The Australian Women's Register

In 1990 Grace Kruger became the first woman to be appointed a magistrate in Queensland.

After completing Junior at the Malanda High School in far north Queensland, Grace Kruger commenced employment at the Magistrates Court Office, Ingham, as a Clerk/Typist. She left in 1968 to travel overseas and gained temporary employment in the Premier’s Department in Queensland House, in London. She was appointed to the permanent staff in 1969. Whilst in London, Grace passed the exam enabling her to become a Clerk in the Queensland Public Service.

Kruger returned to Queensland in 1972 and took up a Clerk position in Brisbane. Now eligible to sit for the Clerk of the Courts examination, she was eligible for promotion within the Magistrates Court Service. She was also then eligible to enrol with the Solicitors Board of Queensland. Kruger was admitted as a Solicitor in 1984.

Kruger served in various parts of the State taking promotion as Senior Clerk Mackay, Relieving Clerk of the Court, Clerk of the Court Munduberra/Eidsvold, Clerk of the Court Cloncurry and Clerk of the Court Townsville. In both Cloncurry and Townsville she acted on numerous occasions as a Stipendiary Magistrate.

Kruger was appointed Stipendiary Magistrate, Kingaroy, in March 1990. She retired on 8th August, 1998.

In July 2000, Leanne Clare was appointed the Queensland Director of Public Prosecutions – the first woman to hold this position in Queensland.

Graduating from the Queensland University of Technology in 1984 with a Bachelor of Laws, Clare was admitted as a Barrister of the Supreme Court of Queensland in the following year. She joined the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, in the Justice and Attorney-General’s Department in 1985.

From 1986 to 1989, she was with the Child Abuse Unit and became a Crown Prosecutor in 1988, becoming Senior Crown Prosecutor in 1991. Leanne became a Senior Counsel, Appeals in 1995. She stepped up to act as Director and Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions several times during 1998. During 1999 and 2000, she was an acting member of the District Court in Ipswich.

On the 2nd of April, 2008, she was appointed a judge of the District Court of Queensland.

Clare Foley was the fourth woman to be admitted as a Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Queensland. The daughter of an Ipswich lawyer, she commenced a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Queensland in 1931. She then began her articles of clerkship with her brother Thomas Joseph in 1933. With her two brothers, Clare established a family legal practice through the Depression and in May 1939 she was admitted as a Solicitor.

Soon after admission, Foley became a partner with her brother in the firm of T.J. Pender & Pender until 1950, the year of her brother, Thomas Joseph’s, sudden death. At that point she decided the practice should be sold, however, encouraged by friends, she carried on until the practice was bought by Mary and Eric Whitehouse in October of 1951.

In 1967, Clare resumed practice at the Toowong firm of Foley & Foley, where she was assisted by her husband and son, Thomas Joseph. Although Clare’s son Thomas took over the firm as partner during the mid 1980s, his tragic death in 1992 forced Clare to return to work to run, then dispose of the practice.

Clare Foley was the first of a family dynasty of women lawyers. Her daughter, Mary, went on to become a Judge of the Family Court of Australia and her grand-daughter, Eugenie was admitted as a New South Wales solicitor in 2016.

Naida Haxton completed degrees in arts and then law at the University of Queensland. She was admitted to practise in 1966 (the first woman to actively practise at the Queensland Bar) and almost immediately began receiving briefs. Her practice was, to begin with, “commercial work, probate work, bankruptcy and some family law”.

In 1967 she received her first junior brief in the Supreme Court and in 1969, her first brief in the High Court. She read with Cedric Hampson. She also lectured at the University of Queensland in Land Law and Commercial Law, and frequently gave speeches to women’s organisations.

She moved after marriage to Sydney and was admitted to the NSW Bar in early 1972. She read with Murray Tobias and devilled for Bob St John and Jeremy Badgery-Parker and actively practised until the late 1970s.

From 1972 to 1981, Naida was editor of the Papua New Guinea Law Reports. In 1981, she was appointed Assistant Editor of the NSW Law Reports (NSWLR) until 2000 when she was made the Editor.

Naida also lectured at the University of Sydney, the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and for the Bar Association continuing education program.

She was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in 2007 for her services to the legal profession and to the judiciary, particularly as Editor of the NSWLR and as a practitioner and educator.

Haxton Chambers in Brisbane is named in Naida’s honour. She retired from the bar in 2006.

Joan Martin worked in the Commonwealth Crown Solicitor’s Office from 1943 to 1987. She commenced her career as a typist and became a Legal Officer, rising to the position of Principal Legal Officer.

