The Australian Women's Register

Ruby Scott was assistant physicist in the Physics Department at the University of Sydney, then a teacher at Woodlands Church of England Grammar School, before the outbreak of WWII. Post-war, she worked as a radio engineer with Amalgamated Wireless Australasia. After the birth of her son she became a science teacher at Danebank Anglican School for Girls, where she established a Science Department.

Marian Harwood was a committed member of the New South Wales branch of the Peace Society, becoming vice-president in 1913. She founded the journal Pax in 1912, and established a library of peace literature. Harwood funded the Sydney office of the Peace Society and offered prizes to children in state secondary schools for essays on peace. She also gave money to several Sydney hospitals and children’s homes. Marian Harwood had a strong interest in feminist organisations. She wrote several monographs on subjects that ranged from the life of Rose Scott, to the success or otherwise of international peace conferences, and to the study and performance of Shakespeare’s plays.

Matilda Evans arrived in Adelaide with her family in 1851. Her first novel, Marian, or the Light of Someone’s Home was completed in 1861 while Evans was working as a governess near Mt Barker. After the death of her husband, Ephraim Evans, she opened a school at Angaston and resumed writing novels. Her works, which always had religious and temperance themes, included Vermont Vale: or Home Pictures in Australia (1866), Emily’s Choice: An Australian Tale (1867), Minnie’s Mission: an Australian Temperance Tale (1869) and Golden Gifts (1869). Evans opened Angaston House in North Adelaide in 1868. A collected edition of her fourteen novels was republished several times.

Eliza Fewings was appointed Headmistress of the Brisbane Girls’ Grammar School in 1896. Her dismissal from the position in 1899 after accusations of incompetence by the second mistress, Maud Sellers, led to a great deal of public protest. Fewings opened her own school, the Brisbane State High School for Girls (Somerville House), in October 1899. By 1903 it was the largest girls’ school in Queensland.

Alice Jackson was a journalist and editor who was on the staff of the Australian Women’s Weekly from its inception in 1933. Prior to working for the AWW, she enjoyed stints on Smith’s Weekly and the Sydney Daily Telegraph. She was formally appointed editor of the AWW in 1939 – the first woman editor of the magazine which, by then, had an all female hierarchy. She is credited with establishing the national distribution system that made the AWW so attractive to advertisers.

Hilary Bray stood as a candidate for the Australian Greens Party in the Legislative Council Province of Chelsea at the Victorian state election, which was held on 30 November 2002. She was a candidate again for the Australian Greens in the Legislative Assembly seat of Cranbourne at the state election, which was held on 25 September 2006. She has been employed as a secondary school teacher in the state system since 1990.

Karin Geradts stood as a candidate for the Australian Greens Party in the Legislative Assembly seat of Broadmeadows at the Victorian state election, which was held on 30 November 2002. She stood again unsuccessfully at the 2006 election as the Greens candidate in the seat of Yan Yean.

Helen Mayer was elected to the House of Representatives of the Federal Parliament of Australia as the Member for Chisholm in Victoria in 1983. A member of the Australian Labor Party she served until 1987 when she was defeated at the General election. She died in 2008.

Olive Zakharov was elected to the Senate of the Parliament of Australia in 1983 as a representative for Victoria. A member of the Australian Labor Party, she served until her death in 1995.

Maria Vamvakinou was elected to the House of Representatives of the Parliament of Australia as the Member for Calwell in 2001. A member of the Australian Labor Party, she was re-elected at the elections which were held in 2004, 2007, 2010 and 2013.

Sue Wynn stood as a candidate for the Australian Greens Party in the seat of Swansea in the Legislative Assembly at the New South Wales state election, which was held on 24 March 2007.

Margaret Perger stood as a candidate for the Australian Greens Party in the seat of Bega in the Legislative Assembly at the New South Wales state election, which was held on 24 March 2007.

