The Australian Women's Register

Mabel Balcombe Brookes, who worked for many charitable organisations, was acknowledged as a talented organiser and effective committee member. Her greatest contribution was as president of the Queen Victoria Hospital from 1923-1970. She was appointed as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1933 and as a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire on 9 June 1955 for charitable and social welfare services.

Edith Burnside was acknowledged as a committed worker for charitable causes. She was educated at St Michael’s Church of England Grammar School in St Kilda, Victoria, and married W K Burnside. They had two children; a son and a daughter. She was president of the Royal Melbourne Hospital Almoner Ambulance from 1952. She served on a number of committees, which included the Yooralla, the Lady Mayoress’s, the National Gallery Society of Victoria, the Australia-Japan Society and the Australian Elizabethan Trust. She also served as president of the Prince Henry’s Hospital Central Council of Auxiliary. She was appointed as a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire on 1 January 1976 for service to hospitals and the community.

Source: Who’s who in Australia 1983, p. 148.

Rita Buxton was interested in many philanthropic societies. She was closely associated with St Vincent’s Hospital, serving as a member of the Advisory Council and as general president of all working committees. She was educated at Sacre Coeur in East Malvern, Victoria and married Leonard Raymond Buxton in 1922. They had three daughters. In recognition of her philanthropic services, she was appointed as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1955 and Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire on 14 June 1969.

In 1951 Dr Kate Campbell, a specialist in children’s diseases, was the first person to prove the link between retrolental fibroplasia (a blindness in premature babies) and oxygen levels in humidicribs. She was appointed to the Order of the British Empire (Dames Commander) on 1 January 1971 for services to the welfare of Australian children. Along with Norman Gregg she was co-winner of the first Encyclopaedia Britannica award for medicine in 1964. Dr Campbell had previously been recognised for her services to medical science when appointed to the Order of the British Empire – Commander (Civil) on 1 January 1954.

Mabel Irene Coles was associated with the Royal Women’s Hospital for twenty-nine years, and was president from 1968-1972. She was appointed as Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1965 and Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire on 12 June 1971, for charitable services.

Dame Nellie Melba (née Helen Porter Mitchell) was an internationally renowned opera singer, celebrated for her magnificent coloratura (soprano) voice.

On 1 January 1954, Pattie Menzies was appointed Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (Civil). The official citation, conferring the GBE to her under her married name, Mrs R. G. Menzies, read: “In recognition for her years of incessant and unselfish performance of public duty in hospital work, in visiting, addressing and encouraging many thousands of women in every State of Australia, including very remote areas, and in the distinguished representation of Australia on a number of occasions overseas.”

Edith Morgan was the first social worker appointed by the Collingwood Council (1972), and worked to improve services such as childcare, community health and housing. She received the Order of Australia medal for service to the community in 1989 and was later recognised for her service as an advocate for social justice, women and the disadvantaged.

Elsie Rose Beatrice Bolam (MBE), born in St Kilda, Victoria in 1880, was awarded an Order of the British Empire – Member in January 1960, for services to the community of Marysville, Victoria. She was particularly honoured for her work as an unpaid community nurse, but was also highly valued for her role in promoting tourism to the Marysville district in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. She described herself as ‘Marysville’s best advertisement,’ because she came to the town with the intention of staying for only a year, but instead ‘stayed for a generation’.

Sister Bolam lived most of her adult life in Marysville, working as an ‘honorary doctor’, a tourism officer and a guesthouse proprietor. She loved the native flora and fauna of the district and, in1922, donated a parcel of land along the Steavenson River to the community for the purpose of fencing it off to create a koala reserve.

Elsie Bolam passed away in September 1965. She never married and lived most of her life in the Marysville house she bought in partnership with her dear friend, Lesley McGowan. She was dubbed ‘Marysville’s Florence Nightingale’.

Grace Elizabeth Brebner (QPM) achieved many ‘firsts’ during her policing career, which began in 1942. She was the first police woman to pass her police driving test, the first female detective in Australia, and, in 1973, the first police woman in Victoria to be awarded the Queen’s Police Medal (QPM).

Brebner was Officer in Charge of Women Police from 1956 until she retired in 1974. ‘Policing is not a glamour job,’ she said when she retired, and you ‘need to be able to put things out of your mind after work’, to do it well. But for any drawbacks encountered, she assured that there were many, many rewards. ‘I can’t imagine anything in the way of a job that would have been more satisfying and interesting over the years’.

Florrie Hodges was only a teenager when her heroics at the mill settlement near Powelltown, Victoria, captured the national imagination. On Sunday February 14, 1926, she was at home with members of her family when they felt the full impact of the catastophic bushfires that surrounded them.

Instructed by her mother to take the children to safety, she walked for miles with her three younger siblings, finally lying down on a train track and shielding them with her own body when there was nothing to do except allow the fire to burn over the top of them. They all survived, but Florrie received horrific burns to her legs and back. She was hospitalised for several months and left disabled and disfigured.

Stories of the heroics of ‘the little bush girl of Powelltown’ emerged quickly after the fires were put out and Florrie Hodges became something of a celebrity. Her bravery was recognised far and wide and she was awarded a Royal Humane Society medal.

Lesley Hall was a feminist and disability advocate who worked throughout her life to empower low income and indigenous people, and people with disabilities, to attain and assert their human rights. She dramatically increased the policy involvement of people with disabilities in Australian and international disability issues. On behalf of the Australian Federation of Disability Organisations (AFDO) she represented and involved people with disabilities in the consultation, lobbying and campaign to successfully achieve the National Disability Strategy and the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).