In 1943 when Joan joined the newly opened Crown Solicitor’s Office in Brisbane, Una Prentice and Mollie Whitehouse were Legal Officers.

Following the end of the War, she saw many women give up their jobs as men returned from the War. Joan became head typist but by 1960 was concerned at the prospect of spending her life behind a typewriter. In 1960, she completed the adult matriculation course and in 1961 she enrolled as a part-time law student at the University of Queensland.

Joan completed her studies in seven years. In December 1967 she was admitted as a barrister and was immediately appointed as a Legal Officer with the Crown Solicitor. Her work primarily involved tax and general recovery work. Joan became a Senior Legal Officer in 1973/4 in charge of the Taxation and General Recovery Section. She was appointed a Principal Legal Officer in 1985, in charge of the expanded Tax Recovery Section.

Joan remained in the Crown Solicitor’s Office until her retirement in 1987.

Her Honour Helen O’Sullivan is a retired judge of the Queensland District Court. She began her career as a Junior Clerk in Toowoomba, prior to returning to school and graduating from a Bachelor of Commerce degree.

Following her practice as a Senior Accountant in Perth, O’Sullivan graduated from a part-time Law degree and began practice as a Solicitor in Brisbane. In 1981, she was appointed Director of Continuing Legal Education at the Queensland Law Society, after which she commenced practice as a Barrister at the private bar.

Her Honour was appointed to the District Court bench in 1991 and retired at the end of 2009. She famously declared herself ‘an unapologetic feminist’ at her swearing-in ceremony on 9 April 1991. The official published transcript of proceedings deleted the word ‘unapologetic’ – reminding us that the Queensland bench was one of society’s most conservative bastions. Originally reluctant to accept a judicial appointment, O’Sullivan eventually agreed, believing it to be the best pathway with potential to change the system.

O’Sullivan was committed to a variety of pro bono and community causes. Before accepting her judicial appointment, she acted as a duty lawyer for Legal Aid and as a volunteer at the Caxton Street Legal Service. She was a foundation member of the Women’s Legal Service and volunteer lawyer there for some years. With Di Fingleton, she was the co-founder of the Financial Counselling Service.

Veronica McCarthy left school at the age of 15 and joined the public service. She decided to become a librarian and completed secondary school by evening classes. However, when Myles Kane offered her articles of clerkship, she accepted.

In 1967 McCarthy began her articles, performed secretarial work at Roberts & Kane and attended the University of Queensland at night. In 1972 she was admitted as a solicitor, the 42nd woman to be placed on the roll. She continued to work as a solicitor at Roberts & Kane where she became a partner in 1977.

Veronica McCarthy was the inaugural Secretary of the Women Lawyers Association, a position she continues to hold. She has served on the Law Society Grants Committee and was a member of the Supreme Court Library Committee.

Bernadine Mulholland graduated in physiotherapy from the University of Queensland in 1955. In 1964 she established the a branch of the Childbirth Education Association in Canberra, joining the Australian Physiotherapy Association in 1967. In 1968 she began Canberra’s first childbirth classes. From 1969-83 she worked with physically handicapped children at the Royal Canberra Hospital (RCH) and helped establish the Hartley Centre, O’Connor, for children with cerebral palsy in 1973 working there as a physiotherapist and as its administrator (1975-78) . During the 1980s she worked at the RCH in orthopaedic and post-operative rehabilitation and from 1990-2007 in its Aged Care Unit. Since 2009 she has worked in the orthopaedics ward of the Calvary John James Hospital.

Her Honour Patricia (Patsy) Wolfe served as Chief Judge of the District Court of Queensland between 1999 and 2014. She was the first woman to be appointed to the role. In 2014 she received the Order of Australia for her ‘distinguished service to the judiciary, to the law through legal education reform and as a mentor and role model for women’.

Patsy Wolfe came to law as a mature age student and mother, after first pursuing careers in medicine and journalism. She graduated LLB with honours from the University of Queensland in 1978 and was admitted to the Bar the same year. In 1979, she joined the Faculty of Law as a senior tutor and then went on to complete a Masters Degree in 1983. While senior tutor, she met Margaret White and Quentin Bryce and formed supportive and enduring friendships with them both.

Before being appointed to the District Court in 1995, Wolfe served as Deputy Commissioner of the Fitzgerald Inquiry Into Official Corruption (1988-89) and as a part-time Commissioner on the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (1993-95).

She is well remembered for her forthright comments made when she was chair of the Queensland Women’s Consultative Committee in 1992. When challenged as to why Queensland women needed such a committee, when there was no equivalent body for men, her response was direct and uncompromising. Men already had a powerful organisation, she said. ‘It’s called Cabinet, where men outnumber women sixteen to two…That’s why we need council as a direct line to the Premier.’