Michele Sacco stood as a candidate for the Australian Greens Party in the seat of Strathfield in the Legislative Assembly at the New South Wales state election, which was held on 24 March 2007.

Kerry Kenihan worked as a primary school teacher before turning to journalism, a career she has followed for over thirty years. She was at one time women’s editor of the Melbourne Sunday Observer and chief sub-editor of New Idea. In the 1970s Kenihan was a prolific writer of short stories, many of them romances, which she published under various pseudonyms. Since then she has worked freelance, writing both general news and features on topics including medicine, food and wine, and women’s issues.

Her second son, Quentin, was born in 1975 with severe osteogenesis imperfecta (OI), which meant that his bones were as brittle as eggshell. With her husband Kenihan founded the Osteogenesis Imperfecta Foundation to assist families afflicted with this condition. Their experiences in caring for Quentin and helping him to overcome the difficulties resulting from his OI led her to write the bookHow to be the Parents of a Handicapped Child – and Survive (1981), and in 1985 when Quentin was ten she wrote his story.

Zora Cross was, among other things, a poet and author of children’s verse. She wrote for the Brisbane Daily Mail as a freelance journalist, and was drama critic for the magazines Green Room and the Lone Hand.

Glenda Adams was a Sydney-born and educated novelist and short-story writer. She studied journalism at Columbia University in New York, where she subsequently taught creative writing. During the 1980s she was writer-in-residence at a number of Australian universities before returning to Australia in 1990 to teach creative writing at the University of Technology, Sydney. Her MA writing program there became the model for successful postgraduate writing programs across Australia. Her novels Dancing on Coral (1987) and Longleg (1990) won a number of major Australian literary prizes. She died in Sydney in 2007.

Merran Martin has taught English to migrants and refugees in Canberra since 1985. From 1973-75 she worked in the Department of Immigration teaching English in a migrant hostel, as a shipboard education officer, and in its Migrant Education Section in Canberra. Fluent in French and German from childhood she also taught English in Europe in the early 1970s. She is currently Education, Placement and Referral Officer, Special Preparatory Program Manager and Home Tutor Scheme Coordinator in the Adult Migrant English Program at the Canberra Institute of Technology.

Michelle Ronksley-Pavia is one of Australia’s emerging scientific artists. Born in England, she has lived in various parts of the United Kingdom and Europe. She studied for eight years in Belgium, where she attended the State-operated Ecole des Beaux Arts in Brussels. Whilst in Europe she was greatly influenced by the works of the Impressionists and the Belgian Surrealist painter, Rene Magritte.

Ronksley-Pavia emigrated and took up Australian Citizenship in 1992. She attended the University of Western Sydney and continued with postgraduate study in Visual Arts. Here she was drawn to the work of artists like James Gleeson and Brett Whiteley. Ronksley-Pavia exhibited widely and joined the National Association for the Visual Arts. The influence of the Association saw her career begin to flourish.

Sue Pennicuik was elected Member of the Legislative Council for the Southern Metropolitan Region in November 2006, representing the Australian Greens (Victoria). She was re-elected at both the 2010 and 2014 elections. She has held the position of Victorian Greens Whip in the Legislative Council since 2006.

Betty, adopted as a baby, grew up in a dysfunctional home in a small country town in South Australia, and experienced difficult and stressful formative years. She later moved to Canberra, where she felt welfare was available to young people with problems of all kinds. In Canberra, Betty established a home for her rapidly growing family – in the space of two years, she went from having two children to six. Betty’s many activities included setting up the first secretarial agency in Canberra, from her home.

When Robyn, a profoundly deaf daughter, was born, the family struggled to communicate with her. Robyn eventually trained to become a teacher, and became the first deaf teacher of the deaf in Tasmania.

Betty took an active role in social justice issues, including actively fighting for justice for Lindy Chamberlain and other victims of injustice. She was elected to the House of Assembly on the Family Team before ACT self-government.

Later, as she was living in Queensland in retirement, Betty continued to champion causes for those who could not fight for themselves.

