The Australian Women's Register

Helen Morgan is a senior research fellow at the University of Melbourne’s eScholarship Research Centre. A historian with archival and editing qualifications, she has worked as information architect and exhibition designer on the Australian Women’s Archives Project since its inception in 2000, and is co-editor of the Australian Women’s Register. Her MA thesis in art history was on the Australian artist Thea Proctor. She is a director and board member of Her Place Women’s Museum Australia.

Joan Weidenhofer was appointed compere of the 9PA Women’s Session and Territory correspondent to the Australian Women’s Session by the Australian Broadcasting Commission during 1954.

Fanny Balbuk was a prominent Noongar woman and an informant on Noongar culture and history to anthropologist Daisy Bates. She is renowned for protesting at Government House about the occupation of her traditional land around Perth.

The information which Fanny Balbuk passed on to Daisy Bates played an important role in the native title claim of 19 September 2006, whereby Justice Wilcox of the Federal Court of Australia found that Noongar people held native title rights over parts of the Perth area.

Claire Dunn emigrated to Australia in 1957 at the age of twenty. She worked as a presenter and occasional actor on television during the 1960s and 1970s. Dunne joined the Radio Ethnic Australia in 1975, which was subsequently incorporated into the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) in 1976. During the 1980s Dunne produced and directed Eire san Astrail (Ireland in Australia) on SBS. In 1985-1986 she was a member of the council of the Australian Institute of Multicultural Arts.

Dunne produced an ABC radio programme entitled Poems from prisons during the 1970s and during the 1970s and 1980s Dunne was involved with the peace movement and the United Nations Association of Australia. Dunne has also produced books and worked as an occasional journalist, as well as a television and radio script writer.

Dr Isabel Ormiston had been working with the Red Cross in London before enlisting in the war effort in World War I. She worked at the Queen of the Belgians’ Hospital at Ostend and La Panne (1914-1915), the Wounded Allies Relief (W.A.R.) Hospital Montenegro (1916-1917), British Red Cross Depot Egypt (1916), and the W.A.R. Hospital Limoges.

Dr Ormiston was awarded the Montenegrin Red Cross and Orders of Danilo and the Nile. She later took up the position of Senior Lady Medical Officer, Egyptian Ministry of Education and in 1928 was awarded an MBE.

Josephine Zammit emigrated to Australia from Malta with her husband Charles in 1952. In the late 1960s the couple became Australian representatives of the Malta Emigrants’ Commission and Josephine became involved in radio broadcasting as part of her welfare work with migrants. She was a pioneer of ethnic station 2EA in Sydney and continued her active involvement with ethnic radio broadcasting until the mid-1980s.

In 1978 she was awarded an MBE in the ‘ethnic community’ category, the first Maltese woman in Australia to be honoured in that way.

Dr Laura Forster was the first Australian doctor to head to the war in Belgium. She joined the British Field Hospital in Antwerp in September 1914.

Laura’s sister, Mrs H. E. Kater, provided funding to the Sydney University Women’s College in her memory, which was to provide for a series of lectures on hygiene. There was also a scholarship in her name.

Grace Amelia Perry studied medicine at the University of Sydney. She had a home-based medical practice at Five Dock and served as an honorary physician at the Renwick Hospital for Infants and as an honorary paediatrician at the Fairfield District and South Sydney Women’s hospitals.

As a child, Grace had written poetry and three collections were published by Consolidated Press Ltd. She began writing poetry again in 1961 and the following year she joined the Poetry Society of Australia.

Grace was editor of Poetry Magazine from 1962-1964. After being expelled from the poetry society in 1964, she established a new Magazine Poetry Australia, which she edited until her death.

Perry won a medal at the New South Wales premier’s literary awards in 1985 and was appointed AM the next year. After failing to receive funding for two projects and feeling abandoned by her supporter, Grace committed suicide at her Berrima home on 3 July 1987.

Dr Alice Benham was a doctor who served during World War I.

Joanna was the CEO of the International Women’s Development Agency from 2010 until 2017.

Joanna’s experience in international development, foreign affairs, human rights, peace building and social justice ranges across four continents and 28 countries.

Her former roles include: Country Director for the Burnet Institute in Myanmar; Country Director for Save the Children UK in Vietnam; and Regional Director for Africa with the Overseas Service Bureau. Joanna’s international advisory roles include UNDP, UNOCHA, UNICEF, UNAIDS, UNHCR, governments across Asia, Africa, Australia and the Pacific and multiple international and local NGOs.

Joanna has provided policy, evaluation and management services in relation to disease control, humanitarian assistance, national strategic planning, organisation and capacity development and institutional strengthening within government systems and across civil society organisations and networks.