Justice Mary Finn of the Family Court of Australia is a second-generation woman lawyer (third generation lawyer). Her mother was Clare Foley, Queensland’s fourth woman solicitor, who, in turn, was the daughter of an Ipswich lawyer, Edward Pender. Appointed to the bench of the Family Court in 1990, Justice Finn retired on her seventieth birthday, in July 2016.

Finn’s reputation as a drafter and developer of legislation, established during her career in the Federal Attorney-General’s office, was renowned. Lionel Bowen, federal Attorney-General 1984-1990, described her advice as both ‘practical and accurate’; he was known to ask regularly, when confronted with legislative challenges, ‘What would Mary think?’

Finn is well known for her contribution to the review of the Family Law Act 1975, completed in 1980, and for her contribution to committees established to implement the report’s recommendations. Her public service experience established her credentials as an expert in family law; at the time of her appointment to the bench in 1990 she was regarded as one of Australia’s leading experts on the Family Law Act.

Both of Finn’s children, Wilfred and Eugenie, are fourth generation lawyers, with Eugenie enjoying a special and rare status in Australian law as a third generation woman lawyer.

A former Australian Young Lawyer of the Year, Zoe Rathus is Director of the Clinical Legal Education Program and Senior Lecturer at Griffith University’s Law School in Queensland. She was previously a solicitor, and then co-ordinator, at the Queensland Women’s Legal Service, in whose establishment she played an integral part. In 2011 Rathus was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for service to the law, particularly through contributions to the rights of women, children and the Indigenous community, to education and to professional organisations.

Zoe Rathus was interviewed by Kim Rubenstein for the Trailblazing Women and the Law Oral History Project. For details of the interview see the National Library of Australia CATALOGUE RECORD.

Her Honour Nerida Wilson is a Magistrate based in the regional Queensland city of Mackay. Born, raised and educated in Cairns, her career in the law began in 1987 when she joined the Australian Federal Police, undertaking training in Canberra and then serving in Melbourne until 1994 when family circumstances brought her back to Cairns. In 1997 she fulfilled a childhood ambition to see the letters LLB beside her name by enrolling in law at Queensland University of Technology as a mature age student.

Upon graduation, Nerida worked as a solicitor in Mackay, (where she was by co-incidence, appointed to the bench in October 2015), before moving back to Cairns to practise. Nerida was called to the Bar in February 2008 and enjoyed a diverse practice in family, criminal and civil law. She also appeared at Inquests for parties and as Counsel Assisting the Coroner.

Nerida has been engaged in a number of important local community initiatives and organisations. She is a Past President of the Far North Qld Law Association and the Cairns Regional Domestic Violence Service. She lectured and tutored in family law at the Cairns campus of James Cook University. In the early 2000s Nerida developed an Annual Inter-Campus Moot Competition for students at James Cook University securing sponsorship for the event and attracting support from the local judiciary and senior legal practitioners.

Her standing in the community at large and capacity for managing change was acknowledged when she was elected President of the Cairns Golf Club in 2014, the first woman to hold the post in the club’s 90 year history.

Nerida’s contribution to the legal profession was acknowledged in 2013 when she was awarded the Regional Woman Lawyer of the Year Award by the Queensland Women Lawyers Association. She participated in the Queensland Women Lawyers ‘Ladder Program’ as a mentor for young women lawyers.

Her advice to all young women starting their careers in the law is to ‘Surround yourself with good people. Get good mentors early on – people that you can trust’. She counts Magistrate Tina Previtera amongst her mentors and one of the many ‘good people’ she was fortunate to meet. Her advice to all young people, regardless of whether they plan to be lawyers or not, is to ‘give life enough space to present opportunities to you. If we are too rigid, we are going to foreclose on so many rich, rich opportunities. Be open and embrace unexpected opportunities.’

Nerida Wilson was interviewed by Kim Rubenstein in the Trailblazing Women and the Law Oral History Project. For details of the interview see the National Library of Australia CATALOGUE RECORD.

The Honourable Justice Shan Tennent was appointed a Judge of the Supreme Court of Tasmania in 2005, making her the first woman to be appointed in the state’s (then) 180 year history. She is (in 2016) the second longest serving judge on the jurisdiction after the current Chief Justice The Hon Justice Alan Michael Blow, OAM.

Shan Tennent was interviewed by Nikki Henningham for the Trailblazing Women and the Law Oral History Project. For details of the interview see the National Library of AustraliaCATALOGUE RECORD.

