The Australian Women's Register

Suzanne Edgar is a Canberra-based writer of fiction, feature articles, poetry and reviews.

(This entry is sponsored by generous donation from Christine Foley.)

Marian Eldridge was an acclaimed short-story writer, novelist and poet, and was instrumental in establishing the ACT Writers Centre. Her legacy is the Marian Eldridge Award to nurture promising women writers.

(This entry is sponsored by generous donation from Christine Foley.)

Marion Halligan was an acclaimed author of novels, short stories, reviews, essays and gastronomic writing.

(This entry is sponsored by generous donation from Christine Foley.)

Dorothy Johnston is an award-winning novelist, poet, short story writer, and author of reviews and literary essays. Her crime writing portrays the darker side of Canberra.

(This entry is sponsored by generous donation from Christine Foley.)

A former Canberran of the Year (1984), and Centenary Medal winner, Frederika Steen has been actively involved in community, refugee, multicultural and human rights activities for thirty years. She retired from the Department of Immigration in 2001 after a distinguished career in settlement services and three years’ service as the Chief Migration Officer, in the Australian Embassy in Germany. In 1984, in response to recommendations that where possible, federal government departments should establish women’s units, the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs established a Women’s Desk. Frederika Steen was the inaugural head of the Women’s Desk between 1984-87. Her major focus, while director of the women’s desk, was to provide information and build up the confidence of migrant women to ‘do it for themselves’ and make demands on the system.

In 2006 she is a volunteer worker at the Romero Centre in Brisbane, a group of Australians supporting refugees on temporary visas.

Dorothy Buckland-Fuller was a sociologist and social activist of some longstanding, with a distinguished career in ethnic and multicultural politics, particularly as they impact upon women of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. She was a peace activist, an environmentalist, a feminist and committed to the cause of reconciliation with indigenous Australia.

Of Greek heritage, Buckland-Fuller had a long involvement with the Greek Community of New South Wales, and her valuable contributions were acknowledged in 2001 when she was granted Life Membership to the Council of the Greek Orthodox Community of Sydney and New South Wales. In 1974, she established the Australian-Migrant Women’s Association, an organisation designed to bring together immigrant and Australian-born women.

She was active in the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, serving as president in 2002-4. As a sociologist, she taught and conducted action research. Her life has been a case of putting that theory to practice. In her own words, she was an ‘action oriented person’.

Dorothy Buckland-Fuller passed away in Sydney on 5 July 2019. She will be remembered for her words resounding in the ears of all those who knew her over her great life: “I will continue to work for equal rights for all and the betterment of our society for as long as I live”.

Anastasia Bekas was born in Greece in the late 1930s, the youngest of four children. She liked school and was a good student, her teachers encouraged her to attend high school. Unfortunately, she could not live this dream because, as was customary at the time, she had to leave school because her help was required to run the farm. She was a good, hard worker, but in the end her father encouraged her to migrate to Australia, as a way of avoiding the dowry he would eventually have to supply should she stay in Greece. The Australian government was keen to attract single Greek girls to the country at this time. As long as she had somewhere to stay, they would pay her fare. ‘You are healthy, you are going to Australia’, she was told. ‘So I have to go.’

She migrated to Australia, where her sister already lived, in December 1963 and arrived in Adelaide, where she would settle, on January 14, 1964. Adjustment was difficult, with the lack of English language skills being the major problem.

Margaret Jones was Literary Editor for the Herald and worked as a journalist in the London and New York bureaus of John Fairfax Ltd, before becoming Foreign Editor for the Sydney Morning Herald in the 1970s. She reported from North Korea and North Vietnam, and was staff correspondent in Peking, China. Described as a ‘trailblazer for women journalists’, Jones wrote for the Herald newspaper for a total of thirty-three years.

Ellen Koshland is the founder and president of the Education Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation that seeks to stimulate new thinking about public education in Australia and fund innovative student projects in public schools.

In June 1988, Kay Cottee became the first woman to sail solo, unassisted and nonstop around the world. In the course of her voyage she set seven world records. Cottee was named the 1988 Australian of the Year and was awarded the Order of Australia.

Marie Bjelke-Petersen is best known as a writer, but as a young woman she enjoyed playing sport and was, it has been argued, instrumental in introducing the sport of netball to Tasmania.

She migrated with her family to Hobart, Tasmania in 1891, where her brother, Hans Christian, established the Bjelke-Peterson Physical Culture school in 1892. Marie joined as instructor in charge of the women’s section; she also taught the subject in schools. It was during that time, it is suggested, that the Bjelke-Petersen’s learned about a new game called basketball that was being played in the United States. Marie introduced drills designed for the game in to the Physical Culture program that she taught in the schools.

