The Australian Women's Register

Established in 1994, the Frances Burke Textile Resource Collection was located within the School of Fashion and Textiles at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT). The Textile Resource Collection collected and researched the work of Australian textile designers and visual artists working in the area of textile design so that future researchers could assess and appreciate their individual creative contribution to the cultural identity of Australia.

The Centre no longer exists as a discrete entity, but is now part of the RMIT Design Archives, a growing facility which actively collects material relating to Melbourne design from the twentieth century onwards, including fashion and textile design, architecture, industrial design, interior design, landscape architecture, graphic design, gold and silver smithing and sound. Building on the Frances Burke Centre collection the RMIT Design Archives is bringing together archives from other design practices in order to tell the story of Melbourne as a design city. These archives are both digital and material, representing historical and contemporary practices.

Cascades Female Factory was a workhouse for female convicts in the penal colony of Van Diemen’s Land. Opened in 1828, the Factory expanded to accommodate 1000 women and 175 children by 1853.

The Cascades Female Factory Historic Site is one of eleven convict sites that form the Australian Convict Sites World Heritage property.

The public garden known as ‘Wendy’s Secret Garden’ was established in 1992. It was named informally by local residents after Wendy Whiteley who cleared the derelict land and established the gardens. The land belongs to the NSW State Railways but had been neglected for decades. In October 2015 it was leased to North Sydney Council on 30 year lease with a 30 year option. It is now a popular location for weddings and tourists.

For almost 20 years the Women’s House in O’Connor was an important feminist space providing support for community based women’s groups and organisations. Activities and events at the house reflected the changing shape of the women’s movement, both locally and nationally, as well as local women’s involvement in broader political campaigns. The House was the first centre for community based women’s services in Canberra with Canberra Women’s Liberation, Women’s Electoral Lobby, the Abortion Counselling Service and the Rape Crisis Counselling Service as the first tenants. Over the years many of the women involved formed significant groups and connections at the House, contributing to the establishment of some of the key women’s services in Canberra. Lesbian Line, a telephone support service for women, operated out of the House for a number of years in the late 1980s and early nineties. An even wider range of women’s groups used the House for meetings. By the mid 1990s there were more women-specific services established in Canberra, both government and non-government. This meant that the House was being used less often after having provided a critically significant place for a diverse range of Canberra women to meet, work, organise and party.

St Margaret’s Hospital, known initially as St Margaret’s Maternity Home, was founded by Gertrude Abbott in 1893. Located in Elizabeth Street in Strawberry Hills it was founded ‘to provide shelter and care for unmarried girls of the comparatively respectable class. In 1904 the hospital started an outpatients service, and in 1910 St Margaret’s Hospital for Women moved to its final location on Bourke Street in Surry Hills. The work of the maternity hospital and midwifery training was continued from this base until 1998. At its peak, St Margaret’s was the third largest maternity hospital in Sydney. The site was continually extended and rebuilt and specialist services and training courses added, including obstetric and gynaecology training of doctors.

St. Margaret’s Private Hospital was opened in 1946 to assist in the funding of the public facilities. St. Margaret’s Children’s Hospital operated from 1967-1979 for the specialist care of infants and children, particularly the intensive care needs of neonates.

St. Margaret’s Public Hospital closed in June 1993, followed by the closure of the Private Hospital in June 1998. The site of the Children’s Hospital, reused as the Gertrude Abbott Nursing Home, opened in 1982 and remains in operation

The concept of a Women’s Memorial Playing Fields emanated from the concern from South Australia’s sporting women over the lack of playing areas available to them. Sports field for women had always been in short supply in Adelaide, but the situation was made worse by the rapid growth of women’s participation in sport in the post-war period.

This concern led to the formation of the South Australian Women’s Amateur Sports Council. With the help of the National Fitness Council they lobbied the government for resources and were eventually successful. In 1953 the Premier, the Hon. Tom Playford, granted the Council 20 acres of reserve land on the corner of Shepherds Hill Road and Ayliffes Road, St. Marys for a centre for women’s sport.

From 1953-55 the fields progressed and prospered. In 1956 to honour those who had died during war, a memorial drinking fountain was erected, and the grounds as a whole were dedicated to the South Australia Servicewomen who served in World Wars I and II. A ceremony remembering the nurses and other women in the services is held each February.

The work of early Trust members is commemorated in the naming of the Helen Black oval, the Gordon Brown oval and the May Mills Pavilion.

The Women’s Memorial Playing fields are the only dedicated women’s memorial of this type in Australia.

Tilley’s Devine Café may not rival its namesake in the arenas of vice and criminality, but in Canberra and beyond, this institution has been celebrated for providing originality and flair for over twenty-two years.

Cummeragunja Reserve was established in New South Wales in 1883 when some of the Aboriginal residents from Maloga Mission, five miles down the river, moved in order to be free of the strict religious lifestyle. It became a thriving and prosperous community and a site of Aboriginal activism in the early twentieth century. On 9 March 1984 the title deeds for the land passed to the Yorta Yorta people through the newly created Yorta Yorta Land Council. Today, many Aboriginal families reside on Cummeragunja.

