The Australian Women's Register

Ashleigh Gentle won a gold medal in the Mixed Team Relay Triathlon at the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.

Meredith Hinchliffe has been involved with the arts in Canberra since 1977 when she joined the Crafts Council of the ACT as its Executive Secretary and then Director. She went on to work in organisations such as the National Campaign for the Arts, Museums Australia, ArtsACT, and the Donald Horne Institute for Cultural Heritage at UC, and has also worked as a freelance arts consultant and exhibitions curator since 1997. Meredith is a specialist on crafts including ceramics, textiles and furniture, and is an approved valuer under the Commonwealth Government’s Cultural Gifts Program. She has written about the arts for numerous arts journals and regularly contributed reviews of crafts and visual arts exhibitions and books to The Canberra Times from 1978 to 2009. Meredith has been a long-time advocate and lobbyist for the arts, and is a significant patron of and donor to arts organisations, especially the Canberra Museum and Gallery. In 2022 she was made a Member of the Order of Australia in recognition of her significant service to the arts.

Meredith Hinchliffe was inscribed on the ACT Women’s Honour Roll in 2000.

Tia-Clair Toomey won a gold medal in the 58kg Weighlifting event at the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.

Georgia Sheehan won a gold medal in the Synchronised 3m Springboard at the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.

In 1931, aviatrix Maude ‘Lores’ Bonney broke the Australian record for the longest one-day flight by a woman and the following year she became the first woman to circumnavigate Australia by air. She was also the first person to fly from Australia to England and the first person to undertake a solo flight from Australia to South Africa.

Win Olive was heavily impacted by the events of the Second World War, particularly as most of her male friends were deployed overseas to fight. This experience motivated Win’s later anti-war activities, as well as her defence of the environment, her concern for Indigenous people and their fight for justice, and her decision to embark on the journey of the Pacific Peacemaker.

The Pacific Peacemaker sailed around the Pacific in protest of nuclear weapons, specifically the launch of the Trident nuclear submarines in North America. Setting sail in December 1981, the journey took the yacht’s eleven crew members nine months. The voyage was documented in the film The Land My Mother by David Roberts and Win also published a book about their journey, titled Voyage of the Pacific Peacemaker.

Rhyll McMaster began writing poetry at an early age, with several poems published in the Bulletin whilst still in high school.

After moving to Hobart in 1967, Rhyll worked in the editorial office of the journal Australian Literary Studies, which was then based at the University of Tasmania.

After returning to Brisbane in c.1969, then moving to a rural area near Canberra, Rhyll settled in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales where she began writing full time.

Rhyll’s first collection, The Brineshrimp was published in 1972 and has since published a further six collections, including Washing the Money: Poems with Photographs, joint winner of the C. J. Dennis prize and winner of the Grace Leven Prize in 1986, and Flying the Coop: New and Selected Poems 1972-1994, joint winner of the Grace Leven Prize for 1995. Rhyll published her acclaimed debut novelFeather Man in 2007, winning the inaugural Barbara Jefferis Award.

Alexandra Cameron was a music teacher, music educator, administrator and founder of a number of music performance programs in Victoria. As the first Inspector of Music in Victoria and through her publications, she influenced and shaped Victorian music education in the second half of the twentieth century.

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.

Leah Neale made her Olympic debut in Rio, winning a silver medal in the 4x200m freestyle relay.

Sigrid McCausland, a former Senior Lecturer in Archival Science at Charles Sturt University, Australia, was a leader in the international community of archival educators who made a particularly significant contribution to archival education. Her contribution to the field was acknowledged in 2016 when she was honoured with Fellowship of the Australian Society of Archivists.

Sigrid straddled, with distinction, both practitioner and academic roles during her career. Her practitioner roles were unusually varied and included work in government archives, private manuscript collecting archives in large research libraries, as well as many years as University Archivist at both the University of Technology, Sydney and the Australian National University.

In 2016, Sigrid was Secretary of the International Congress of Archives (ICA) Section for Archival Education and Training and also a regular member of the Archives and Human Rights Group.

Sigrid passed away in Brisbane, Australia, on 30 November 2016.

