The Australian Women's Register

Margaret Olley is known as one of Australia’s most prized interior and still life painters. She first came to public attention as the subject of Sir William Dobell’s winning Archibald portrait in 1948. These days she is regarded as an Australian national treasure. In 1997 her work was the subject of a major retrospective organized by the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Zara Dare was 45 years-old when she applied for a position as a Queensland police officer. She had previously worked in China for the Salvation Army and, upon returning to Australia, she was an organiser of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. Zara and her colleague, Ellen O’Donnell, commenced at the Roma Street Police Station in 1931. Neither of the women was sworn in and therefore did not receive the same pay allowances and privileges (including superannuation) as male officers. Zara’s work within the police force was restricted to looking after lost children, escorting female prisoners, and working with victims of domestic and sexual violence. Nine years after joining the police force, Zara retired to marry. It was not until 1965 that Queensland police women were officially sworn in and therefore entitled to some of the privileges enjoyed by men.

Ursula McConnel is recognised as an influential anthropologist of the Cape York Peninsula and a talented amateur photographer. McConnel used her photographs to illustrate publications of her research in magazines and ethnographic journals such as Oceania and Walkabout. She was also a collector of Indigenous artefacts.

Content added for original entry by Lee Butterworth, last modified 11 June 2009

As one of the first students of A. R. Radcliffe-Brown’s Australian tenureship, Ursula McConnel conducted ethnographic fieldwork as a participant-observer in western Cape York Peninsula between 1927 and 1934. She worked chiefly among the Wik peoples, particularly the Wik Mungkan based at Aurukun Mission. As part of her anthropological study McConnel amassed a substantial material culture collection of over five hundred artefacts. Together with Donald Thomson’s collection from the same area, it forms a unique record of Wik Mungkan material culture from that period. In 2006 a large collection of professional papers belonging to Ursula was discovered and donated to the South Australian Museum.

Meta Overman was a Dutch-born composer who studied piano and composition with leading figures in Rotterdam before emigrating to Western Australia in 1951. She earned accolades for her works, which included choral, instrumental, chamber pieces, ballets and operas. After lengthy sojourns in both Melbourne and Holland, she returned to Perth in 1978, where she remained until her death in 1993.

May Jordan McConnel was the first paid female union organiser in Queensland, elected Secretary of the newly-formed Tailoresses Union on 5 August 1890. The Brisbane Women’s Union met for the first time on 27 August 1890 and discussions focused on securing fair wages, fair hours and equitable conditions in the workplace for women. In Brisbane on 17 December 1893, May delivered an address to suffrage supporters, celebrating New Zealand women’s success in attaining the right to vote. In February 1894, a public meeting was held and the Woman’s Equal Franchise Association, a strong supporter of women’s suffrage, was founded. May was elected as Treasurer. In 1910, the McConnel family left Brisbane for the United States, leaving their Indooroopilly house, ‘Robgill’, as a gift to Queensland. This house became the Methodist Church’s first institutionalised home for orphans in the state – the original Queen Alexander Home for Children. The family never returned to Australia and May died in California in 1929.

Evelyn Evans was a young English girl from a well-to-do family, who while in Australia as part of a world trip, met and married station manager Charles Maunsell in 1912. They lived at Mulgrave Station which was located on the frontier of far north Queensland. Evelyn endured incredible hardship, with pioneering forcing her to endure hazards that pushed her far beyond the traditional female role; that of mother, wife and homemaker. Her courage and resourcefulness helped further the position and importance of women in colonial society.

Pamela Anne Beggs joined the Australian Labor Party in 1977 and sat in the Parliament of Western Australia as member for Whitfords from 1983 to 1993.

The Queensland Women’s Electoral League (QWEL) was co-founded by Christina Corrie (wife of Brisbane mayor Leslie Corrie) in 1903. The Queensland Women’s Electoral League differed from the Women’s Electoral Franchise Association (WEFA) in that it was conservative, anti-socialist and pro private enterprise. Its membership was drawn from women in professions and wives of businessmen. Christina Corrie was one of the most well known women in Brisbane in the early 1900s and she used her notoriety to advance the causes of the many social, cultural and charitable institutions she supported.

Pamela Buchanan was a parliamentarian who represented the Australian Labor Party in the Pilbara region of Western Australia from 1983 until 1992.

