The Australian Women's Register

Janet Biddlecombe ran her father’s estate at Golf Hill, Victoria, from his death in 1888 to her own in 1954. She pioneered the breeding of Herefords in Australia. As a pastoralist Janet was remarkably successful, and proceeds from her Hereford Stud went to any number of charitable causes – usually as anonymous donations.

Glenda Hiroko Gauci was the first Asian Australian woman appointed as an ambassador in the Australian diplomatic service.

Judy Pollock was one of Australia’s best track athletes. She represented Australia internationally in the 1960s and early 1970s, at one time holding the world record in 440 yard and 400 and 800 meter events. She ran third (to Betty Cuthbert) at the 1964 Olympic Games in the inaugural running of the women’s 440 yards. Pregnancy prevented her running at Mexico City in 1968, when she was, arguably, at the peak of her performance.

Pollock’s last tilt at Olympic gold happened in 1976 in Montreal. She was outclassed in the 1500 and didn’t proceed past the heats, but her time over 1000 meters (2.38.80) run just prior to the games, in 2006 remains an Australian record.

Debbie Flintoff-King was a hard-working, determined athlete who became an Olympic champion in the gruelling 400 meters hurdles event. She won Commonwealth Gold in 1982 and 1986, spent an intense season competing in Europe in 1987, but is best remembered for her last-stride victory in Seoul in 1988.

Cara Honeychurch is a tenpin bowler who won the World Cup in 1996, the same year she was awarded the title of Bowler of the Year. In 1998, at Kuala Lumpar, she won three gold medals in the sport.

In 1999 she travelled to the United States, where the sport gets national TV coverage and where over 80 tournaments a year are played. In her first year as a professional, Honeychurch headed the season’s averages and was second on the money earning lists. During this season, she bowled two perfect games, one of them on live TV, and in so doing earned herself a $50,000 bonus. In October 1999 she was voted Bowler of the Month by the American bowling media. In 2000, she won the Professional Women’s Bowling Association (United States) Rookie of the Year award.

In October 2006, after a three year break from competition, she won the United States Bowling Congress Women’s Challenge, defeating the 2005 World Ranking Masters champion, Clara Guerrero, in the final.

Daniela Di Toro is a champion wheelchair tennis player who, in 1999, was named the Australian Paralympic Committee Athlete of the Year. She was ranked number one in her sport in 2000.

Di Toro was not born with a disability; she lost the use of her legs in 1988 after a wall collapsed on her while she was participating in a school swimming carnival. She credits her success to a meeting with another wheelchair athlete, basketballer Sandy Blyth, who was a rehabilitation worker at the unit where Di Toro was receiving treatment.

Di Toro is still involved in her sport and works as a youth worker in Melbourne, Australia.

Born Eleanor Hall, Hopman was born at Coogee, New South Wales, and educated at Claremont College, Randwick. As a student she excelled at tennis and music, obtaining her licentiate and teaching diploma at the Royal College of Music, London, but ultimately chose a tennis career. In 1930, Harry Hopman spotted Eleanor and partnered her in the Australian senior mixed doubles, which they won. That year and in 1933, she also won the women’s doubles title.

Eleanor and Harry were married in March 1934. The pair moved to Melbourne and Eleanor became captain of the Victorian interstate team. In 1935, they reached the mixed doubles finals for Wimbledon. In 1936 and 1937 they won the Australian mixed doubles. Eleanor won the Victorian singles in 1938, and the South Australian singles the following year, raising her national ranking to equal first with Emily Westacott.

At the end of her playing career, Eleanor Hopman became a tennis administrator, elected as the first woman councillor of the Lawn Tennis Association of Victoria in 1947. In 1950 she managed Victoria’s Wilson Cup team.

Raised at Albert Park, Melbourne, Beatrice Kerr and her four siblings were taught to swim by their mother, Eliza Sophia. Kerr began her competitive swimming career in Geelong and in Melbourne, at Brighton and Albert Park. In 1905 she won the Australasian amateur championship, and the 100 yards and 120 yards in the Victorian championships, and completed 366 swimming and diving performances at Princes Court, Melbourne. The following year she won forty-three swimming prizes in Western Australia. Kerr’s fastest time for the 100 yards was 1 minute, 21.4 seconds, and for the mile, 27.5 minutes, but she did not hold world records nor did she compete in the Olympic Games.

