The Australian Women's Register

The Australian Women in Agriculture Movement had its beginnings in the state of Victoria. It involves a number of interconnected organisations, networks and community groups that emerged in Australia in the 1990s, although its roots spread back through the previous decade. It was driven by the desire of farm women for visibility and recognition of their contribution, for a greater role in decision making, and for a hearing for their broader concerns, which focussed on community, social justice and the environment, as well as productivity

After an early career in teaching, Laurene Dietrich moved into the area of community development, working on a number of projects which reflected her commitment to social justice and equity, particularly in regard to rural women. She was the first equal opportunity officer at the Bendigo campus of La Trobe University, and was employed to work on the organisation of the First International Women in Agriculture Conference

Zoe McHenry was the great -grand-daughter of Brunswick, Victoria, pioneers Luisa and Thomas Wilkinson, and the grand-daughter of Victoria’s first woman pharmacist, Sarah George. A pianist and music teacher, Zoe Henry was employed in 1943, its inaugural year, by the ABC’s  Kindergarten of the Air, as a pianist.  Recognising the dearth of appropriate music for children’s activities,  Zoe  began to compose for the program.  She continued to do so after leaving the program in order to care for her father, who was ill.  She published several books of music and songs for kindergarten,  travelling to London in 1962 to record.  Her music is still recorded and used today, including on the ABC’s ‘Play School’.

Alice Rosman was an editor, journalist, novelist and writer. She is best known for her work as a novelist, under the pseudonym Alice Grant Rosman. She achieved success particularly in the United States of America and Canada during the 1920s and 1930s, where she was a best-seller for four consecutive years.

Elyne Mitchell is an Australian writer who is best known for the Silver Brumby series of children’s books.

Grace Carmichael worked as a nurse and poet, and during her lifetime contributed many poems to newspapers and published her own book of verse in 1895. Grace is best known by her pen name Jennings Carmichael. The Australian poets Henry Lawson and Henry Tate have both written poems about her.

Sarah Ann George was the daughter of Thomas Wilkinson, the ‘father of Brunswick’, and Louisa Wilkinson. In 1856, at Geelong, at the age of seventeen, Sarah Ann married Joseph George, a pharmacist. Joseph had established a pharmacy in Sydney Road, Brunswick, in 1853, and Sarah worked with him as his assistant, eventually becoming registered as a pharmacist herself. She is believed to have been Victoria’s first lady pharmacist, and one of the first to be registered. Sarah first registered in 1882, stating that she had been in business in Victoria before the required registration date of 1876. At this time, she was 43 years old, and her nine surviving children ranged in age from five to twenty-five years. Like her husband, who was a member of council and Mayor of Brunswick from 1884-5, Sarah was active in the Church of England, and interested herself in philanthropic work. She was President of the Boarding Out Committee in Brunswick for thirty years, and also of the Australian Women’s National League both in Brunswick, and in Portland, where she instigated the branch.

Marie Wood graduated in Arts from the University of Melbourne in 1967, taught at McKinnon High School, Melbourne, and trained briefly as a graduate nurse at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney. In late 1969 she joined the New South Wales Department of Child and Welfare Services as a teacher at Bidura, Glebe, a temporary receiving home for children removed from their families before allocation to foster homes or other institutions. From February to July 1970, she taught girls convicted of ‘exposure to moral danger’ and similar offences at the Department’s Ormond Training School for Girls, Thornleigh, Sydney.

Hilda Dow (nee Grey) was the daughter of police magistrate Charles Grey, and sister of Royal Melbourne Hospital Lady Superintendent Helene Grey, OBE. Hilda Grey became a student of the Victorian College of Pharmacy in 1919. In 1929, she was working at Poynton’s pharmacy in Morwell, when she purchased the pharmacy at Chiltern in Victoria. She was elected to the Pharmaceutical Society of Victoria as a member in 1930 Hilda apprenticed her husband, Roy Dow, and the two ran the pharmacy in Chiltern until 1968, when they closed the doors. In 1988 Mrs Dow donated the pharmacy, which had been operating on the site since 1859, intact to the National Trust, and it is now a museum. Hilda Dow was a foundation member of the North East branch of the National Trust, a member of the hospital committee and board, of the Infant Welfare Centre and the Red Cross, and a member and office bearer of the Chiltern Branch of the County Women’s Association.

Dianne Airey (Liberal Party of Australia) was a member of the Legislative Council of the Parliament of Western Australia between February and May 1993, when Parliament did not sit. She was not sworn in.

Valma Ferguson (Australian Labor Party) was a Member of the Legislative Council of Western Australia between 1993 and 1997.

Margaret Annie Bignell was the seventh daughter of William and Elizabeth Blyth, of Hobart. She became Victoria’s first registered female pharmacist, and one of the first women pharmacists to conduct her own business in the state, carrying on her husband’s pharmacy in Lygon Street, Carlton, after his death in 1897. She was known for apprenticing women, and was an activist for the recognition of women pharmacists. Two of her daughters entered the profession. She was a subscribing member of the Pharmaceutical Society of Victoria, and a founding member of the Women Pharmacists’ Association, formed in 1905 to promote the interests of women pharmacists.