Ebenezer Mission Station began on 10 January 1859, with the school opening on 17 January with one pupil. Two other boys joined the school the next day. Sixty people were at the Mission station by the end of March. However, it was obvious that the Aboriginal people had no intention of staying there permanently. It was not until the middle of April that the three pupils came back to the school.
Despite these beginnings, with circumstances beyond their control, the Wotjobaluk and Wergaia from the area began to settle on the station and the 1901 report to the Board states that 40 people were registered as permanent residents. The schoolteacher, Miss Isabel Tyre taught 30 children.
In 1904, the Mission was closed and the Moravian Mission Board wrote to the Board for the Protection of Aborigines, thanking them for their support and asking the government to make a permanent reserve of the burial land because it had five of their missionaries buried there. The Lake Hindmarsh Land Act (1904) revoked the Reserve and the land was made available for selection, however, the cemetery was made a Permanent Reserve.
Ebenezer Mission was the home to many Aboriginal women, some of whom became prominent Aboriginal spokespersons.

Coranderrk Station was established in 1860 when the government set aside 4,850 acres of land for use as a reserve for Aboriginal people. The site was selected by the local Aboriginal groups, the Wurundjeri, Taungerong and Bunorong people, who built the reserve within a few months, constructing their own huts, a school and dormitories for the Aboriginal children from all over the colony. They sustained themselves by growing their own vegetables and cash crops, including arrowroot and hops. Through the hard work of the Aboriginal people, Coranderrk Station was renowned for its farming produce and became the model for all future stations.

During the 1870s the Board for the Protection of Aborigines placed Aboriginal people from all over Victoria at Coranderrk Station. In 1924 it was closed as a staffed station. Nine Aboriginal people remained, with the Police Constable at Healesville as their local guardian. The rest were sent to Lake Tyers Reserve.

The area was gradually given away over the years until its status as a reserve was revoked. In 1948 the Coranderrk Land Bill released the station for private purchase. In 1998 land at Coranderrk was purchased by the Indigenous Land Corporation and returned to Aboriginal people.

Coranderrk was the home to many Aboriginal women, some of whom became prominent Aboriginal spokespersons.

Lake Tyers Mission was established in 1861 when the Central Board for the Protection of Aborigines approved the allocation of 2,000 acres at Lake Tyers for the purpose of providing a base for missionaries in eastern Victoria. Consisting of a manager’s residence, church, school and huts, the mission attracted a number of Aboriginal people and as such was seen by the Mission Societies as successful and flourishing.

In 1908 it was taken over by the Board for the Protection of Aborigines as a Government station. At this time the Board believed that Victorian Aboriginal people were dying out and so it instituted a policy of closing all the reserves around Victoria and sending the people living on them to Lake Tyers.

In the 1960s the Aborigines Welfare Board attempted to close Lake Tyers as a reserve, however, it met with the residents’ opposition. The Aborigines Advancement League, led by Pastor Douglas Nicholls, fought for eight years to retain Lake Tyers Reserve. The Aboriginal Amendment Act 1965 changed the status of Lake Tyers from temporary to permanent, thus strengthening Aboriginal claims to preserve it. In 1971 the fight was finally won, when freehold title to Lake Tyers was given to the Lake Tyers Trust under the Aboriginal Lands Act of 1970. Today, Lake Tyers is also known as Bung Yarnda.

The Lake Tyers Mission and later Reserve was home to many Aboriginal women, some of whom became prominent Aboriginal spokespersons.

Ramahyuck Mission was established in 1862 by the Reverend F.A. Hagenauer on a site near Maffra, Victoria. It was one of three Aboriginal Missions established by Moravian Missioners in Victoria. The local farming community opposed the mission in this location so it was moved to the Avon River, near Lake Wellington.

On 1 April 1869, the Education Department classified Ramahyuck school as half-time Rural School No. 12 and appointed Reverend Kramer as the teacher. Students enrolled at the school did extremely well which encouraged attendance. 1872, there were 19 children at the school. In 1873, the school had gained 100% of marks. In 1877, Ramahyuck Mission Station was placed at the head of the list for ‘presenting the most successful results’.

Then, in a strange move, on 13 May 1901, the Department of Education closed the Ramahyuck State School, and the remaining children were told to attend the nearby Perry Bridge school. Aboriginal people protested about their children having to move schools and the Central Board for the Protection of Aborigines appointed a teacher to conduct lessons at Ramahyuck school. The school continued under the Board until 1908 when the Mission closed and the remaining residents were sent to Lake Tyers.

Ramahyuck Mission was the home to many Aboriginal women, some of whom later became prominent Aboriginal spokespersons.

On 3 March 2002, a Remembrance Service was conducted in the Rose Garden in the Kokoda Track Memorial Walkway opposite Concord Hospital in Sydney, New South Wales, to dedicate 24 memorial plaques for service with the Australian Imperial Force in New Guinea during World War II. The plaques commemorate the service of personnel of the Royal Australian Navy, Medical, Dental and Nursing Services, the Royal Australian Air Force Medical Service, Nursing Sisters of the Australian Army Nursing Service and the many deployed units of the Australian Army Medical Corps.

The Arboretum was established in 1985/86 and named in honour of Dame Elisabeth Murdoch in recognition of her contribution to the project.

The Olive Pink Botanic Gardens, located in Alice Springs in the Northern Territory were established in 1956 by their founder, anthropologist Olive Pink. Originally named the Australian Arid Regions Native Flora Reserve, an then the Olive Pink Flora Reserve, Miss Pink and her Warlpiri assistant gardeners worked for nearly two years to establish a public area for the appreciation of central desert native fauna.

Olive Pink lived in the Tanami desert in Central Australia with Aboriginal people for 36 years before starting work on a Floral Reserve at Alice Springs in 1956. Miss Pink worked on the development of the sixteen-hectare reserve with the assistance of Aboriginal gardeners until her death in 1975. The Olive Pink Botanic Garden opened to the public in 1985.

An amphitheatre located in the eucalypt lawn was erected as a memorial to Dr Burbidge’s contribution to Australian botany.