the Sydney Region with Alec Blombery are in the Archives of the New South Wales State Library.

Also she illustrated books on mah-jong and thimbles – she maintained a collection of Victorian thimbles, was a co-founder, with her husband, of the Sydney Wagner Society and was involved with volunteer conservation groups, including the Society for Growing Australian Plants.

In the early 1990s her own garden at French’s Forest was approved by the National Trust as a Trust garden and she was presented with a terracotta plaque.

Julie Hammer was the first woman to command an operational unit in the RAAF, the Electronic Warfare Squadron, and was awarded a Conspicuous Service Cross for that command. She was the recipient of the 1996 Association of Old Crows (Australian Chapter) Award for Distinguished Service to Electronic Warfare. She was awarded the 2001 Sir Charles Kingsford Smith Memorial Medal by the Royal Aeronautical Society to recognise her contribution to Australian aerospace and delivered the 2001 Kingsford Smith Memorial Lecture. She is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers Australia, a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society and a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. She was the first woman in the RAAF to become a member of the General List on promotion to Group Captain 1996, and the first serving woman in the history of the Australian Defence Force to be promoted to One Star level, on promotion to Air Commodore in 1999. She served for three years from 1996 to 1998 as one of the Prime Minister’s representatives on the Governor General’s Australian Bravery Awards Council.

Born in Pressburg, Austria-Hungary where her father was the manager of a branch of J P Coats thread mills. The family returned to Paisley, in Scotland, with the outbreak of World War I.
She enrolled in the in the Scottish National Academy of Music in Glasgow, then studied singing under Francis Harford before joining the Carl Rosa Opera Company in 1935 and played at the London Lyceum Theatre and touring South Africa.
In 1937 she joined the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company as a principal soprano, touring the English provinces and later America. In 1939 she was invited to join the Australian Gilbert and Sullivan Opera Company as a principal for a year long tour of Australia and New Zealand.
She met and married Frank (later Sir Frank) Tait, the youngest of the five Tait brothers.
Her first book A Family of Brothers provides a history of the J C Williamson’s theatre enterprise and the contribution of the Tait brothers to Australian theatre. This was followed by Dames, Principal Boys…and all that: A history of Pantomime in Australia in 2001.

(Source: Farewell to a grand dame of light opera by Elisabeth Kumm and Grand lady of the stage by Philip Jones)

The Invergowrie Foundation is a public charitable trust. The primary focus of the Foundation is to promote and advance the education of girls and women within Victoria. The Foundation is administered by twelve Trustees. They are responsible for maintaining the assets and distributing annually the surplus funds to promote and advance education in Victoria.

Ola Cohn was the first Australian sculptor to carve large commissions free-hand in stone. She created the statue for the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden in Adelaide, South Australia, and carved the famous Fairies’ Tree in Melbourne’s Fitzroy Gardens. Examples of Ola Cohn’s work in bronze, stone and wood are in state and provincial galleries nationwide. On 1 January 1965, Cohn was appointed a Member of the British Empire for her work in the service of art, especially sculpture. Her studio home in Gipps St, East Melbourne, is now known as the Ola Cohn Memorial Centre.

Coppel (née Service) was an Arts student at the University of Melbourne and the Womens’ Vice-President of the SRC. She graduated L.L.B in 1924 and in the following year married Elias Coppel (lecturer in law). Marjorie Coppel (author of modern history texts for secondary schools) was an active member of “The Catalysts”, an association of intellectual, professional and artistic women who met regularly for dinners at the Lyceum Club.

(Source: Historical Note University Melbourne Archives)

Joan Coxsedge was the first Labor woman to be elected to the Victorian Legislative Council as the Member for Melbourne West Province in July 1979. She served until 1992. While in office she wrote and produced the newsletter, Hard Facts For Hard Times, from her Footscray office, in which she offered a left view of current local, national and international events.

(Source: Historical Note Melbourne University Archives)

In 1998 Mirka Mora was awarded the title of Honoured Artist, by the Lord Mayor and councillors of the City of Melbourne, ‘in recognition of lifelong achievement in the arts which has made an outstanding contribution to the life of this city’. Born in Paris, France, Mora with her husband Georges and son Philippe arrived in Australia in 1951. Over time their cafes and restaurants, The Mirka Café, the Balzac and the Tolarno were renowned for the bohemian style of the time. In 1999, a retrospective of her work was shown at Heide Museum of Modern Art and her autobiography Wicked but Virtuous: My Life was published in October 2000.

A fourth-generation Chinese Australian, Shun Wah is known for hosting ABC & SBS programs Studio 22, The Big Picture, Image, Eat Carpet, The Noise and Media Dimensions.
In 1996, she was nominated for an AFI award in ‘Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role’ for acting debut in Floating Life.
She is the co-author with Greg Aitkin of the publication Banquet: 10 Courses to Harmony.