Kathleen O’Connor was born in New Zealand in 1876 to Charles Yelverton O’Connor and his wife Susan Laetitia. She was educated at Marsden School, Wellington, then taught privately after 1891, when the family moved to Perth, Western Australia, in order for her father to take up a post as a government civil engineer. Kathleen O’Connor then studied art at Perth Technical College, and later in London and Paris, where she relocated in 1910. There she attended night classes and immersed herself fully in the artistic and cultural milieu that Paris offered, attending galleries and lectures, and writing about her experiences for Perth newspapers.

O’Connor began exhibiting extensively – in the Salons d’ Automne (1911-32), des Independants, and de la Société des Artistes Français. She moved to London in 1914 and exhibited with the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers in 1915 and the National Portrait Society in 1916, before returning to Paris. In the early 1920s she began working in the decorative arts and fashion, as well as interior design and fabric painting. In 1926 she returned to Australia, working briefly for David Jones and Grace Brothers department stores, producing hand-painted plates and fabrics. After a solo exhibition in Perth, O’Connor returned to France in 1927. She kept working, and exhibiting regularly – in 1934 at la Société Internationale des Femmes Peintres et Sculpteurs, and Exposition des Femmes Artistes d’Europe, Musée du Jeu de Paume and Galéries J. Allard in 1937. She left Paris in 1940 just as the Germans were arriving, and spent the remainder of World War II in Britain.

Returning to Paris after the War, she found her Paris studio expropriated. After exhibiting in Nice in 1948, she returned to Fremantle with 200 pictures, which were impounded, subject to 20% import tax. She was forced to destroy 150 pictures and pay the tax on the rest, despite being an Australian citizen and not liable. She exhibited in 1948 at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, and at Perth’s Claude Hotchin Gallery in 1949 and 1950. After another trip to Paris, she settled reluctantly in Western Australia in 1955. O’Connor won the Western Australian section of the Perth Prize Competition in 1958 and the B.P. prize, Commonwealth Games art competition in 1962, and the Art Gallery of Western Australia held a retrospective in 1967. O’Connor died in Perth in 1968. Since she had refused to be buried there, her ashes were scattered in the sea.

Miriam Stannage was born in Northam, Western Australia, in 1939, and was a painter, photographer and printmaker. She travelled to Europe and the USA in the early 1960s, returning to Perth influenced by ‘new developments in geographical abstraction’. Stannage studied with William Boissevain 1963-64, then with Henry Froudist 1965-68, as well as at Claremont Technical College, Perth. Extensive travels in the Australian bush are evident in her work, which also often uses text in order enhance her particular form of social commentary. Stannage’s first solo exhibition was in 1969 at the Old Fire Station Gallery, Perth, and she was exhibited in major galleries across Australia. Her work is held in the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.

Her final exhibition ‘Miriam Stannage: Survey 2006 – 2016’ was underway at the University of Western Australia’s Lawrence Wilson Gallery at the time of her death.

Carol Rudyard was born in England in 1922. She left Sheffield in 1947 with her husband, a doctor employed by the British Government, and lived on the Gilbert and Ellice Islands (British Colonies in the Pacific). They arrived in Western Australia in 1950, and lived in Mullewa and Southern Cross, before settling in the Perth suburb of Leederville in 1956.

At this point Rudyard began designing textiles, quickly achieving both commercial and artistic successes. She also painted watercolours, and won the Festival of Perth Poster Prize for an untitled work in 1964. Rudyard enrolled in an Associate Diploma in Art at the West Australian Institute of Technology from 1968-1970. She won the Mundaring Art Prize in 1970, and began teaching at the West Australian Institute of Technology in 1971.

Rudyard travelled to Europe in 1972 and held her first solo exhibition in 1973. After completing a postgraduate diploma in visual art at Curtin University in 1981, Rudyard began to abandon painting for audio visual mediums, particularly video installations. Her ‘Langco’ (1986) is held in the permanent collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Rudyard was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters from Curtin University in 1999, and made a Living Treasure of the State of Western Australia in 2004.

Lyn Johnson, in partnership with her husband Rob, was a dairy farmer in Gippsland in Victoria. Together they planned and led study tours for dairy farmers to the USA, Canada, the UK and Europe, starting the Tarago River Cheese Company on their return. The successful organisation and activism of American rural women inspired. Lyn’s own active commitment to the movement, and to women at the grass roots level in particular. Her work to have women’s role in agriculture acknowledged, and their voice heard, has included involvement in the organisation of the First International Women in Agriculture Conference, and the Women on Farms Gatherings.