Unfortunately, injuries prevented her from continuing with her teaching career much past 1910. At this point, she picked up her career as a writer. She published her first novel The Captive Singer, in 1917 to much acclaim; it sold 100,000 copies in English and 40,000 in Danish. In 1935 she won the King’s Jubilee medal for services to literature.

In recent years, Bjelke-Petersen has become a gay and lesbian icon. She lived in an intimate relationship with Silvia Mills, who she met in 1898, and who, it is argued, The Captive Singer was about, for thirty years.

When Adair Ferguson won the single sculls title at the 1985 rowing World Championships in Belgium, she became Australia’s first female world champion rower. Her performance was excellent enough for her to be named the 1985 Australian Athlete of the Year; in achieving the honour she beat fellow nominees Jeff Fenech and Alan Border. Ferguson proved it wasn’t a fluke when she won a gold medal in the same event the following year in Edinburgh at the 1986 Commonwealth Games.

Ferguson represented Australia eight times at various international competitions but never at an Olympic Games. 1988 was considered to be her best chance of winning a medal but that year the Australian selectors decided not to send any female rowing competitors.

As well as representing Australia as a sportswoman, Ferguson tried her hand at politics. She stood as the Australian Democrats candidate in the blue ribbon liberal seat of Ryan in the 1990 federal election.

A promising pianist in her school days, Daphne Akhurst attended the State Conservatorium of Music in New South Wales, becoming a music teacher and performer. While studying, she became an enthusiastic tennis player, winning the schoolgirls’ singles championship in 1917-20. In 1923 she won the County of Cumberland ladies’ singles, and two years later, the Australasian championships. She went on to win the Australasian championships a further four times. Akhurst travelled to the United Kingdom, where she competed at Wimbledon, reaching the singles and doubles semi-finals and the mixed doubles final (with Jack Crawford). Akhurst out-performed all of the Australian men in the competition and was ranked third in the world by Ayres’ Almanac.

Akhurst married Royston Stuckey Cozens, a tobacco manufacturer, in 1930, and retired from serious competition in 1931. The pair had one son. Akhurst died of an ectopic pregnancy in 1933.

The trophy for the women’s singles winner at the Australian Tennis Open is names in her honour.

Described as ‘the cornerstone of Australia’s golden era in women’s hockey’, Rechelle Hawkes was one of the world’s most highly decorated hockey players. She had her international debut in 1985 and retired in 2000, playing an Australian record 279 international matches and winning multiple gold medals in major competitions along the way. She won three Olympic Games gold medals (1988, 1996, 2000), two World Cups (1994, 1998) and five Champions Trophies (1991, 1993, 1995, 1997, 1999). She was a member of the team that won gold at the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur in 1998. She is the most successful female player in international Hockey history

Hawkes had bad luck with injuries early in her career, but this did not stop her from taking her place in the team that won Olympic gold in 1988 in Seoul. In 1993, she was appointed team captain and led the team that compiled an unbeaten streak of 31 games leading into the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, and which eventually went on to beat South Korea 3-1 in the final.

After Atlanta, Hawkes took some time off the game to contemplate her future. She decided to go for Olympic gold one more time and was given the honour of reading the Athletes’ Oath at the opening ceremony in Sydney. Two weeks later, she played her last international game and claimed her third Olympic gold medal.

Hawkes was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 2002 and the Western Australian Hall of Champions in 2005.

An athletic student, Gwendoline Varley went on to be sports mistress at the Hermitage school in Geelong, Victoria, before moving to Sydney, where she became organizing secretary of the City Girls’ Amateur Sports Association. She inaugurated Girls’ Week as a fundraising initiative, and caught the attention of local radio stations. In 1928, Varley began broadcasting with radio station 2BL and was founding secretary of its Women’s Amateur Sports Association. The wireless was an invaluable tool for the promotion of sports activities for women, and the Association grew rapidly. It was placed under the auspices of the Australian Broadcasting Commission on the establishment of that body in 1932. Varley continued broadcasting for the ABC. In addition, she was involved with the City Girls’ Amateur Sports Association; the New South Wales (NSW) Lawn Tennis Association; the NSW Women’s Hockey Association; the NSW Women’s Basketball Association; and the NSW Women’s Cricket Association.

Varley continued an active involvement in sport by captaining an A-grade tennis team, and – according to the ADB’s Marion Consandine – by swimming, rowing, running, fencing, skating, and playing golf, hockey and croquet. She married Hector Maximus Greig, a widower and father of two sons, in June 1938.

