The Australian Women's Register

The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union of Australasia (later renamed the National Women’s Christian Temperance Union of Australia) was formed in May 1891 at a meeting held in Melbourne for the purpose of federating the existing Colonial Unions. This was probably the first interstate gathering of women’s organisations held in Australia and the Union was the first national women’s organization in the country. The first branch of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) had been formed in Sydney in 1885. Although the primary objective of the organisation in Australia, and worldwide, is the prohibition of, and/or individual abstinence from, alcohol, the Union has been involved in a broad range of social and political reform activities. It was particularly active in the campaign for women’s suffrage in Australia from the 1880s, and the National Union included a Suffrage Department from its inception. The National Union functions as a coordinating body for the various State Unions, and sends representatives to international gatherings of the World’s Woman Christian Temperance Union.

The Women’s Club was founded in 1901 by Dr Mary Booth to provide a place where women interested in public, professional, scientific and artistic work ‘might spend their leisure moments and associate together.’ The first committee also included Lady David and Rose Scott. It began with 100 members – rising to 807 by 1929. Within the Club there was a debating group and a Thursday Group, while the Sydney University Women Graduates Association and the Professional Women Workers Association were also associated with it. The annual reports of these last two associations are included with those of the Women’s Club.

Edith Ada Fry was born in England in 1858, the eighth child of James Kight and Amelia Fry and the youngest sister of Arthur Fry. When the family came to Sydney in the early 1870s they lived at “Sunnyholt”, Blacktown; after her father’s death in 1896 Edith moved with her mother and sister Katie to “Headingley” in Coogee and later to the North Shore. Edith was prominent in the early days of the women’s movement in New South Wales; in the early 1890s she joined the Womanhood Suffrage League of New South Wales, was a member of its council and later honorary treasurer. It was during this time that she met Rose Scott, who became a close friend. A founding member in 1896 of the National Council of Women of New South Wales, she held various offices and was later appointed Honorary Life Vice-President. She was one of the Council’s delegates at the Quinquennial Meeting of the International Council of Women held in Rome in 1913. She was also a founding member of the Women’s Club in 1901, served on the Executive in its formative years and was made an Honarary Life Member. Edith Fry died in Sydney in 1940.

Mangiwa Sagiba was born and raised on Goulburn Island in the Northern Territory. She grew up in the bush, speaking the Aboriginal languages and was engaged in traditional activities from an early age. She was educated at the Methodist Mission School, where she learned to speak English. When she was 21, she went to Darwin to do three years’ teachers training, and made visits to Hawaii and Fiji. Later, she attended a university course in Brisbane to learn how to read and write her own language. She became Principal of the school on Goulburn Island, which educates mainly Aboriginal children from pre-school age up to, but not including secondary school standard.

Bessy Cameron was educated at a ‘native institution’ (later known as Annesfield) at Albany, opened in 1852 by Anne Camfield, a teacher and governess. Bessy took her certificate of Proficiency with honours, and was sent to Sydney to attend a ‘model school’, where she became an accomplished pianist. In 1866 she returned to Albany to help Mrs Camfield in the school and was employed as church organist. In 1867 Bessy was sent to the Moravian Ramahyuck mission as a teacher. Not being able to marry a European man of her choice, she was transferred to Lake Tyers, were she married Donald Cameron, a Jupagilwournditch man from Ebenezer in 1868. Bessy lost her initiative and enthusiasm, which was reflected in a marked deterioration in her status. Her married years were spent moving from Ramahyuck to Lake Tyers and back, in a struggle to support her four surviving children. Her marriage deteriorated, and in 1887 Bessy fell seriously ill following another miscarriage. The rest of her life was spent battling to prevent the forceful removal of her children and grandchildren.

Pearl Gibbs was a major figure in Aboriginal political activism from the late 1920s to the 1970s. She was involved in organising the Day of Mourning on 26 January 1938 to protest the invasion; spoke for the Committee for Aboriginal Citizen Rights; supported Northern Territory Aborigines in their conflicts with a frontier ‘justice’ system; called for Aboriginal representation on the New South Wales Board; set up the Dubbo branch of the Australian Aborigines’ League with Bill Ferguson in 1946; became the organising secretary for a new Melbourne-based Council for Aboriginal Rights in 1953; was elected as the Aboriginal member of the Aborigines Welfare Board in 1954 and its only woman member; established the Australian Aboriginal Fellowship (with Faith Bandler) in 1956 and the first hostel for Aboriginal hospital patients and their families in Dubbo in 1960; and continued contributing to Aboriginal conferences throughout the 1970s.

The Melbourne Jewish Women’s Guild was formed in June 1896 at a meeting held in the Melbourne Town Hall. It initial objectives were personal service amongst poor, especially hospital visits, in order to bring relief to the sick and afflicted, without any regard to creed, race or colour. The philosophy adopted was that ‘All are creatures of the same God.’ Its foundation president was Mrs N. Bennett. By 1897 the Guild had 132 financial members. They held fundraising events, and distributed goods and money among Melbourne’s poor, but they discouraged ‘pauperism and idleness’. The Guild became one of the foundation affiliates of the National Council of Women of Victoria in 1902. Dr Constance Ellis, one of Melbourne’s first women doctors, was an active member and as the Guild’s representative to the National Council of Women of Victoria from 1902.

Daisy Bindi was born probably around 1904 on the Western Australian edge of the Gibson Desert. She learned to do housework and to ride and manage horses while working on ‘Ethel Creek’ station from an early age. In the 1940s she organised a strike of Aboriginal workers on the stations near her, despite the threats by the police and Native Welfare Department that she would be removed from the area. Her initiative was largely responsible for spreading the strike to the further inland Pilbara stations; the strike changed the structure of labour relations in the north of the State. In the 1950s Daisy lived with others in a well-ordered collective, the Pindan Cooperative, the first Aboriginal cooperative formed in Western Australia. When she visited Perth for the first time in October 1959, she spent much time lobbying for a school for Pindan. Her later visit to Perth gave her the opportunity to associate with women who supported the Aboriginal cause at the Union of Australian Women.

On 25 February 2003 Judy Maddigan was elected the 32nd person, and first female, to hold the office of Speaker of the Legislative Assembly in Victoria. She held this position until December 2006. The daughter of William Joseph and Bessie Irene (née Hurley) Todd, Judy was educated at Tintern Church of England Girls’ Grammar School before entering the University of Melbourne. She holds a Bachelor of Commerce, Graduate Diploma of Librarianship and a Masters of Librarianship and Information Services (Conservation and Archives). Prior to entering Parliament, Maddigan worked for the Commonwealth Public Service, was a Branch Services Librarian with the City of Maribyrnong and a Councillor with the City of Essendon. During this time she received the State ‘Clean Air Award’ by leading the campaign to ban incinerators in the City. Maddigan has a long history of involvement in local community groups including Women’s Organisations, the Essendon Historical Society and the Friends of Essendon Library. During the 1990s she was involved with the ‘Defend Public Libraries’ campaign which was organised to protect public libraries from the effects of compulsory competitive tending and amalgamations. An unsuccessful candidate for the Australian Labor Party at the 1992 state election, Maddigan was elected as a Member of Victorian Parliament to represent the Electoral District of Essendon in the Legislative Assembly in March 1996 and was re-elected in 1999, 2002 and 2006. She retired at the November 2010 election.

Ella Simon went to school on Purfleet Aboriginal reserve, New South Wales, until the age of twelve. She then worked in Gloucester and Sydney, but returned to Purfleet in 1932 to nurse her sick grandmother, Kundaibark. She married Joe Simon in the mid-1930s, and they travelled around New South Wales, helping Aboriginal people. In 1957 Ella was granted her ‘certificate of exemption’ from the restrictions imposed by the Aborigines Welfare Board. In 1960 she formed a branch of the Country Women’s Association on Purfleet reserve and became its president. She opened the Gillawarra gift shop selling Aboriginal artefacts. She improved the living conditions on Purfleet, by supplying new stoves and introducing electricity. She continued caring for Aboriginal children and the sick. In 1962 she was named Lady of Distinction by Quota and appointed a justice of the peace. She dictated her life story for the book Through My Eyes during 1976-78.

The Bardon Women’s Club was formed in 1926 with the aim of providing a vehicle for community involvement for the women in this suburb of Brisbane, Queensland, as long as they were not Catholic. The initiative of Mrs. Vera Jones, a local mother and an ex-schoolteacher with a Masters of Science from the University of Queensland, the club was open to non-Catholic women who wanted to ‘widen their own horizons’, who wanted ‘a voice in the community’ and also needed some entertainment and ‘a social focus’. The club amended its constitution in 1996 to allow membership to non-Protestant women, in accordance with State government anti-discrimination legislation. It ceased operation in 1998.