She currently sits on the Board of the Australian Council for International Development and the Victorian Ministerial Council on Women’s Equality.

In 2013, Joanna was named as one of Australia’s 100 Women of Influence, and in 2016, she was inducted into the Victorian Honour Roll for Women for outstanding service to international development, gender equality and peace building.

Joanna was made an Officer in the Order of Australia (AO) in the 2018 Australia Day Honours for ‘distinguished service to women in the areas of gender equality and individual rights through leadership and policy, development roles, and to the promotion of global health, peace and security’.

Paulette was one of three remarkable sisters who made history by becoming the first Australian women to own and run a film production company.

The trio were inducted into the Victorian Honour Roll of Women in 2001.

Paulette was one of three remarkable sisters who made history by becoming the first Australian women to own and run a film production company.

The trio were inducted into the Victorian Honour Roll of Women in 2001.

Paulette was one of three remarkable sisters who made history by becoming the first Australian women to own and run a film production company.

The trio were inducted into the Victorian Honour Roll of Women in 2001.

Jenny Morgan is a feminist legal scholar with a particular interest in theories of equality, reproductive issues, especially abortion law reform, and violence against women including sexual assault and the use by men of the provocation defence. She served as a member of the Committee for Gender Studies at the University of Melbourne from 1988.

Betty Feith is a teacher and volunteer whose work inside and outside the classroom has reflected her ideals of a peaceful, just and inclusive society, and her abiding Christian faith. Betty was a co-founder of the Volunteer Graduate Scheme for Indonesia, a programme established in the early 1950s that pioneered the concept of international volunteering as it is understood today. Betty herself worked in Indonesia in a volunteer capacity during the mid-1950s and again in the 1990s, both times with her husband, political scientist Herb Feith. Betty has taught at schools and tertiary institutions in Melbourne and Indonesia, and the Asian Studies and Indonesian history courses she taught in Melbourne during the 1960s and 1970s were among the first of their kind in Victoria. Betty has had a lifetime involvement in church and other service, including for the Christian World Service (renamed Act for Peace), the Division of Social Justice (Victoria) in the Uniting Church of Australia, and other ecumenical organisations.

Ailsa Thomson Zainuddin is a writer and academic who taught at the Faculty of Education at Monash University, specialising in the history of education. Her undergraduate courses at Monash on the history of education in Southeast Asia and the history of education for girls and women, were among the first of their kind in Australia. Her published writing in these fields includes the text-book, A Short History of Indonesia. Ailsa has maintained a close and enduring association with Indonesia, the country where her husband Zainu’ddin was born and raised, and where she herself lived and worked during the 1950s. Ailsa was awarded a PhD for They Dreamt Of A School, the centenary history of Methodist Ladies’ College, Kew; the school she herself attended.

Mary Ann Cannard was one of very few returned WW1 nurses granted a block of land to farm under the Soldier Settlement Scheme.

Helen Baillie was an Aboriginal rights activist and a nurse. She was passionate about Aboriginal issues and was involved in various Aboriginals rights organisations. In addition, Baillie opened her house on Punt Road as a hostel to Aboriginal people from the 1930s to the 1950s.

Patti Warn was the first female president of the Tasmanian Branch of the Australian Labor Party.

Dr Evelyn Ruth Scott was an indigenous rights activist and social justice campaigner who played a pivotal role in the reconciliation process in Australia. She was a key figure in the ‘yes’ campaign of the 1967 referendum whereby 90 per cent of Australian voters chose ‘Yes’ to count Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the census, and give the Australian Government the power to make laws for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Juliet Flesch spent over 30 years as a librarian, first at the National Library of Australia and then for almost two decades as the foundation Principal Librarian (Collections) in the University of Melbourne Library, before turning to historical research, working mainly as a research assistant in European history. Her 2002 PhD, which examined Australian popular romance novels of the 20th century, was published in 2004 as From Australia with Love. Her subsequent books include Minding the Shop, published in 2005, a history of the University of Melbourne’s Department of Property and Buildings. She has published widely in journals of librarianship and history.

Irene Myrtle Lowe was the first woman to graduate from the Bachelor of Agricultural Science at the University of Melbourne in 1918, and the first female student to attend the Dookie Agricultural College.

Following her graduation, Irene worked at the Bacteriology School and then at Burnley. After the birth of her three children, Irene never worked again.

Jane Macartney was a well-respected and much-loved member of both Irish and Victorian society during the nineteenth century. She dedicated much of her time to working with the sick and poor and was involved in the establishment of an Orphan Asylum, the Carlton Refuge, the Melbourne Home and the Lying-In Hospital.

Jane was the wife of Hussey Burgh Macartney, the Dean of Melbourne from 1852 until his death in 1894.