(Sources: http://www.amida.com.au/profiles/1001.diffe.html accessed 18/02/02; http://www.anu.edu/pad/community/literary/pastlitevents/Text/shun-wah.html accessed 18/02/02 and http://www.thei.aust.com/isite/cellfloatlife.html accessed 18/02/02)

Marjorie Tipping is a prolific writer and historian of art and colonial Australia. In 1990, based on her many published scholarly works, she became the first woman to earn the degree of Doctor of Letters by examination from the University of Melbourne. Tipping’s books include Eugene von Guerard’s Australian Landscapes (1975) Ludwig Becker: Artist & Naturalist with the Burke & Wills Expedition (1978), Melbourne on the Yarra (1978) and Convicts Unbound: The Story of the Calcutta Convicts and Their Settlement in Australia (1988).

Tipping was the first woman president (1972-1975) and fellow (1968) of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria. She was a member of the Victorian Council of the Arts and numerous other committees and community organizations, often in a voluntary capacity. Tipping was appointed as a Member of the Order of the British Empire (13 June 1981), for her contribution to the Arts.

Tipping is the patron of and one of the founders of the E W Tipping Foundation for Mentally Retarded Children and Adults, established in 1970. Tipping has travelled on six continents; her interests include music, theatre, archaeology, Australiana, and Chinese art.

Source(s): Personal Communication (2002), Who’s Who of Australian Women, Who’s Who 2002.

To celebrate the centenary of the graduation of the first woman graduate (Bella Guerin, 1883), the University Council appointed a Committee, chaired by Dame Margaret Blackwood, with the responsibility of arranging various appropriate events in 1983.

(Source: Historical Note University of Melbourne Archives

The Committee consisted of undergraduate representatives of the Faculties, one member representing the Professors’ wives and another representing the University staff. It arranged social functions to raise money for the University.

(Source: Historical Note University of Melbourne Archives)

Jenny Cheney was Professor Michael White’s graduate research assistant in the Department of Genetics from December 1960 to White’s retirement at the end of 1975. Cheney also co-authored an article with Professor W.R. Atchley entitled “Morphometric Differentiation in the Viatica Group of Morabine Grasshoppers”.

(Source: Historical Note University of Melbourne Archives)

Elected in 2001, Margetts is a member for the Agricultural Region, in the Legislative Council of Western Australia(WA), representing the Australian Greens Western Australia Party. From 1993-1999 she was a Senator (The Australian Greens) for WA in Federal Parliament.

Prior to commencing her parliamentary career Margetts was a lobbyist and state co-ordinator for the People for Nuclear Disarmament (1988-1991).

Miss Marjorie Connor was born in Colac, Victoria in 1906 and died in Balwyn on 7 May 1991 aged 84. She was educated by a governess an later attended Lauriston before training as a nurse at the Alfred Hospital 1925-1928. After graduation she worked in the private consulting rooms of a dermatologist who used radium. She sustained some radium burns to the hand. From 1945-1972 she was the Executive Secretary of the Royal Victorian College of Nursing. Both it and its successor the RANF Vic. Branch awarded her Honorary Life Memberships. After her retirement she became the Hon. Secretary/Treasurer of the Florence Nightingale Committee Vic. Br. until shortly before her death.

(Source: Historical Note University Melbourne Archives)

Isabel Clifton Cookson was born in Melbourne in December 1893 and educated at Hambledon Ladies’ College and later at the Methodist Ladies’ College before entering the University of Melbourne where she graduated B.Sc. in 1916. She tutored at Newman and was appointed as Lecturer in Botany “including evening”) for 1930 and remained associated with the Department until her death on 1 July 1973, when she was still a Research Associate. She visited Europe for the first time in 1925, and in 1929 studied at the University of Manchester under Professor Lang, a specialist in fossil plants. In 1948 she received a Leverhulme Research Grant and in 1952 attended the 40th session of the Indian Science Congress.

Active in Melbourne’s outer eastern suburbs, Dulcie Bethune was a member of both the North Ringwood Women’s Liberation and North Ringwood Women’s Electoral Lobby (which later merged with the Maroondah WEL). She stood as a candidate for the Australia Party in the Legislative Assembly seat of Ringwood at the Victorian state election, which was held on 19 May 1973 and was an independent candidate for the Australian Senate at the federal election, which was held in May 1974. She stood again at the 1979 state election for the Australia Party in the Legislative Assembly seat of Warrandyte.

(Source: Historical Note University Melbourne Archives)

Annie Blamire was of the Blamire butchering family, High Street, Malvern. The shop belonging to her brother and sister-in-law was later converted to an antique shop – one of the earliest in the High Street area. Annie’s married name was Fraser.

Edith Bonney passed her University of Melbourne Matriculation examination in Algebra, Geometry, English, History, Arithmetic, Geography, and Elementary Physics held in November 1889, and received her certificate 29 March 1890.

(Source: Historical Note University of Melbourne Archives)

Edith married Stewart Frank Wylie at ‘Cleffcote’ in Sandringham, Victoria, on 6 February 1907.

Ada Booth graduated B.Sc. in April 1943; and B.A.(Hon) in 1961. She was appointed Laboratory Assistant in 1942; Part-time Demonstrator in Physics 1953; Senior Demonstrator in 1955; Assistant Lecturer in 1961 and Lecturer in 1974. She retired from the Physics School on 31 January 1987.

(Source: Historical Note University of Melbourne Archives)