The Women’s Voluntary National Register, Queensland State Council, was established by a gathering of representatives from Queensland women’s organisations at a meeting in Brisbane, Queensland on April 26th 1939. It was part of a federal government scheme to determine how many women would be able to provide ‘manpower’ and national service, if required, when the nation went to war. The list of organizations associated with the register provides evidence of the large number of women who were members of clubs and organizations in the interwar period.

The Australian Women’s Land Army, Queensland Division, was established in July 1942, to help ‘fight on the food front.’ Queensland women comprised almost one quarter of the nation’s enlistees for war on this front. At its peak, 3,000 women were members of the Australian Women’s Land Army, 700 of who came from Queensland.

The ‘Women’s Place Women’s Space’ steering committee was formed in 1989 with the aim of securing a building and funding to resource a women’s centre in Brisbane; a building that would provide ‘a space for women by women for women, in Brisbane’. An ex-director of the University of Queensland Health Service, Dr Janet Irwin, is credited with initiating the concept, which received the public support of 173 women’s organizations, representing 200,000 women throughout Queensland. The then Lord Mayor of Brisbane, Sally Anne Atkinson, gave the proposal her strong support

The Women’s Community Aid Association was established in the 1970s in order to lobby local, state and federal governments for funding to establish a Women’s Resource and Education Centre in Brisbane.

The Lady Musgrave Lodge Committee was the initiative of a group of Brisbane women who felt that there was a need to provide a good home for working women and girls in Brisbane. The committee raised and administered funding to support the lodge where respectable young women could ‘take rest or board while waiting a new situation.’ Primarily designed to be a first port of call for young emigrant women arriving in the colony, it was also a place to stay for local working women and girls between jobs. It was named for its first patron, Queensland Governor’s wife, Lady Lucinda Musgrave.

The Ithaca Benevolent Society was established in 1900 by a group of Brisbane women to relieve poverty and hardship amongst the ‘deserving poor’. With the passage of time, the interests of the society evolved to encompass more women-centred interests. They were particularly concerned with the interests of mothers and their children, and spokespeople at the time claimed the association was instrumental in campaigns that sought to set up systems of state aid for mothers.

Julia Bensusan was founding secretary of the Sydney Foundling Institution, later renamed the Infants’ Home, Ashfield. She served on the Board from 1874 until her death in 1878. All members of the first committee were described as ‘ women of prominence in Australia… who tried to use their influence to improve social conditions’.

The Association of Queensland Women’s Forum Clubs was established in 1947 to operate as a central administrative and supervisory body for the growing number of Women’s Forum Clubs that formed in Queensland after 1945. The first of these clubs was established in Brisbane, Queensland, in 1941, with the aim of fostering public speaking amongst women. The club maintained a non- party political, non-sectarian stance, and was unaffiliated with any other organizations, except The National Council of Women. The association still exists, under the name of Forum Communicators Association Inc. It acts as the umbrella body for twenty-three (in 2004) forum clubs across Queensland.

The Sydney District Nursing Association was established in 1900 on the initiative of the Anglican Christian Social Union, which considered the care of the sick to be part of its Christian responsibility. It supplied trained nurses to visit the sick and poor in their own homes. In 1906 it made the decision to co-operate with other religious organisations, thereby becoming a non-denominational association. By 1935 the Association was incorporated as a second schedule hospital, governed by a board of directors appointed by the Government. The Association expanded rapidly after 1956 with the passing of the Home Nursing Subsidy Act with the result that by 1967 decentralisation of the service was a priority. The name was changed to the Sydney Home Nursing Service in 1967. The Sydney Home Nursing Service is the largest single organisation in New South Wales delivering community nursing care.

The Australasian Trained Nurses’ Association (ATNA), Australia’s first nursing association, was formed in New South Wales in 1899, with branches subsequently established in Queensland in 1904, South Australia in 1905, Western Australia in 1907 and Tasmania in 1908. It sought to improve the status of nurses through registration and to develop standards of training in hospital schools of nursing. The Association commenced publication of its journal entitled Australasian Nurses’ Journal, (ANJ) in 1904. The state branches eventually came to form branches of the Australian Nursing Federation, which was established in 1924.