Dorothy Dunn lost her husband in the 1979 Streatham, Victoria bushfires. She decided to continue to run their farm on her own, and quickly realised that farming in Australia was seen as a male profession. The contribution of women was invisible, and they had little influence in decision making at any level. In 1992 she attended a meeting of similar minded women in Ballarat, Victoria, convened by Liz Hogan, a Project Officer with the Rural Women’s Network. Out of the meeting, the peak body Australian Women in Agriculture was formed, with Dorothy as inaugural president. Her presidency and long history of work as an advocate for the role of women in agricultural policy making was recognised with an AO in 1999.

Kay Hallahan was the first woman to sit in both houses of Western Australian Parliament. An Australian Labor Party member she was elected to the Legislative Council of Western Australia on 19 February 1983. She served until 13 January 1993. She switched to the Legislative Assembly when she was elected 6 February 1993, serving until 14 December 1996.

Ada Laura Goodman was the daughter of Canon George Goodman, of Christ Church Geelong, who was an early member of the Anglican Church in Australia, and, together with his wife Margaret, a philanthropic worker. Miss Goodman was Honorary Secretary of the Geelong District Nursing Society from its inception in 1906 until her death in 1931, and also vice-president of the Geelong & Western District Ladies’ Benevolent Society. In the latter capacity she was superintendent of the Austin Cottages for many years. She was a member of the Geelong Church of England Girls’ Grammar School Council, and was organist and Sunday School teacher at Christ Church, where she was involved with all the clubs and societies. Miss Goodman was also Honorary Secretary of the Baby Health Centre from its establishment in Geelong in 1917.

Judyth Watson was an Australian Labor Party member of the Legislative Assembly of Western Australia.  Elected on 8 February 1986, she served as member for Canning until 4 February 1989, when she was elected member for Kenwick. Watson held this seat until 14 December, 1996.

Iris Francis was born in Fremantle, Western Australia, in 1913, into a family with a long history of involvement in the arts. Her grandfather and father (who died when Iris was a week old) had sketched and carved, and her aunt, Pansy Francis, was an accomplished woodcarver. Iris studied at Perth Technical College, gaining a diploma in commercial art, after which she worked at Gibbney & Sons, a commercial art firm. In 1935 she was offered a permanent position at Perth Technical College, where she taught for twelve years until marrying Thomas Wilkinson. During World War II, Francis made topographical maps from aerial photographs for the army. She was also an accomplished cellist.

Francis was a member of the Perth Society of Artists, the West Australian Women’s Society of Fine Arts and Crafts, and the Studio Club, a group of six or seven women who met weekly to paint together and constructively critique each others’ work. They also exhibited together regularly, and Francis’s first exhibition was at the Newspaper House Gallery, Perth, in 1934. She worked in a variety of media, including oils, watercolour, ceramics, and linocuts. Melissa Harpley described her as ‘a fearless experimenter with technique and medium, subject-matter and modes of representation’, noting that ‘her clear graphic style was strengthened by her work as a commercial artist, as well as her ongoing experiments with the language of modernism.’ Iris Francis died in Perth on June 2, 2004.

Beryl Jones was an Australian Labor Party member of the Legislative Council of the Parliament of Western Australia. She was the member for South West Province 8 February 1986 – 4 February 1989. She was elected member for South West Region 4 February 1989 and served until 6 February 1993.

The first Women on Farms Gathering was held in Warragul, Victoria, in 1990. The Gatherings have been held annually in different rural locations across the state since that time, with organisation handed over to an autonomous committee of local women each year. Women from Queensland, Tasmania and New South Wales attended the fifth gathering in Tallangatta in 1993, and the movement spread to Queensland and New South Wales in 1993, and Tasmania in 1994. Held over a weekend, the Gatherings bring together rural women to learn new skills, share stories and, especially in the beginning, to reaffirm their identity as farmers. They were a vital thread in the women in agriculture movement, providing a public collective space for women to build an alternative knowledge about their disadvantaged position in farming, and fostering a political voice.

Shelly Archer was elected to the thirty-seventh Parliament of Western Australia for Mining and Pastoral Region on 26 February 2005 (for term commencing 22 May 2005), as an Australian Labor Party candidate. She resigned from the Australian Labor Party on 21 November 2007 and became an Independent. She retired on 21 May 2009.

Carolyn Burton was an Australian Labor Party candidate for the Western Australian Legislative Council. She was elected to the thirty-eighth Parliament of Western Australia for the North Metropolitan Region on 17 September 2008 to fill a vacancy upon the resignation of Hon Graham Giffard on 11 August 2008. She retired 21 May 2009.

Shelley Eaton is an Australian Labor Party candidate elected to the Legislative Council of the Thirty-Eighth Parliament of Western Australia for Mining and Pastoral Region on 17 September 2008, to fill a vacancy upon the resignation of Hon Vincent Catania on 12 August 2008. She retired on 21 May 2009.

In her role as an agricultural scientist with the Department of Primary Industries Victoria, Maria Rose was one of the femocrats whose work was vital in both empowering rural women, and supporting initiatives of the Women in Agriculture Movement, particularly the First International Women in Agriculture Conference, for which she was Program Co-ordinator.