Following her rival, Annette Kellermann, Kerr travelled to the United Kingdom in 1906. She issued a public challenge to Kellerman that year, but did not receive a response. Kerr began a busy season of performances, appearing in theatrical swimming events. According to Judy Nelson, Kerr was renowned for swimming techniques including the revolving waterwheel, and for her diving displays, as well as for her daring, spangled swimming costumes. She returned to Australia in 1911 and retired from professional swimming the following year when she married Griffith Ellis Williams. The pair had one son and lived at Bondi, Sydney.

Born in St Kilda, Melbourne, Victoria, Emily Pelloe was educated at a private school in South Yarra before moving with her family to Western Australia. In 1902 she was married in Perth to Theodore Parker Pelloe, a bank manager. The pair had no children.

A member of the Perth Riding Club, Pelloe competed successfully in equestrian events in Sydney, Melbourne, Launceston and Perth. She made several long rides in New South Wales and Western Australia. In 1916 she turned her talents to the study of botany, and went on to produce a number of illustrated publications including Wildflowers of Western Australia. Some of her landscape watercolours were purchased by government departments.

From 1920, Pelloe was writing the ‘Women’s Interests’ column for the West Australian. She supported the Country Women’s Association, the Women Writers’ Club, and the Women’s Riding Club. A year after her death, Pelloe’s husband Theodore presented 400 of her wildflower paintings to the University of Western Australia.

An athletic student, Gwendoline Varley went on to be sports mistress at the Hermitage school in Geelong, Victoria, before moving to Sydney, where she became organizing secretary of the City Girls’ Amateur Sports Association. She inaugurated Girls’ Week as a fundraising initiative, and caught the attention of local radio stations. In 1928, Varley began broadcasting with radio station 2BL and was founding secretary of its Women’s Amateur Sports Association. The wireless was an invaluable tool for the promotion of sports activities for women, and the Association grew rapidly. It was placed under the auspices of the Australian Broadcasting Commission on the establishment of that body in 1932. Varley continued broadcasting for the ABC. In addition, she was involved with the City Girls’ Amateur Sports Association; the New South Wales (NSW) Lawn Tennis Association; the NSW Women’s Hockey Association; the NSW Women’s Basketball Association; and the NSW Women’s Cricket Association.

Varley continued an active involvement in sport by captaining an A-grade tennis team, and – according to the ADB’s Marion Consandine – by swimming, rowing, running, fencing, skating, and playing golf, hockey and croquet. She married Hector Maximus Greig, a widower and father of two sons, in June 1938.

Following her husband Ury, Naomi Wolinski took up lawn bowls in the late 1920s, playing at the Wollstonecraft Bowling Club. In 1930 she co-founded the New South Wales Ladies’ (Women’s) Bowling Association, serving as inaugural vice-president, honorary secretary (1931-32), and president (1933-58), and becoming a life-member in 1938. She also co-founded the association’s journal, (Women’s) Bowls News, and chaired its editorial committee for nearly ten years.

Wolinski used her influence in women’s bowling circles to organise fundraising and the production of clothing for servicemen during wartime. She was elected foundation president of the Australian Women’s Bowling Council in 1947, and was vice-president (1938-50) and president (1950-64) of the National Council of Amateur Sports Women of New South Wales.

In 1953 Naomi Wolinski was awarded Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation medal and in 1960 she was appointed M.B.E.

Eunice Gill was an All Australian netball player who had a long term and profound influence on the development of Australian women’s sport and sports administration in general. A graduate of the University of Melbourne (B.A. 1940, Dip. Phys. Ed. 1945), her views on the importance of sport and physical education were influenced by another netball player, Lorna McConchie, who helped to establish the physical education course at the University of Melbourne, and who was one of Gill’s teachers at university.

It became obvious very quickly that Gill not only had a talent for sport, but for teaching, coaching and administration, talents that her paid work and community interests allowed her to express and explore to the maximum. Gill eventually went on to obtain a permanent position teaching in the Department of Physical Education. She used study leave in 1972-73 to undertake a Master of Arts coursework degree in physical education at Leeds University, from which she graduated in July 1973.