Eve Fesl is a former discus champion of Victoria and Queensland and a Queensland netball representative. In 1988 she received the Order of Australia Medal for her work with the ethnic community and maintenance of Aboriginal languages. She gained her PhD with her sociolinguistic study on language policy and implementation.
Fesl has been a local councillor for Nunawading, Victoria, and a member of a number of national bodies including the Advisory Council on Multicultural Affairs, the National Museum of Australia’s Aboriginal Advisory Committee, the Aboriginal Literature Board and the Aboriginal Arts Board of the Australia Council.
In 1981 she became the first Aboriginal woman to be appointed Director of the Aboriginal Research Centre at Monash University, the position she currently holds. She also lectures in Koori and language studies, and she became an associate professor in 1992. In 1993 she published Conned! A Koori Perspective, a political history of the invasion and settlement of Australia from the Aboriginal point of view. She is author of numerous articles, book chapters, etc.

Louisa Briggs, of Woiworung descent, was born on Preservation Island, Bass Strait. Around 1853 she and her husband, John, went to the Victorian goldfields. Then they worked as shepherds in the Beaufort district until 1871 when the family was admitted destitute to Coranderrk Aboriginal Station. There Briggs acted as nurse and midwife. In 1876 she was appointed matron and became the first Aboriginal woman to replace a European on salaried staff. She became the spokesperson for the residents and succeeded in securing the reappointment of the popular first manager. She fought the Aborigines Protection Board’s plans to sell Coranderrk and remove residents to other reserves, and gave evidence to the 1876 inquiry but was eventually forced off the reserve and moved to Ebenezer Aboriginal Station. After yet another inquiry in 1881 she moved back to Coranderrk where she was reappointed matron. When her sons were forced off the reserve under the Victorian Aborigines Protection Act 1886, she moved first to Maloga Mission, and in 1889 to Cummeragunja reserve. Late in life she moved to Barmah and finally to Cummeragunja where she died in 1925.

The New South Wales Bush Nursing Association was formed in 1911 on the initiative of Lady Dudley, wife of the Australian Governor-General. She enlisted the support of the National Council of Women in her strategy to organise an effective nursing service in rural areas. Under vice-regal patronage the Association was assured of success, with the state government providing the first subsidy in 1912. It was disbanded in 1975 when the Health Commission took over management of the Bush Nursing Centres and most were converted to Community Health Centres.

Iris Clayton was taken to the Cootamundra Domestic Training Home for Aboriginal Girls in the 1950s, and from there sent to work as a servant in Canberra. At the age of 18 she was allowed to return home where she married. She returned to Canberra in 1977 to work at AIATSIS, first as a library assistant and later on the switchboard, where she stayed for a number of years. She was awarded a grant to research the Wiradjuri births, deaths and marriages, and her findings have been deposited at AIATSIS.

From 1991, Clayton worked as a health worker at the Winnanga Nimmityjah Aboriginal Health Service in Canberra. She was involved in community issues and served as a council member of the ACT Cultural Council. She influenced a generation of Canberra school children by becoming a regular visitor to ACT schools, sharing her stories and explaining her culture.

Iris Clayton died on 5 July 2009 at Bega, New South Wales, after more than a decade of recurrent health problems.

The Australian Women’s Ski Club was founded in Sydney in September 1932 and a Victorian branch was formed in November of the same year. The New South Wales branch was disbanded in March 1963. The Victorian branch continues to operate at Mt Buller, Victoria.

Cootamundra Home began as the Cootamundra hospital, in operation from 1897 to 1910, and reopened in 1911 as the Cootamundra Domestic Training Home for Aboriginal Girls. It was maintained by the Aborigines Welfare Board until 1968. This was the place where Aboriginal girls were placed after forcible removal from their parents under the Aborigines Protection Act of 1909. The idea was to segregate ‘part-Aboriginal’ children from their families and assimilate them into the mainstream community. The girls were not allowed to remain in any contact with their families, and were later sent to work as domestic servants. The building that housed the Home was later taken over by the Aboriginal Evangelical Fellowship as a Christian vocational, cultural and agricultural training centre called Bimbadeen College.