The Australian Women's Register

Ronda Kimble was a netball player who advanced through the ranks to become an All Australian netball umpire. She has been involved in the game of netball for nearly forty years, as a player, coach, umpire, administrator and archivist.

Lauren Jackson is widely regarded as Australia’s greatest female basketball player ever. She has led the nation’s team, the Opals, to three silver medals at successive Olympic Games in Sydney (2000), Athens (2004) and Beijing (2008) and a much cherished bronze in London in 2012. She was chosen to carry flag for the Australian Olympic team in London in 2012, which was, she says, ‘the proudest moment of my sporting career’.

Tanya Harding has won a medal at every Olympic softball tournament since the sport made its debut in 1996. She is one of only three Australian women to win medals at four Olympic Games, the other two being teammates Melanie Roche and Natalie Ward. Harding is regarded as one of the greatest pitchers ever to represent Australia, and has played an important role in some of the team’s most exciting games.

In the 1950s Dorothy Green wrote to a friend, ‘I am now rising forty two and looking back on my life, I find have spent the greater proportion of it doing things I didn’t want to do at all.’ Nearly thirty years later she felt ‘nothing has changed’. Yet during the course of her long life, Dorothy Green produced poetry, literary criticism and journalism and taught and shaped the lives of many students. With a Bachelor of Arts in English, French and Philosophy and an Master of Arts with Honours in English, she worked as a journalist in New South Wales and Queensland, was the principal of a girls’ private school, before moving in to tertiary education, holding positions at Monash University in Melbourne and the Australian National University and Australian Defence Forces Academy in Canberra. Married to Henry Green, journalist, librarian and literary historian, with whom she had two children, she was also politically active, especially later in her life, when she was a founding member of Writers Against Nuclear Arms and an ardent environmentalist. She wrote a study of the work of Henry Handel Richardson as well as updating her husband’s History of Australian Literature and publishing several books of poetry and numerous works of literary criticism.

Betty Wilson was the first test cricketer, male or female, to complete the match double of 100 runs and ten wickets in a test match.

As a teenager, Bev Francis was an accomplished shot-putter in track and field. She began powerlifting, winning six world titles from 1980 to 1985 and earning the accolade of “Strongest Woman in History”. In 1983 Francis was invited to attend the Caesar’s World Cup in Las Vegas, representing the ‘muscular extreme’ and sparking a debate within the bodybuilding community on ‘how much muscle is too much?’

At the contest Francis met IFBB judge and powerlifter Steve Weinberger, whom she later married. She relocated to Weinberger’s Long Island abode and entered her first IFBB Ms. Olympia contest in 1986, where she was placed 10th. The next year, she won the IFBB Women’s World Pro Championships and was third in that year’s IFBB Ms. Olympia. She was third again in 1988 and 1989, and runner-up in 1990. In the 1991 contest she presented the most muscular female physique ever seen and finished, controversially, as runner-up to Lenda Murray. Once again, Francis’ extreme muscular form sparked debate and led to an attempt to overhaul procedure.

Today Francis and Weinberger live in Syosset, Long Island, as co-owners of Bev Francis Gold’s Gym.

In 1938 Jess Sams won a nationwide fishing contest for heaviest catch with a 330lb striped marlin.

Jill Reichstein is Chair of the Reichstein Foundation and an advocate of social change philanthropy. Mentor to many Australian women philanthropists, she is a member of the Committee of Management for Changemakers Australia and has served on the boards of the Melbourne Community Foundation, the Foundation for Young Australians, the Community Support Fund Community Advisory Council, the Trust for Young Australians, the Mietta Foundation, the Koori Heritage Trust, and Philanthropy Australia.

Helen McCue is best known as a co-founder of Rural Australians for Refugees (2001). A trained nurse educator she worked with the World Health Organisation (WHO) in the Middle East in 1981, was then seconded to the United Nations Relief and Works Organisation (UNRWA) in Lebanon, and subsequently worked as a volunteer in refugee camps in Beirut 1982-83. In 1984 she co-founded the trade union aid body Australian People for Health Education and Development Abroad (APHEDA), and was its first Executive Director and regional adviser in South Africa and the Middle East until early 1994. She founded the Women Refugee Education Network (1996) and the Wingecarribee Community Foundation (2001), and was involved in the establishment of Wingecarribee Reconciliation Group (1997).

A member of the Australian Labor Party, Nicola Roxon was elected to the House of Representatives for Gellibrand, Victoria, in 1998, and was re-elected in 2001, 2004, 2007 and 2010. She became Shadow Minister for Health in 2006 and on the election of the Labor Government in November 2007, she became the Minister for Health and Ageing.

She continued to hold that portfolio in the Gillard Labor Government until she was appointed Attorney-General on December 14, 2011; the first woman to hold the position in the Australian parliament.

She resigned from the portfolio in February 2013 and retired from parliament on 5 August 2013.

Patricia Riggs became a cadet journalist on the Macleay Argus at the age of thirty-five. She went on to win two Walkley awards for provincial journalism and eventually became editor of the newspaper. She was a fighter for Aboriginal advancement long before the cause was a popular one.

After retiring as editor, she became a Shire Councillor in 1983, a position she held until 1991.

Michelle Grattan was the first woman to become editor of an Australian metropolitan daily newspaper. Specialising in political journalism, she has written and edited for many significant Australian newspapers. Her long and distinguished career in journalism began in 1970 at the Melbourne Age, where she enjoyed a stellar career as their political editor. She left that paper (for good!) in 2013. .