Margaret Peden completed a Bachelor of Arts (1926) and Diploma of Education (1928) at the University of Sydney, where she co-founded the women’s cricket club and served as president of the women undergraduates’ association. While working as sports mistress at Redlands School (1928-34), Peden helped to rebuild the New South Wales Women’s Cricket Association, serving as honorary secretary from 1928 to 1944. She captained every New South Wales women’s cricket team until 1938, with the exception of the 1930 team – that year she co-founded the Australian Women’s Cricket Council. She was secretary of the New South Wales Women’s Amateur Sports Council in 1932-37, and later vice-president.

It was Margaret Peden who organised in 1934 the first tour to Australia by an English women’s cricket team and, with her sister Barbara, set up Australia’s first indoor coaching centre in Sydney. Peden was appointed captain of the Australian team that year, and again in 1937. In 1950 she became an honorary life member of the Women’s Cricket Association, England.

In 1935, Peden married Maurice Ranald Emanuel. She gave birth to a son in 1938.

Nancy Reardon was a gifted Tasmanian athlete who excelled in rowing and netball.

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.

Ingrid grew up in war-torn Germany. When she was three years of age her home was bombed, and her family lost everything. She and her mother had to flee to a little village in the mountains where they experienced great hardships and survived by living on food gathered from the forest and the fields. After training as a teacher in her teenage years, Ingrid went to the UK where she met and married Malcolm Ross. They spent 10 years teaching in Papua New Guinea before settling in Australia in 1982. Here Ingrid taught German language in a private school for a number of years. She is now employed as a tour guide around historic sites in Canberra and travels with her husband, a Professor of Linguistics, when he lectures overseas. Tempered by her experiences of life, Ingrid has embraced her adopted country of Australia with great affection, as well as warmly embracing all who come across her path.

Thai, Ti Bach Tuyet was born in Cholon in South Vietnam. For many years, she taught Vietnamese language and social sciences and provided counselling services at a French High School.

She migrated to Western Australia in 1975 and quickly reskilled, graduating with a Graduate Diploma in Library Studies from the Western Australian Institute of Technology in 1977, and obtaining work at the Perth Technical College library. Around this time, she adopted the name ‘Emily’; inspired by a French poem Emilie ou pays natal because she felt the same homesickness as described in the poem. Adopting this name also made it easier for her Australian colleagues and customers, who couldn’t pronounce ‘Tuyet’ properly.

Not long after, Emily combined her skills in librarianship and teaching at the Perth City Council Library to develop and run a library education service for new migrant students. After that she worked as the Children’s librarian at the City of Gosnells library. She worked very hard at developing programs to build stronger links between the library and the community. She also designed a graded reading system which helped migrants and reluctant readers become literate in English. Her expertise and experience eventually led to her being invited to be the Co-ordinator of the Ethnic Child Care Resource Unit. She introduced Cross-Cultural information packages for Children’s Services and ran a variety of workshops relating to early childhood education.

Since her arrival in Australia, Emily has maintained a strong commitment to community work. She has been an active member of Management Committees for non government organisations that focus on the provision of services to migrant communities, including: the Ethnic Music centre; Community Arts Network; Ethnic Communities Council; Australia Asia Association; Vietnamese Poetry, Classical Music and Opera Association, the Vietnamese Women’s Support Community and the Federated Vietnamese Women’s Association.

Meitka Gruszka is a member of the Polish community in Western Australia who has taken an active role in multicultural issues. As well as being a leader in the Polish community, having served as President of the Polish Association of Western Australia, she was involved in a number of multicultural organisations. At various times throughout the 80s and 90s she was a member of the Ethnic Communities Council of Western Australia, the Catholic Migrant Centre and the National Ethnic and Multicultural Broadcasters’ Council.

Janice Burnswoods was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Council on 25 May 1991 and served until 2007. She has been a member of the Australian Labor Party since 1972.