Isabel Letham is renowned throughout the surfing world as ‘the first Australian to ride a surfboard’, although she disputed this, preferring to describe herself as an early Australian female surfer who experimented with riding a board in the Hawaiian tradition. She did this in 1915 at the age of fifteen when the visiting Hawaiian surfer, Duke Kahanamoku, who was giving a surfboard riding exhibition at Sydney’s Freshwater Beach, invited her to ride tandem with him. Since then, her name has become legendary within the surfing world. She has been a source of inspiration for subsequent women surfers; Australian world champion, Pam Burridge, even named her first daughter Isabel in her honour.

Letham is less well known for the important role she played in teaching swimming to hundreds of young people in Australia and in the United States. In the 1920s she lived in San Francisco where she first taught swimming at the University of California and was eventually appointed to the position of Director of Swimming to the City of San Francisco in 1924. She returned to Australia to live in 1929, where she continued to teach swimming at Freshwater and Manly for many years. Letham was also important for introducing water ballet to Australia.

Pam Burridge was born in Sydney into a sport loving family who were active in the surf living saving movement at Sydney’s Bondi Beach. Her mother and sister, Donella, loved to swim, her father was an accomplished distance runner but Pam loved surfing. She was given her first (homemade) surfboard in 1975 at the age of ten, entered her first competition (which she won) in 1977 at the age of twelve, won her first New South Wales State Championship in 1979 aged fourteen and was national champion the following year when she was only fifteen.

At this point, Pam was deemed a professional by virtue of the fact that she had been invited to surf in the elite Hawaiian North Shore events; the strict rules of the governing amateur body offered no leeway. So Pam went on the international circuit when she was sixteen and by the age of seventeen had earned her first of six runner-up finishes in the world championships. She eventually broke through in 1990, winning the world championship by what was then a record margin and becoming the first Australian woman to do so.

The consistency of Pam’s performance throughout the years prior to her claiming the title are even more remarkable when one considers what she overcame to achieve them. She spent the better part of the 1980s battling one personal crisis after the next, crises which can, arguably, be attributed to the unique challenges that confronted young women who dared enter the macho world of 1980s surf riding. She faced plummeting self confidence, which led to drug and alcohol abuse and an eating disorder. The fact that she was able to maintain an overall ranking of number two in the world throughout the 1980s, despite never being ‘at her best’ is testament to her extraordinary talent.

Burridge retired from competition in 1993 made a brief comeback in 1996, retiring again in 1999, ranked eighth in the world. Whilst the result was not one for the record books, Pam was nevertheless satisfied with the result; it proved that she still has it in her to match it with the best in the new world of women’s surfing.

Edith ‘Edie’ Robinson made Australian Olympic history in Amsterdam in 1928 when she became Australia’s first female Olympic track and field athlete. She took up running at the age of 14 (she ran for the St George Athletic Club in Sydney, New South Wales.) Selected to compete in the 100 meters, she did not make the final, but did run a personal best time in the semifinal, which she finished in third place. Robinson also ran in the 800 meters, but did not complete the race. Given that she had never trained for the event before, let alone competed in it, the fact that she made the 600 meter mark before withdrawing was an extraordinary effort.

Edith was a very popular member of the small team that travelled to Amsterdam, and because she had a background in dressmaking, she was popular and much in demand by male athletes who needed badges sown to their shorts!

She officially opened the Olympic athletes village in Homebush, Sydney on September 2, 2000.

Eileen Wearne became the second woman to represent Australia in athletics at the Olympic Games when she competed in the 100 meter sprint at Los Angeles in 1932. Unfortunately, she did not compete at her best in Los Angeles; she finished fourth in her heat in the time of 12.5 seconds which meant that she did not make the finals. On her return to Sydney, however, she continued to compete and won state and Australian titles throughout the 1930s. She and the first woman to represent Australia in athletics at the Olympic Games, Edith Robinson, enjoyed a healthy rivalry. In 1938, she represented Australia at the British Empire Games where she won a gold medal in the 4 X 100 yard relay and a bronze medal in the 200 meter sprint.

An extremely attractive young woman, so much so that, whilst in Los Angeles, she caught the eye of the U.S. media. In an article entitled ‘Future Weissmullers, Beautiful Amazons Keenly watched by Scurrying Studio Scouts’, a journalist noted that ‘scouts from the picture camps have been roving the practice fields ever since the first boatload of athletes was unloaded.’ One of those at training who they noticed was ‘Eileen Wearne of Australia’ who had ‘ a beautiful figure, a great deal of poise and a nice voice.’ Wearne’s looks, according to her teammates, were ‘ proof that athletic competition does not detract from the beauty or femininity of women.’

Wearne retired from athletics in 1940 but remained involved in the Olympic movement. She was an active member of the New South Wales Olympian Club and loved attending reunion lunches.

Daphne Pirie was a nationally ranked track and field athlete who captained the Queensland women’s athletics and hockey teams and represented Australia in hockey. She then became a world-ranked Master’s Athlete, winning eight gold medals in international competitions. In 1989 she was awarded an MBE for services to hockey and appointed an Officer in the General Division of the Order of Australia in June 2012.

Rosina Raisbeck enjoyed a successful career in London and performed on the club circuit across Australia in the 1960s, before joining the Australian Opera in 1971. She was still singing with the company at the age of 72.

Described as ‘one of our greatest and unluckiest’ athletes, Marlene Mathews set a world record of 10.3 seconds for the 100 yard sprint in 1958. Her best times for the 100 metres and 200 metres, set over forty years ago, would have won both titles at the 2005 Australian Athletics Championships were they repeated.

Having missed selection for the 1952 Olympic Games due to a leg injury, Mathews was selected for the 1954 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Canada, only to be forced to withdraw from sprint events due to injury once again. Two years later, she was able to compete at the Olympic Games in Melbourne and won bronze in the 100 metres and 200 metres behind Australia’s Betty Cuthbert and Germany’s Christa Stubnick – though many expected her to win. Disappointingly, Mathews was not selected for the 4x100m relay team that year. The team, comprising Shirley Strickland, Norma Croker, Fleur Mellor and Betty Cuthbert, won gold. At a post-Olympics meeting, Mathews was part of a relay team that broke world records for both the 4×220 yards and 4×200 metres.

In 1957, Mathews set the inaugural world record times for the 440 yards and 400 metres. The following year she set her world record of 10.3 seconds for the 100 yards sprint (breaking the 10.4 second record held jointly by Betty Cuthbert and Marjorie Jackson) and of 23.4 seconds for the 220 yards (breaking Cuthbert’s 23.5 second record). She is reputed to have run a ‘wind-assisted 10.1 seconds’ in the 100 yards at the Australian titles. Mathews went on to win the 100 yards and 220 yards at the British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Wales in 1958. She ran in the relay team that won silver in the 4×110 yards relay. After making the semi-finals in the 100 metres at the Olympic Games in Rome in 1960, Mathews retired from competition and took up an administrative role. She was an Assistant Manager of the Australian Olympic Team at the Olympics in Munich in 1972.

Marlene Mathews became a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 1979 for her services to athletics, and an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 1999. A Trustee of the Sydney Cricket Ground, she is recognised in its Walk of Honour. Mathews was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 1985.

Alisa Camplin is Australia’s first female Winter Olympic gold medallist, dual Olympic medallist, World Champion, World Record Holder and two times WC Grand Prix Champion.

In 2017 Camplin was a director on four prominent Australian Boards – including the Australian Sports Commission, Royal Children’s Hospital Foundation, Olympic Winter Institute of Australia and the Collingwood Football Club.

Over the course of her swimming career, despite recurrent illness and injury, Petria Thomas won 3 Olympic Gold Medals, 3 World Championships, 9 Commonwealth Games Gold Medals, 13 Australian Championships, and 3 Pan Pacific Gold Medals. Her tally of eight Olympic medals (three gold, four silver, one bronze) is the best ever for an Australian woman, equal with Dawn Fraser and Susie O’Neill. Thomas was inducted into the Australian Institute of Sport Swimming Hall of Fame in 1996, and was crowned the AIS Athlete of the Year in 2001 and 2002. She currently resides in Belconnen, Canberra, with her husband Julian Jones.

Louise Sauvage is a professional athlete and Paralympian who dominated the world of wheelchair track and road racing for well over a decade. Over the course of her career, Sauvage won nine Paralympic gold medals, four Boston Marathons, and was four times the winner of the 800m Wheelchair Exhibition Race at the IAAF World Athletic Championships. She holds world records in the 1500m, 5000m and 4x100m and 4x400m relays. Louise Sauvage was Australian Female Athlete of the Year in 1999, and International Female Wheelchair Athlete of the Year in 1999 and 2000.

Sarah (Fanny) Durack battled local swimming authorities to become the first Australian woman to compete at the Olympic Games. In 1912, at Stockholm, she won the gold medal in the 100 meters freestyle event, beating her compatriot and training partner, Wilhelmina (Mina) Wylie. She went on to break numerous world records until she retired from competitive swimming in 1921.

Nova Peris was the first Aboriginal Australian to win a gold medal at the Olympic Games. She is also one of a very few athletes who have represented their country in two different sports at separate Olympic Games. In 1996 in Atlanta she was a member of the gold medal winning Hockeyroos team. In 2000 at Sydney she made it to the semi finals of the 400 meters track and field event. She is a staunch campaigner for Indigenous rights and reconciliation in Australia.

Nova served in the Australian Senate from November 2013 until May 2016. She was the first Indigenous Australian to serve in Federal Parliament.