Joan Child was the first female member of the Australian Labor Party to be elected to the federal Parliament in the House of Representatives as Member for the seat of Henty in 1974. She lost her seat in the 1975 general election, but regained it in 1980. She became the first female Speaker of the House of Representatives in 1986, holding the position until she resigned in 1989. She remained the only female speaker of the house until October 2012, when Anna Burke was appointed to the position.

Joan Child retired from parliament in 1990 when the seat of Henty was abolished in an electoral redistribution. She was appointed Officer of the Order of Australia in June 1990.

She died on February 23, 2013 at the age of 91. In a statement from Prime Minister Julia Gillard, on the occasion of her passing, Joan Child was remembered as a pioneer and an inspiration. ‘As a confirmed true believer, Joan never forgot who had put her into politics or why. She was a powerful voice for the needs and rights of women, especially working women and women doing it tough.’

Janet Powell stood unsuccessfully as a candidate for the Australian Democrats Party in the Legislative Assembly seat of Rodney at the Victorian state election, which was held on 5 May 1979. She was a candidate again at the 1985 state election, when she stood for the Legislative Council province of Central Highlands.

She was elected to the Senate of the Parliament of Australia in 1986 as a representative for Victoria. A member of the Australian Democrats and leader from 1990-1991, she resigned from the party in 1992. She served as an Independent until 1993.

In 2004 she joined the Australian Greens Party and stood as a candidate in the November 2006 Victorian State election for the Eastern Metropolitan Region in the Legislative Council.

After leaving Parliament, Ms Powell focused on volunteer leadership roles in health, women’s issues and services for the disadvantaged.

Powell passed away in September 2013, survived by four children and one grandchild.

Popi Sidiropoulos gained the distinction of becoming the first Greek speaking hairdresser in Melbourne in 1957. She migrated to Australia from Greece in 1957 and on gaining her Hairdressing diploma in Melbourne in the same year, she established her business at home, ‘just below Collingwood railway station’ and worked there for ten years.

Journalist, foreign correspondent and rock music expert Lillian Roxon enjoyed a long and varied career before her untimely death in New York at the age of 41. She was the first full-time female employee at the Sydney Morning Herald‘s New York office, and her Rock Encyclopedia was published in 1969.

Pat Holmes is widely recognised as the first woman to have worked as a full-time photojournalist on an Australian newspaper. Initially working as a studio portrait photographer in Sydney, Holmes took a position as press photographer for The Sun during WW2. In 1946, Holmes produced the iconic photograph New Year’s Eve, Kings Cross.

Florence Rodan, a member of the League of Women Voters and its president from 1961-63, stood for the Victorian parliament three times; in 1945, 1952 and 1955. She stood as an Independent in the Legislative Assembly seat of Borung at the 1945 state election, represented the Australian Labor Party in the Legislative Assembly seat of Camberwell in 1952 and the seat of Balwyn in 1955.

A member of the League of Women Voters, Mascotte Brown stood as a candidate in the Legislative Assembly seat of Malvern at five Victorian state elections which were held in 1947, 1950, 1952, 1955 and 1958. She stood as an Independent Liberal candidate at all elections except 1955 when she represented the Victorian Liberal Party.

Irene Crespin was a micropalaeontologist. After graduating from the University of Melbourne in 1919, she worked for the Geological Survey of Victoria, describing macro and micro-fossils found in sediment on the Mornington Peninsula. In 1927 she was appointed assistant palaeontologist to Frederick Chapman in the Geological Branch of the Department of Home Affairs. In 1936 she succeeded him as Commonwealth palaeontologist at half his salary and was located in Canberra.

May Holman was the first Labor Party woman parliamentarian in Australia. Representing the Legislative Assembly seat of Forrest, she was also the first Labor woman MP to serve more than ten years in parliament.

Dorothy Gordon Jenner was an Australian actress, scriptwriter, newspaper columnist and controversial radio personality.

Biographical accounts of the early acting career of Dorothy Gordon are laden with contradictions. Due to a lack surviving archival material, what we do know about Gordon comes from her own memoirs which are criticised for being inconsistent and exaggerated. It does appear, however, that she did have a career in film, in Australia and abroad, which finished sometime in 1927. She then turned her hand to journalism.

After two unsuccessful marriages, Dorothy Jenner travelled to London in 1927, where she began a column for the Sydney Sun under the name of ‘Andrea’. Hers was a gossip column, keeping Australian audiences updated on celebrity comings and goings in London and New York. After 1940, she toured south-east Asia as a war correspondent. She was captured by the Japanese in Hong Kong and spent nearly four years in Stanley prisoner of war camp. From 1951, Jenner was writing for the Mirror. She later switched to broadcasting, working for 2UE, and pioneering talk-back radio on 2GB.

Daughter of the Swiss born Elise Lehmann, Louise Lovely began her stage career at the age of eight, playing Eva in Uncle Tom’s Cabin at the Lyceum in Sydney. She subsequently appeared in many stage and screen productions. In 1912, Louise moved to Hollywood with her husband Wilton Welch and became a star, cast in at least 24 films for Universal Studios and nearly a dozen western films for Fox Studios. She returned to Australia in 1924.

Louisa Meredith sailed for Sydney with her husband Charles in 1839. A keen naturalist, she collected plant, insect and seaweed specimens in Tasmania and was a member of the Tasmania Royal Society. She published several volumes of poetry as well as her accounts of colonial life, and often illustrated these works herself.