Mary (Mollie) Eugenie Whitehouse was the sixth woman to be admitted as a solicitor in Queensland, on 26 September 1939. She served her articles between 1930 and 1939 with a firm in Warwick, Queensland (Messrs Neil O’Sullivan and Neville), completing her legal studies via correspondence while caring for her sick father. Firmly believing that all women should have an occupation, he willingly financed her training.

Whitehouse attempted to join the armed forces during World War 2, but was excluded due to poor eyesight. After performing temporary work as a typist in an army records office, she was employed as a temporary legal officer in the newly established Crown Solicitor’s office in Brisbane. She left the office when she married Eric Whitehouse in August 1944. Mollie had six children, the first of which died at birth in 1945.

The Whitehouses purchased the Pender and Pender (later Pender and Whitehouse) in 1951. While raising five children, Mollie worked for the firm in a variety of capacities, increasing her workload once her youngest child started school. By the time they had all completed school, she was working full-time. She continued to practise until 1989, fifty years after her admission.

Mollie Whitehouse was a founding member of the Queensland Women Lawyers Association. She always regarded herself as ‘a lawyer who was a woman, not a woman lawyer’.

Tracy Fantin is a Cairns based barrister and mediator who practises in planning and environment, administrative, employment and discrimination, succession and commercial law. She has worked on important coronial inquests and has experience working with Indigenous organisations and in native title.

Born and raised near Cairns, Fantin completed her education at Gordonvale State High School in 1982. Keen to undertake a combined Arts/Law degree, she moved to Canberra and graduated BA LLB (Hons) from ANU in 1987. She was admitted to practice as a solicitor in NSW in 1988 and practised in Sydney and London before returning to Cairns in 1994 where she became a partner and then consultant with local firm, Morrow Petersen Solicitors. She was called to the Bar in 2005. Fantin served as a sessional member of the Queensland Anti-Discrimination Tribunal for six years (2003-2009) and the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal for two years (2009-2011). She was a council member of the Bar Association of Queensland in 2014-2015 and is a member of the Australian Bar Association Diversity and Equality Committee.

Fantin has a history of involvement with community and advocacy organisations. She has served as a board member of Australian Women Lawyers (2004-2007), Women Lawyers Association of Queensland (2004-2007), Arts Law Centre of Queensland (1996-2001), Cairns Community Legal Centre and local arts organisations, and is a longstanding member of the Queensland Environmental Law Association and the Environmental Defender’s Office of Northern Queensland.

In 2016, Tracy Fantin was named the WLAQ Regional Woman Lawyer of the Year, in recognition of her promotion of women in the legal profession and her contribution to community organisations.

Tracy Fantin was interviewed by Nikki Henningham in the Trailblazing Women and the Law Oral History Project. For details of the interview see the National Library of Australia CATALOGUE RECORD.

In 1989, Catherine Pirie became the first woman of Torres Strait Islander descent to be admitted as a solicitor. She achieved another first in 2000 when she was appointed Magistrate; once again, the first Torres Strait Islander to hold the position.

Debbie Kilroy OAM is a former prisoner, qualified social worker and practising lawyer. Debbie spent much of her teens in youth prisons, and several years in adult women’s prisons, in Queensland. Since its establishment in the 1990s, she has led Sisters Inside Inc, an organisation that advocates for the human rights of criminalised women in Queensland. She was admitted as a Legal Practitioner in Queensland in 2007 – the first former prisoner to achieve this.

Go to ‘Details’ below to read an essay written by Suzi Quixley about Debbie Kilroy for the Trailblazing Women and the Law Project.

Sisters Inside Inc. is an independent community organisation that exists to advocate for the human rights of women in the criminal justice system, and to address gaps in the services available to them.

The Hon. Margaret Wilson QC was a barrister and judge of the Supreme Court of Queensland.

She is known for her contribution to mental health law, as the first judge of the Mental Health Court and as the Commissioner who inquired into the closure of the Barrett Adolescent Centre, as well as for the part she played in procedural and substantive law reform in Queensland through her membership of the Rules Committee and the Queensland Law Reform Commission.

Joan Bennett is a trailblazing solicitor who established the first law firm in Brisbane in which one of the founding partners was female. She has established several successful law firms and is prominent in the Council of the Queensland Law Society.

Admitted as a Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Queensland in 1965, Patricia Conroy (nee Herlihy), established two partnerships with Martin Conroy in 1966 that have remained steadfast – marriage in July and then a business partnership in December. In the intervening period, the couple travelled to the remote north Queensland town of Mt Isa, where they established their firm, Conroy and Conroy Solicitors. Conroy was the first woman to practise in remote north-western Queensland, and she was one half of the first husband and wife partnership to practice state-wide, a partnership that endures still, in 2016.

