The Australian Women's Register

Enid Derham was a poet and an academic who photographed her travels to Egypt, the Mediterranean, Europe, and England during 1927.

Frances Derham was born in Melbourne in 1894 and married Alfred Derham. As a trained artist and qualified art teacher, she taught and lectured for over sixty years and had a profound influence on early childhood art in Australia. After teaching at Preshil in Kew, Frances Derham tutored at the Kindergarten Training College. She was closely involved with Christine Heineg in the establishment of the Lady Gowrie Child Centres in 1939. A former President of the Art Teachers’ Association of Victoria, Vice-President and founding member of the Australian Society for Education through the Arts, Derham died in 1987.

Barbara Ward was born on February 12, 1954 in Gympie, Queensland, educated at Aspley State High School and studied Economics at the University of Queensland.
Barbara was advisor to the Hon Paul Keating, MP between 1979 and 1985. ( Keating was Treasurer of Australia between 1983 and 1991).
Barbara held various positions with TNT Finance between 1985 and 1993 and then was Chief Executive of Ansett Worldwide Aviation Services 1993-97.
Barbara has been Chairman of North Power since 2000 and a director of the Commonwealth Bank since 1994.

(Source: Herd, Margaret (editor) Who’s Who in Australia, 2002, 38th edition, Crown Content, Melbourne.)

[NB: the above biography was researched and written by Philida Sturgiss-Hoy]

Margaret Jackson was born on March 17, 1953 in Warragul, Victoria, educated at Warragul High School and studied Economics at Monash and Business Administration at Melbourne University.

Margaret was chairman of Qantas from 2000 to 2007. She has been a director of Qantas since 1992 and her other directorships include ANZ since 1994.
Margaret is married to Roger Donazzan and they have 2 children.

(Source: Herd, Margaret (editor) Who’s Who in Australia, 2002 38th edition, Crown Content, Melbourne.)

[NB: the above biography was researched and written by Philida Sturgiss-Hoy]

Simone Young is the Conductor and Music Director of Opera Australia. She was educated at the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music.

Simone has been conductor Paris Opera, Vienna Philharmonic, Berlin and Vienna Staatsoper, Royal Opera House (London) and the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
She was Young Australian of the Year in 1987.

Simone is married to Greg Condon and has 2 daughters.

(Source: Herd, Margaret (editor) Who’s Who in Australia, 2002 38th edition, Crown Content, Melbourne.)

[NB: the above biography was researched and written by Philida Sturgiss-Hoy]

Lorna Sisely, born in 1916 in Wangaratta, was educated at Wangaratta High School, Methodist Ladies College (Melb.) and Janet Clarke Hall University of Melbourne. She was a junior then senior Resident Medical Officer (RMO) at St Vincent’s Hospital, Melbourne from 1942 until 1944. Later Sisely was founder and consultant surgeon at the Monash Medical Centre Breast Clinic. Among her other activities she was a member of the Anti-Cancer Council 1964 – 1981. On 14 June 1980 Lorna Sisely was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for her service to medicine.

[NB: the above biography was researched and written by Philida Sturgiss-Hoy for Women’s History Month 2003]

An illustrator of many books on Australian plants, Betty Maloney and her sister, Jean Walker, studied art at Melbourne Technical College (now RMIT).

After teaching art at the National Fitness Council, Melbourne Church of England Grammar School and St Catherine’s School in Melbourne, she travelled to Europe.
With her sister she wrote Designing Australian Bush Garens and Australian Bush Gardens in 1966 and 1967.

The 86 watercolour illustrations used for the publication Proteaceae of the Sydney Region with Alec Blombery are in the Archives of the New South Wales State Library.

Also she illustrated books on mah-jong and thimbles – she maintained a collection of Victorian thimbles, was a co-founder, with her husband, of the Sydney Wagner Society and was involved with volunteer conservation groups, including the Society for Growing Australian Plants.

In the early 1990s her own garden at French’s Forest was approved by the National Trust as a Trust garden and she was presented with a terracotta plaque.

Julie Hammer was the first woman to command an operational unit in the RAAF, the Electronic Warfare Squadron, and was awarded a Conspicuous Service Cross for that command. She was the recipient of the 1996 Association of Old Crows (Australian Chapter) Award for Distinguished Service to Electronic Warfare. She was awarded the 2001 Sir Charles Kingsford Smith Memorial Medal by the Royal Aeronautical Society to recognise her contribution to Australian aerospace and delivered the 2001 Kingsford Smith Memorial Lecture. She is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers Australia, a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society and a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. She was the first woman in the RAAF to become a member of the General List on promotion to Group Captain 1996, and the first serving woman in the history of the Australian Defence Force to be promoted to One Star level, on promotion to Air Commodore in 1999. She served for three years from 1996 to 1998 as one of the Prime Minister’s representatives on the Governor General’s Australian Bravery Awards Council.