Una Prentice (nee Bick) was the first woman law graduate admitted to the Bar of the Queensland Supreme Court, first woman admitted to the Bar of the High Court, and first female Commonwealth Prosecutor.

June Craig was a member of the Western Legislative Assembly from 1974 until 1983, and served also as a cabinet Minister. In 1994 she received an Order of Australia (AM) for her long and distinguished parliamentary and community service.

Fanny Elizabeth Hunt was the first woman to graduate with a Bachelor of Science from the University of Sydney, graduating in 1888. She was appointed as first headmistress of Ipswich Girls Grammar School in 1892. Fanny Hunt was in charge of the school from its opening in 1892 until 1901, when she resigned because of ill-health. Her family had relocated to Toowoomba and after a restorative holiday Fanny Hunt founded Girton College in Toowoomba in about 1905. In 1915 the family moved to Sydney and settled at Rose Bay. Fanny Hunt died in Sydney in 1941.

Estelle Cribb was a first day pupil at Ipswich Girls Grammar School (IGGS) in 1892. She was the first woman to study for a Master of Arts, with Honours in Mathematics, from the University of Sydney. She graduated in 1901. After obtaining an Honours Diploma in Education, she was appointed Mathematical Mistress at IGGS in 1903. She held the position for 35 years, retiring in 1938. Estelle Cribb was an active member of the IGGS Old Girls’ Association, serving as President for 12 years. She was much loved and when she died on 5 November 1947 a memorial fund was established by the Old Girls’ Association. In 1952 commemorative gates were unveiled at the front of IGGS, which still commemorate her

Olga Miller was a direct descendant and Elder of the Butchulla people of Fraser Island. She was an Aboriginal historian who wrote about and taught Aboriginal culture for over 40 years.

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Celia Smith was one of the unsung heroes of the early Aboriginal rights movement, helping hundreds obtain their social welfare rights, taking up their cases with politicians and bureaucrats. As an early member of the Queensland Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders (QCAATSI), Celia took over from poet Kath Walker as its honorary secretary. She was also a delegate to its federal counterpart, the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders (FCAATSI).

From 1970 Celia wrote a regular column in the QCAATSI monthly newsletter in which she discussed issues of land rights, conditions on reserves, wages, and housing for Aborigines. She campaigned vigorously for a ‘yes’ vote in the successful 1967 referendum to empower the commonwealth government to legislate on Aboriginal affairs. She was often ‘on duty’ at the ‘tent embassy’ set up in 1974 at King George Square, Brisbane, to publicise the need for more Aboriginal housing in the city and to protest against the State’s repressive Aborigines and Torres Strait Islander Affair Act in 1965. In the 1970s Celia belonged to the Queensland branch of the Union of Australian Women, and kept the organisation informed of matters affecting Aborigines.

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Ruth Don was the first Senior Mistress of a Queensland high school, as well as the first female Principal of the Domestic Science High School and of Brisbane’s Office Training College. She also became the Queensland Teachers Union’s first female president. Ruth was founding president of the Forum Club in Brisbane.

Joan Innes Reid influenced many lives as a pioneering social worker and the first woman councillor (and deputy mayor) in Townsville, North Queensland. In 1953 she was the only practicing medical social worker in Queensland outside of Brisbane. Joan also actively involved herself in community work, helping to establish medical, humanitarian and cultural institutions in Townsville. In 1976 she joined the staff of the James Cook University and became the first woman to be awarded an honorary degree by the University in 1995. In 1984 Dr Innes Reid was made a Member of the Order of Australia in recognition of her community work and in 1989 she received life membership to the Australian Association of Social Work.  The Joan Innes Reid prize in social work awarded by James Cook University is named in her honour

Anna Maria Bligh was elected as Premier of Queensland on 21 March 2009, thus becoming the first woman in Australia to be elected in her own right as Premier. She was sworn in as Premier of Queensland on 13 September 2007, following the resignation of Peter Beattie, and was then Queensland’s first female Premier. She was appointed Deputy Premier of Queensland in July 2005 – the same month she celebrated 10 years as Member for South Brisbane. As Deputy Premier she was also Treasurer and Minister for Infrastructure, running the $33 billion Queensland State Budget and leading construction of the $9 billion South-East Queensland Water Grid.