Known as D.C., Dorothy Coleman was a successful commercial photographer known for her photographs of society people in Brisbane. An innovative photographer, D.C. was highly sought after for the effects she could achieve in portraiture and dance photography. D.C.’s photography was published widely in newspapers and magazines of the time. She employed and trained a number of women photographers and colourists in her photographic studio.

Harriett Brims operated a number of successful photography studios in Queensland: the Britannia Studios in Ingham, c.1902-1903; as well as studios in Mareeba, Queensland, c.1903-1914.

Ada Driver was one of the most successful woman photographers working in Brisbane in the early twentieth century. She owned her own studio, producing high-class portraiture and illustrative work. Driver used the latest processes, adding artistic colouring to produce soft-toned photographs, as well as producing images for magic lantern slides and stereoscopic photographs.

Bernice Agar was a highly successful portrait photographer based in Sydney, whose work featured prominent Australian society figures. Agar was also an early fashion photographer. Widely published, her glamourous works were characterised by a strong preference for artificial light and crisp outlines. Her technique favoured strong frontal lighting. Few of her society portraits survive today.

Rose Simmonds was a Brisbane-based photographer who was the only female member of the Queensland Camera Club. She consistently won prizes in competitions run by the club and by the Australasian Photo-Review. She worked in the Pictorialist style from 1926-1932, using the bromoil process to achieve romantic effects, and in the Modernist style from 1933-1940.

The Magistrates Court represents the first tier of the Queensland Courts system. It is the place where most criminal cases are first heard; it is also where most civil actions are heard. It deals with civil cases where the amount in dispute is $150,000 or less. Some minor family law matters are dealt with by the Court as too are matters covered by the Customs Act 1901, the Social Security Act 1991 and the Taxation Act 1953. The Court also hears the majority of domestic violence matters, and applications for child protection orders.

The Supreme Court is the highest court in Queensland. It is made up of two divisions: the Trial Division and the Court of Appeal. While the Trial Division hears the most serious criminal cases, as well as all civil matters involving amounts of more than $750,000, the Court of Appeal hears appeals from the District and Supreme Courts and also from tribunals.

The Court of Appeal is one of the two divisions of the Supreme Court of Queensland, the other being the Trial Division. Established in 1991, the Court of Appeal hears appeals from the District and Supreme Courts and from tribunals. Decisions of the Court of Appeal are made by a panel of three to five judges of the Supreme Court.

The District Court is constituted under the District Court of Queensland Act 1967 (QLD). It deals with serious criminal offences such as rape, armed robbery and fraud. It also hears appeals from cases decided in the Magistrates’ Court and disputes involving sums greater than $150,000 but less than $750,000. The judges of the District Court also sit in the Planning and Environment Court and in the Children’s Court of Queensland.

Established in 1992, the Children’s Court of Queensland (CCQ) deals with all juveniles who commit criminal offences while under the age of 17 years, unless the court orders that the matter be dealt with in an adult court. The CCQ is presided over by judges who have been appointed from the District Court. There is no jury. Matters are heard in accordance with the guidelines set down in the Children’s Court Act 1992 and the Youth Justice Act 1992. Matters involving children can, in addition, be heard in the Magistrates or Supreme Court.

May Darlington Lahey was the first female Queenslander to practice law. Although her legal career took place overseas, Lahey can lay claim to being Australia’s first female judge.

Susan Mary Kiefel was appointed to the Court in September 2007. At the time of her appointment she was a judge of the Federal Court of Australia and the Supreme Court of Norfolk Island. She served as a judge of the Supreme Court of Queensland in 1993-94 before joining the Federal Court. She was admitted to the Queensland Bar in 1975 and was the first woman in Queensland to be appointed Queen’s Counsel, in 1987. Justice Kiefel served as a part-time Commissioner of the Australian Law Reform Commission from 2003 to 2007. She has a Master of Laws degree from Cambridge University. Justice Kiefel was appointed a Companion in the General Division of the Order of Australia in 2011. She was elected a titular member of the International Academy of Comparative Law in June 2013. She was elected an Honorary Bencher of the Honourable Society of Gray’s Inn in November 2014.

On 29 November 2016, Justice Kiefel was appointed Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia. She is the first woman to achieve the position, ending 113 years of men leading the nation’s highest court.