Lesley Hall is well known for a radical form of activism in 1981, when she and other activists stormed the stage of the St Kilda Town Hall during the Miss Australia Quest. The act has been described as ‘the first public act to place disability as a feminist issue on the agenda’.

Lily Beaurepaire was one of Australia’s first women Olympians, when she competed at the 1920 Antwerp Olympics in swimming and diving. She was the first Australian woman to compete in diving but was unplaced.

The only woman in Australia’s small team, she joined her brother Frank and they were the first sibling Olympians. Frank, (later Sir Frank Beaurepaire), was already an Olympian from the 1908 Games. During WW1, the 1920s and into the 1930s, Lily, Frank, and May Cox, the Education Department of Victoria’s Supervisor of Swimming and Lifesaving, promoted swimming and diving at exhibitions which raised patriotic funds and supported the Victorian community through charity events.

A strong swimmer, over short and long distances, Lily competed in the sea, surf and swimming baths, was a fearless high diver and leapt off bridges into rivers. In 1910, Lily was one of the first people to be qualified as a lifesaver when she gained the Bronze Medallion for Lifesaving awarded by the Royal Australian Lifesaving Association. For a decade she was sometimes the only lifesaver at Lorne surf beach.

In 1933, aged in her forties, she won fame for a dangerous lifesaving rescue of three men in rough seas. In 1967, Lorne’s Lilian Beaurepaire Memorial Swimming Pool was opened.

Ruby Foster was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 1958 for social welfare services in Gippsland in Victoria. She was heavily involved with the Red Cross in Gippsland and Maffra, serving as president of the Maffra branch from 1941.

Mary Mitchelson was the first woman to fish commerically in the Gippsland Lakes. After her children left chool she joined her husband, Kevin, in the family business, working fulll time as Kevin’s deckie in the Gippsland Lakes.

The used seine nets to catch patches of mullet, trout and bream.

Kevin and Mary were inseparable and fished together for over 50 years, starting on the “Mary M”, a 26″ boat built by Kevin and named for her.

Vera Addison was awarded the British Empire Medal for her services to the community of Kangaroo Ground, in Eltham, Victoria, in 1968. She served as a Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) worker in England during the First World War and was a volunteer and later Honorary General Secretary of the Victoria League of Victoria for 25 years.

Margaret McCarthy was a music teacher and music librarian. She was the founding librarian of the Victorian String Music Library, establishing this institution as a thriving educational resource in Victoria.

Judy Hall (nee Baillie) was born into a musical family in West Gippsland in 1922. Although she did not begin formal piano training until she was twelve, she has been an inspiring and influential piano teacher for over seventy years. Her focus and expertise has been on the foundations of good technique and she has been an authoritative voice in music education across Australia. Her teaching and commitment to music education has been recognised through a number of awards and honours including an OAM in 1996.

The Embroiderers Guild was established in 1960 by Morna Sturrock, her mother Mrs Ethel Oates, and Lady Geraldine Amies.

The Labor Women’s Anti-Conscription Committee was formed on 13 September 1916, in response to Prime Minister Bill Hughes’ attempts to introduce conscription during the First World War. The initial meeting, which was held at the Trades Hall, was attended by over 300 women. The aim of the newly-formed Committee was to ‘work in conjunction with the National Executive to fight against conscription of human life.’ Their campaign was to include house-to-house visits, literature distribution and factory mid-day meetings. Mrs Bella Lavender was elected president and Mrs Elizabeth Wallace as secretary.

After the conscription referendum on 28 October 1916, several members of the Women’s Anti-Conscription Committee formed the Labor Women’s Political, Social and Industrial Council.

A second Anti-Conscription Committee was established approximately six weeks prior to the second conscription referendum, which was held on 20 December 1917. Mrs M. Felstead was the president of the second Committee, and Mrs V. O’Brien the secretary.

The Labor Women’s Political, Social and Industrial Council was formed on 7 February 1917. After the successful fight of the Women’s Anti-Conscription Committee in the lead-up to the 1916 referendum, many Committee members felt that the loyal members of the Labor movement should form a permanent council of women. Bella Lavender – who was the first president of the Anti-Conscription Committee – was elected as the first president of the Council and Sara Lewis was appointed secretary.

Mrs Kathleen Werner was an active and loyal member of the Labor Party. During the First World War, Mrs Werner was a member of the Women’s Anti-Conscription Committee and the Labor Women’s Relief Committee. She was also on the first Executive of the Labor Women’s Central Organising Committee.

The Geelong Branch of the Red Cross Society was formed on 22 September 1914 at the residence of Mrs E. H. Lascelles in Newtown.

The Presbyterian Ladies’ College (PLC) was founded in East Melbourne in 1875. In 1938, due to overcrowding at the original site, a search was conducted for a new location. The property “Hethersett”, located in Burwood, was chosen and in 1939 the junior school moved out to the new campus. In 1958 the senior and boarding schools also relocated.

In 1989, Gaby Kennard became the first Australian woman to fly solo around the world.

Tintern was purchased by the Church of England and in 1918 the school’s official name was The Church of England Girls Grammar School for the Eastern Suburbs: Tintern. Soon after, the school was renamed to the much simpler Tintern Church of England Girls’ Grammar School.

The current school site, in Ringwood East, was purchased in 1946 and the entire school moved to that location in 1959.

Tintern Church of England Girls’ Grammar School was renamed Tintern Anglican Girls’ Grammar School in 1993.

In 1999 Tintern Schools was formed with two campuses: Tintern Anglican Girls Grammar School and Southwood Boys Grammar School.