Patricia Conroy was interviewed by Nikki Henningham for the Trailblazing Women and the Law Oral History Project. For details of the interview see the National Library of AustraliaCATALOGUE RECORD.

The Zonta Club of Brisbane was the first Zonta Club in Queensland. It was chartered on October 1, 1971.

In addition to supporting international projects through the Zonta International Foundation, the Zonta Club of Brisbane also supports a variety of local projects and awards.

Diane Fingleton is a retired Queensland Magistrates Court judge. Appointed a magistrate in 1995, she became a senior magistrate three years later. In 1999 she was appointed to the position of Chief Magistrate, the first woman to ever hold the position.

Fingleton approached the appointment with a reformist agenda, introducing important initiatives such as specialist courts for Queensland Aboriginal people (Murri Courts) and programs to assist victims of domestic violence to stay in their homes. Response from her colleagues to initiatives to encourage inclusiveness, such as issuing a formal apology to Indigenous people and performing reconciliation ceremonies, varied from enthusiastic approval to vicious criticism. The views of Indigenous people mattered most to her; a spokesperson from the Aboriginal Legal Service telling her: ‘You can have no idea what a difference this made.’

Her reformist agenda as Chief Magistrate brought challenges with it, none greater than one which began as a magistrate’s transfer dispute, leading to her trial and imprisonment on a charge of retaliating against a witness. In 2005, following a failed appeal to the Queensland Supreme Court, the High Court of Australia quashed her conviction, with Justice McHugh arguing ‘it would be hard to imagine a stronger case of a miscarriage of justice in the particular circumstances of the case’. Later that year, she was again appointed and sworn in as a magistrate of the Caloundra Magistrates Court.

Fingleton retired in May 2010, with hopes that the positive measures she undertook to deliver justice to Queenslanders ‘before she was interrupted’, would be acknowledged. While it is important to note the impact of the miscarriage of justice upon Diane Fingleton, it is more important to ensure that her legacy is not defined by it.

Diane Fingleton was interviewed by Nikki Henningham for the Trailblazing Women and the Law Oral History Project. For details of the interview see the National Library of AustraliaCATALOGUE RECORD.

Tammy Williams is a trailblazing Indigenous and human rights advocate. She is a practising barrister, founding director of Indigenous Enterprise Partnerships, and a leading advisor on Indigenous issues.

Admitted as a barrister in 2002, her legal career includes Commonwealth prosecutor and appointments to quasi-judicial bodies. She has been a member of the National Human Rights Consultative Committee and in 2003 was named the Queensland Women Lawyers Association Emergent Lawyer of the Year.

Marylyn Mayo was an inspirational teacher to many female law students, and encouraged them in their legal careers. She established a full law degree at James Cook University and was influential on many of the University’s boards and committees. Marylyn graduated with Bachelor degrees in Law and Arts as one of a small group of female law graduates at the University of Auckland in the 1960. After being admitted as a barrister and solicitor by the Supreme Court of New Zealand, she worked in private practice before joining the Ministry of Works as Auckland District Solicitor.

Katharine McGregor ‘looked a picturesque figure in the traditional wig and gown’, when she became the first woman in Queensland to be admitted as a barrister, although she never actually practiced as one. She was admitted as a solicitor and a barrister by the Supreme Court of Queensland in October 1926.

Although she was not a lawyer, Beryl Donkin was a prominent administrator and facilitator. She was born in 1920 in Brisbane but grew up in Melbourne. After working in the Queensland public service, she was appointed on 24 April 1941 to the position of the Queensland Law Society’s assistant secretary. This position was particularly demanding as the Society was experiencing financial difficulty and many key members had left to attend military service during World War Two.

She was the Queensland Law Society’s first full-time employee and continued to serve the Society for 13 years before assuming the statutory position of Secretary in 1954, a position she held until 1981 when she retired. Her commitment and service to Queensland lawyers – including by being the first female secretary of any Law Society in the Commonwealth – was honoured in 1975 when she received an OBE at Buckingham Palace.

As secretary, Beryl’s responsibilities included coordination of complaints; the organisation of practising certificates; administration of sub-committees; and financial duties. Beryl Donkin was awarded Order of the British Empire in 1975 for ‘her devoted and untiring service to the Queensland Law Society’. Beryl Donkin was a key mentor and source of support to trailblazer Joan Bennett. Beryl died in 1991, and several legal prizes have been named in her honour.