She was formerly Minister for Finance, State Development, Trade and Innovation. Prior to that she was Queensland’s first female Education Minister spending almost 5 years overseeing the most significant reforms to the State’s education system including the introduction of a preparatory year of schooling and requirements for all young people to be “learning or earning”. During that time she also had responsibilities for the Arts portfolio, overseeing construction of the Millennium Arts Precinct. Following the election of the Beattie Labor Government in June 1998, her first ministerial responsibility was as Minister for Families, Youth and Community Care and Disability Services.

In 2017, Anna Bligh was made a Companion in the General Division of the order of Australia ‘for eminent service to the Parliament of Queensland, particularly as Premier, to infrastructure development and education reform, as an advocate for the role of women in public life, and to the not for-profit sector’.

Lyla Daphne Elliott joined the Australian Labor Party in 1955, and was a member of the Legislative Council in Western Australia from 1971 until 1986.

Jennifer Fowler is an internationally renowned composer who was born in Bunbury, Western Australia. She works as a freelance composer in London, where she has lived since 1969.

During World War II, Joyce Tweddell became a prisoner of war (POW) when she was captured, together with many other nurses, by the Japanese after the fall of Singapore in February 1942. She was interned in Sumatra for three and a half years before her recovery from the camp at the cessation of the war.

She refused to accept the honour of an MBE in the early 1970s as she believed all surviving prisoners of war should have been awarded this honour.

Leontine Cooper was Queensland’s most significant writer addressing the rights of white women during the movement for woman suffrage in that state. By the late 1880s she had emerged as one of the key activists who contributed to progressive movements in Australian political life and Australian feminism. Cooper wrote short stories for the Boomerang and in the mid 1890s edited Queensland’s only women’s suffrage newspaper, the Star. For a short time she edited Flashes, a society newspaper, and for a while wrote ‘Queensland Notes’ for Louisa Lawson’s feminist journal, the Dawn.

In 1889 Leontine Cooper led a breakaway group from the Woman’s Equal Franchise Association, which became known as the Queensland Woman’s Suffrage League. Cooper was concerned that the women’s suffrage movement should not be ‘captured’ by the Labor Party, and become subject to party politics. Leontine founded and served as inaugural president of the Brisbane Pioneer Club in 1899 which, like its London namesake, was a progressive women’s club.

During World War II, Sylvia Muir, along with fellow Queensland Joyce Tweddell, became a prisoner of war (POW) when she was captured, together with many other nurses, by the Japanese after the fall of Singapore in February 1942. She was interned in Sumatra for three and a half years before her recovery from the camp at the cessation of the war.

Mary Salce is a dairy farmer from Gippsland, in Victoria. She has been actively involved in agricultural politics since the 1960s, often, in the first twenty years, as the only woman on industry boards. By the mid-1980s, Mary had emerged as a leader of the Women in Agriculture movement. She was instrumental in establishing the Rural Women’s Network, and her role in organising and convening the First International Women in Agriculture Conference was pivotal in the process of securing a voice in decision making for rural women nationally and internationally. Her leadership and influence has resulted in profound change in the profile of rural women: in the acknowledgement of their contribution to the rural sector, in their empowerment though the development of their leadership skills and confidence, in the development of a co-ordinated voice airing their particular concerns with social, welfare and sustainability issues, and in their role in strengthening communities.

In 1931, Ellen O’Donnell, along with Zara Dare, became Queensland’s first female police officer, serving with the service for nearly 31 years. As Ellen was never officially sworn in as an officer, she did not wear a uniform or receive officer’s wages. She also was never part of the superannuation scheme. Her duties were restricted to assisting lost children, escorting female prisoners, and working with victims of domestic and sexual violence. Queensland’s decision to allow female officers into the police service was extremely controversial, with opinions divided across the state.

Elina Emily Mottram was Queensland’s first and longest practicing female architect, establishing her own business in Brisbane in 1924.

Appointed as temporary lecturer in the department of dentistry, University of Queensland, in 1961, Mrs Marlay joined the department staff in 1965 as lecturer in oral biology. She was awarded a Ph.D. in 1969 for a study of the incident of dental caries in adolescent girls; her project also contributed to knowledge about tests of buffering capacity of saliva and the ability to predict dental caries increments. On 1 January 1971 Dr Marlay was made a senior lecturer.