Born in Pressburg, Austria-Hungary where her father was the manager of a branch of J P Coats thread mills. The family returned to Paisley, in Scotland, with the outbreak of World War I.
She enrolled in the in the Scottish National Academy of Music in Glasgow, then studied singing under Francis Harford before joining the Carl Rosa Opera Company in 1935 and played at the London Lyceum Theatre and touring South Africa.
In 1937 she joined the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company as a principal soprano, touring the English provinces and later America. In 1939 she was invited to join the Australian Gilbert and Sullivan Opera Company as a principal for a year long tour of Australia and New Zealand.
She met and married Frank (later Sir Frank) Tait, the youngest of the five Tait brothers.
Her first book A Family of Brothers provides a history of the J C Williamson’s theatre enterprise and the contribution of the Tait brothers to Australian theatre. This was followed by Dames, Principal Boys…and all that: A history of Pantomime in Australia in 2001.

(Source: Farewell to a grand dame of light opera by Elisabeth Kumm and Grand lady of the stage by Philip Jones)

Maude O’Connell worked as a teacher and completed nursing training before becoming involved in social work. She was elected a Governor of the Carlton Refuge in 1909, and was an active member of the Tobacco Workers’ Union before founding “The Company of Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament” (more commonly known as ‘The Grey Sisters’).

Ola Cohn was the first Australian sculptor to carve large commissions free-hand in stone. She created the statue for the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden in Adelaide, South Australia, and carved the famous Fairies’ Tree in Melbourne’s Fitzroy Gardens. Examples of Ola Cohn’s work in bronze, stone and wood are in state and provincial galleries nationwide. On 1 January 1965, Cohn was appointed a Member of the British Empire for her work in the service of art, especially sculpture. Her studio home in Gipps St, East Melbourne, is now known as the Ola Cohn Memorial Centre.

After leaving school Dorothea Henslowe worked as a teacher and governess. During World War I she was a Voluntary Aid at Hornsey Hospital at Evandale after which she returned to teaching. After both her parents died in 1935, Henslowe travelled to Canada and then settled in Battery Point, Hobart. She worked in an honorary capacity for the Australian Board of Mission, a missionary organisation of the Anglican Church that works largely in Asia, the Pacific and with Aboriginal communities, for over 30 years.

Margaret Forrest was one of Australia’s early botanical artists, and the wife of Western Australia’s first Premier. She was born Margaret Elvire Hamersley in 1844, to Edward Hamersley and his French wife Anne Louise (Cornelis). They left London with their two young sons aboard the Shepherd, and arrived at Fremantle in 1837. Edward quickly acquired land around Perth and Fremantle, and became involved in viticulture and horse breeding. In 1843 the family made the first of two voyages back to Europe, and on this first extended sojourn, Margaret was born at La Havre, France, in October 1844. The Hamersley’s returned to the Swan River colony in 1850.

From an early age, Margaret Hamersley showed enthusiasm for watercolour painting, spending much time studying and sketching wildflowers. She later travelled on sketching trips with other noted botanical artists Marianne North and Rowan Ellis. She married John Forrest on 29 February, 1876 at St. George’s Cathedral, Perth, and became heavily involved in political life, accompanying her husband on overseas and interstate trips. Lady Forrest was an active member of Western Australia’s first society for artists and exhibited six wildflower watercolours in the Wilgie First Annual Exhibition of Paintings in 1890. She was a founding member of the Western Australia Society of Arts and the Karrakatta Club which was organised to broaden women’s outlook by bringing them in contact with the fine arts. After her death in 1929, her collection was bequeathed to the Art Gallery of Western Australia in 1933.

Source: http://www.anbg.gov.au/biography/forrest-margaret.html [accessed 15/03/2002] and Australian Garden History, vol. 7, no. 6, May/June 1996, p.12.

While studying at the Adelaide School of Design under H P Gill, Principal, and Louis Tannert, Master of the School of Painting, Rosa Fiveash chose to specialise in painting Australian flora. She was commissioned by the conservator of forests, John Ednie Brown, to illustrate his Forest Flora of Australia and orchidologist R S Rogers to illustrate his works on South Australian orchids. The Botanic Gardens of Adelaide and the State Herbarium have a collection of her original flower paintings. It was Fiveash who introduced the art of china painting to Adelaide.

Ellis Rowan was a botanical artist who had no formal art training. She received encouragement from her family and husband, Frederick Charles Rowan, whom she married in 1873, to develop her own style in painting wildflowers.
Her work was exhibited in both Australia and overseas for which she won a variety of art prizes.

Along with her sister Harriet (q.v.), Helena was educated by her father Alexander Walker Scott, an entomologist and entrepreneur. After the publication of Australian Lepidoptera, the sisters were elected honorary members of the Australian Entomological Society.

Jean Blackburn was a feminist, socialist and staunch advocate of the critical importance of good quality teaching and resources in shaping children’s’ lives. After completing an economics major at the University of Melbourne in1940 she became a research assistant for the Department of Economics. A mother who experienced the isolation of suburban living, she worked with Winifred Mitchell in organising the New Housewives’ Association to help overcome this isolation.

She later completed a Diploma in Education and began her teaching career. In 1969 she was seconded as a consultant to the Committee of Enquiry into South Australian Education issuing the Karmel Report in 1973. This was the first of several such appointments. In 1983 she conducted a public enquiry into Victorian senior secondary education, issuing the Blackburn Report in 1985.

Anne Hunt attended Sacred Heart College, Geelong, Victoria, before completing a Science degree at the University of Melbourne.
She began her teaching career in 1978 as a teacher of Maths, Science and Chemistry with the Victorian Department of Education and later transferred to the Catholic schools sector. She also completed a degree in Theology at Yarra Theological Union. From 1983 to 1986 she was Deputy Principal of Loreto Mandeville Hall in Toorak, Victoria.

In 1987 Hunt travelled to the USA, where she completed a Masters degree in Educational Administration at Fordham University in New York City, and the next year a Masters degree in Theology at the Catholic Theological Union, Chicago.

Hunt returned to Australia in 1989 and became the first lay principal of Loreto Mandeville Hall. Once again she combined study with her career, completing doctoral studies in Theology in 1994 with the Melbourne College of Divinity. In 2002 Anne Hunt became the Rector of the Aquinas Campus of the Australian Catholic University.

Heather Schnagl is Principal of Ivanhoe Girls’ Grammar School and a Director of the Invergowrie Foundation.

Prior to completing her Science degree at the University of Melbourne, Butt attended Fintona Girls’ School, Balwyn, Victoria. In 1950 she became a Scientific Officer for the Defence Standards Laboratory (Vic), and in 1952 was appointed Assistant Mistress at Heathfield School, UK. From 1955 to 1959 she taught at Shelford CEGGS, before joining the staff at Fintona in 1960.

Elizabeth Butt became Headmistress at Fintona in 1963, retaining this position for 29 years until her retirement in 1991.

(Source: http://www.fintona.vic.edu.au/history.htm accessed 18/03/2002)

Fay Surtees Marles AM (née Pearce) is a former Australian public servant. She served as Victorian Commissioner of Equal Opportunity from 1977 to 1987 and Chancellor of the University of Melbourne from 2001 to 2004.

As a young parent with children growing up in Canberra, Lyndsay Connors was one of many whose lives were enriched by the philosophy of Jean Blackburn. Along with many other active members of the public education community and the feminist movement at that time, Lyndsay Connors found in The Karmel Report, Schools in Australia, and, in particular, in Girls, Schools and Society a set of directions for the continuing struggle for quality and equality in education.

Having served on the ACT Schools Authority as a parent member, Lyndsay Connors was then appointed as a full-time Schools Commissioner. Her later appointments included Chair of the Schools Council of the National Board of Employment, Education and Training; and Deputy Chair, Board, Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Following a period of 8 years as a director with the New South Wales Department of Education and Training, she was appointed in 2000 to chair a Ministerial Working Party Review in Victoria, ‘Public Education: The Next Generation. She was the Australian College of Education Medallist, 2001.

In 2017, Lindsay Connors was awarded an Order of Australian in the General Division for ‘distinguished service to national public education policy, to improved school performance and equitable funding delivery, and as a role model and mentor of young women.’

(Source: Biography supplied by Dr Shirley Randell AM)

A former Principal of Ruyton Girls’ School Melbourne, in 2012 Carolyn Anderson is chair of the board of trustees of the Invergowrie Foundation.

A former principal of Strathcona Baptist Girls’ Grammar School (1990-2001), Ruth Bunyan became a member (and then a director) of the Invergowrie Foundation Council, a philanthropic organisation that issues grants to community groups to advance girls’ education in Victoria.

Jan Douglas, a former Principal of Mentone Girls’ Grammar School, was a member of the Mentone Girls’ Grammar School Council and a director of The Invergowrie Foundation. She was also a council member for International House, a residential college of the University of Melbourne, and vice-principal at Presbyterian Ladies’ College in Melbourne.

A former principal of Camberwell Anglican Girls’ Grammar School, Fary is a director of the Invergowrie Foundation.

A council member of the Invergowrie Foundation, Henry is the former principal of St Margaret’s School, Berwick.