While studying and teaching, Gill remained closely associated with the game of netball. She was appointed coach of the Victorian team in 1954, the same year she was appointed president of the All Australia Women’s Basketball Association. In 1960, she was appointed coach of the Australian team, while still being the coach of the state team. She served on the executive of the International Federation of Netball Associations through the 1960s, 70s and 80s, contributing to the drawing up of an international code for the game in 1960.

She was influential outside of netball, too. Her reputation and qualifications led, among other things, to her appointment as a foundation member of the board of directors of the Confederation of Australian Sport in 1976. The following year she was the only woman on the Sports Advisory Council established by the Federal Government. In 1980 she was appointed to the committee established by the Victorian government to investigate the teaching of Physical Education in schools. As chair of the Australian Council in the early 1980s, she was responsible for the polices and procedures of the National Coaching Accreditation Scheme overseeing 33,000 registered coaches.

Eunice Gill died in 1987 and was posthumously honoured by the Australian Sports Commission, who created and named an award for excellence in coaching and coach development after her. Most recently, she was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame as an associate member. Those who knew her well praised her for her personal qualities of ‘charm’, ‘dignity’, ‘diplomacy’ and ‘her delightful sense of humour’ along with her legacy of improving the standard of coaching and administration and ‘rais[ing] the profile of women in the community.

Rosina Raisbeck enjoyed a successful career in London and performed on the club circuit across Australia in the 1960s, before joining the Australian Opera in 1971. She was still singing with the company at the age of 72.

After nine years playing for both Victorian and Australian netball teams, Lorna McConchie coached Australia to victory at the first netball World Tournament in 1963. A member of the International Federation of Netball Associations for twenty-five years, McConchie was added to the Victorian Honour Roll of Women in 2004.

Eleanor Wright Gatehouse was born in 1886, the eldest daughter in an eminent Victorian family; granddaughter of one of the earliest white settlers in the Geelong region, Thomas Austin. Described as ‘a born ringleader’ she was a forthright and formidable figure in women’s golf in Victoria. Her refusal to take nonsense from people is well exemplified by a story that tells of the time she responded to a group of men who hit up on her party by hitting a ball right back at them!

It is said that Nellie’s maternal grandmother nearly ended her golfing career before it began. Apparently Nellie arrived home from a mixed foursomes event one Sunday soaking wet and smelling of spirits. Nellie’s grandmother was convinced by her doubtful excuse, that her partner had filled her button-up golf boots with whiskey to ward of the cold, and permitted her to continue playing. After this controversial start, she went on to enjoy a very successful playing career. She won the first of three Australian Championships in 1909 and won five Victorian Championships over the thirty years she was active in the game. In keeping with her personality, she retired a champion, hanging up her golf shoes after winning a veterans championship.

Nellie firmly believed that playing golf had taught her life lessons. ‘After the game is over, forget all about it – especially if you had a rotten time. Live for the next day,’ she advised. ‘In my opinion a sound beating at golf is one of the best medicines you can have.’ It was much more than a game for her, a round of golf was a spiritual experience. ‘Golf is such a wonderful game that the more we can do for her the better is for the whole community,’ she observed. ‘For worshipping at the shrine of this goddess Golf gives us health, happiness and contentment.’

Nellie Gatehouse is best known as a golfer and golf administrator but she was also heavily involved in other activities. She was a Justice of the Peace, and served a term as President of the Australian Women’s National League. She was keenly interested in the rights of children and served seven terms as President of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.

Alisa Camplin is Australia’s first female Winter Olympic gold medallist, dual Olympic medallist, World Champion, World Record Holder and two times WC Grand Prix Champion.

In 2017 Camplin was a director on four prominent Australian Boards – including the Australian Sports Commission, Royal Children’s Hospital Foundation, Olympic Winter Institute of Australia and the Collingwood Football Club.

Described as ‘the greatest winner in women’s World Cup aerial skiing history’ by the Olympic Winter Institute of Australia, Jacqui Cooper has eighteen World Cup events to her name. She won three World Cup titles in consecutive years between 1999 and 2001.

Kathy Watt became Australia’s first female cycling gold medallist when she won the 181 kilometer road race at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona