The Australian Women's Register

Dani Stevens won a gold medal in Discus at the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.

Lakeisha Patterson won a gold medal in the S8 50m Freestyle at the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.

Melissa Tapper won a gold medal in the TT6-10 Singles Table Tennis at the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.

Emma Kearney was awarded the 2018 Australian Football League Women’s (AFLW) Best and Fairest medal at the W Awards. She was also awarded an AFLW All-Australian guernsey in both 2017 and 2018.

In addition, Emma won both the 2017 (alongside Ellie Blackburn) and 2018 Western Bulldogs AFLW best & fairest award. She was also the recipient of the 2018 Shadforth Financial Group AFL Coaches AFLW Champion Player of the Year, tying with Adelaide Crows co-captain Chelsea Randall on 42 votes.

Brenda Niall is a distinguished academic and biographer who has won many literary awards.

In 2001 Brenda was awarded the Centenary Medal for service to Australian society and the humanities in the study of Australian literature, and in 2004 she was named an Officer in the Order of Australia (AO) for service to Australian literature as an academic, biographer and literary critic.

Bene Gibson Smyth was an Australian composer of songs for children.

Poet and publisher Marjorie Pizer founded the Pinchgut Press with her husband in 1947.

Marjorie was also a psychotherapist for more than 50 years.

Best-selling author Mem Fox has written over 40 children’s books and five non-fiction adult books. Her first book, Possum Magic, was released in 1983 and is still in publication today.

As an Associate Professor, Mem taught literacy studies at Flinders University, South Australia, for 24 years. She has been the recipient of numerous honours and awards and has received three honorary doctorates.

Win Olive was heavily impacted by the events of the Second World War, particularly as most of her male friends were deployed overseas to fight. This experience motivated Win’s later anti-war activities, as well as her defence of the environment, her concern for Indigenous people and their fight for justice, and her decision to embark on the journey of the Pacific Peacemaker.

The Pacific Peacemaker sailed around the Pacific in protest of nuclear weapons, specifically the launch of the Trident nuclear submarines in North America. Setting sail in December 1981, the journey took the yacht’s eleven crew members nine months. The voyage was documented in the film The Land My Mother by David Roberts and Win also published a book about their journey, titled Voyage of the Pacific Peacemaker.

Bronwyn Thomas was an artist, art teacher and gallery director who had a particular interest in Chinese culture.

Jean Stevenson was a poet and friend of Dame Mary Gilmore. She received an honourable mention in an essay competition. ‘Mary Gilmore: Dreamer and Doer’, through the Henry Lawson Memorial and Literary Society in Melbourne, in 1939. She worked as a typist at the Australian Forestry School in Canberra, the Department of Defence in Melbourne and the Department of Air in Penrith, moving to Woodford in the Blue Mountains in 1955.

In 1946 Jessie Hope Black became the first woman to be appointed a curator at the National Museum of Victoria.

Gay Bilson was the chef and co-owner of Berowra Waters Inn, a restaurant located on an estuary of the Hawkesbury River, New South Wales. After the Berowra Waters Inn close in 2005, Gay opened the restaurant Bennelong, at the Sydney Opera House.

Gay’s book Plenty: digressions on food was named 2005 Age Book of the Year.

Diane Fahey has published twelve collections of poetry, in addition to numerous anthologies published in both Australian and international publications.

As the wife of state and federal parliamentarian Frank Crean, Australian politics was a major part of Mary Crean’s life.

Mary volunteered at kindergartens, helped organise annual collections for the Red Cross, the Salvation Army and Freedom from Hunger. At one stage she was the Victorian Commissioner of the Girl Guides, and was a keen patron of the arts through involvement with the National Gallery of Victoria. Mary was also a long-standing volunteer and patron of the Melbourne High School Library, where her children had attended school.

Erin Phillips was awarded the Australian Football League Women’s (AFLW) Best and Fairest medal at the W Awards in both 2017 and 2019.

Patricia Slater began her nursing training at the Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne, in 1937. She subsequently undertook additional training in adult nursing at the Alfred Hospital, followed by a midwifery certificate at the Royal Women’s Hospital (1942) and an infant welfare certificate at the Karitane Home, Sydney (1947).

Patricia served as a lieutenant in the Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS) from 1943 until 1947. She worked in hospitals in Victoria and Queensland and from 1945 to 46 she worked at the 2/4th Australian General Hospital and 2/1st Casualty Clearing Station on Morotai and Labuan islands, Netherlands East Indies.

After the war Patricia worked and travelled, before returning to Melbourne to teach nursing at the Royal Melbourne Hospital.

In 1956 Patricia completed a diploma in nurse education from the Melbourne-based College of Nursing and in 1959 she was awarded a Centaur war nurses’ memorial scholarship to study in Seattle, United States of America, at the University of Washington (B.Sc. Nursing, MA, 1961). While overseas, she also won a Rockefeller fellowship (1961) to visit university nursing schools in North America and Europe.

Patricia became a fellow (1960) and a part-time lecturer (1963) at the College of Nursing in Melbourne, before taking over as director in 1965. In 1974 the college established Australia’s first undergraduate nurse-education course. Patricia was instrumental in transforming nurse education from a hospital-based system to instead include undergraduate courses within tertiary institutions.

With the amalgamation of the College of Nursing and the Lincoln Institute of Health Sciences in 1977, Patricia became the inaugural head of the school of nursing; a position which she held from 1977 to 1983.

Patricia was appointed OBE in 1975 and a fellow of the Australian College of Education in 1977.

Gwen Luly attended the University Practising School (later became University High School) from 1911 to 1913.

In 1919 Gwen started her nursing career at the Alfred Hospital, where she undertook postgraduate studies and became the Senior Sister of Operating Systems. She graduated in 1922.

In 1929 Gwen set up St Clement’s Private Hospital in Southey Street, St. Kilda. However, in 1939 Gwen cancelled the hospital’s registration and spent the war years running the Altona Air Raid Precautions.

Marie Charlotte Bage was best known through her association with the National Council of Women of Victoria, of which she was an inaugural member and treasurer for more than 20 years. She was a member of the International Council of Women and in 1900 she joined the committee of the Convalescent Home for Women at Clayton, and the Parents’ National Education Union. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children also interested her from their beginnings. For many years she was a member of the City Newsboys’ Society and of the Charity Organisation Society.

In 1909 she was the honorary treasurer of the Victoria League of Victoria, and was a member of the council. She was also a member of the Field Naturalists’ Club, the Forest league, the Arts and Crafts Society, and the Royal Historical Society of Victoria. She was one of the first members of the Alexandra Club and a foundation member and one-time treasurer of the Lyceum Club.

She was the mother of Miss Freda Bage, principal of the Women’s College, Brisbane University, and Miss Ethel Bage, who, after a distinguished career at the Melbourne University, took over the control of a motor garage in Kew on the death of her friend, Miss Alice Anderson. Mrs Bage’s only son, Robert, was a member of the Mawson Antarctic Expedition in 1911. He served in the Royal Australian Engineers, and was killed at Gallipoli on May 7, 1915. Her husband, Edward, died in 1891.