The Australian Women's Register

Judith Joy Davies was an Australian Olympian who won a bronze medal in the 100-metre backstroke at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London and followed up with three gold medals at the 1950 Empire Games in Auckland. She won seventeen Australian championships in freestyle, backstroke and medley swimming. After finishing her swimming career she worked as a sporting journalist for the Melbourne newspapers The Argus and The Sun-News Pictorial.

Davies was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 2011 as a General Member for her contribution as a sportswriter. She was one of the first women journalists to break into covering all sports when she started working with the Melbourne newspaper The Argus, in an era when women sports writers were normally confined to covering women’s sport. Her Argus experience included covering the 1954 Commonwealth Games in Vancouver and then the 1956 Olympics in her home town of Melbourne.

When the Argus ceased publication in 1957 she joined the rival Sun News Pictorial where she was to cover local and international sport for the next 31 years. She was widely respected by both editors and athletes and in 1982 was awarded the National Press Club Award for Sports Journalism.

Chantelle Newbury has retired from competitive diving and is one of Australia’s most successful international competitors in the sport. She won gold at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Victoria and in so doing proved that pregnancy is not necessarily an obstacle to success in competitive sport.

After competing in her last event she took a home pregnancy test and discovered she was pregnant just minutes before being called to her medal presentation. ‘I’m the only diver to compete and win at a major event while pregnant yet if I had known for sure and informed team doctors they would have banned me from competition,’ she said.

Livingstone retired from competitive swimming in 1996 after representing Australia in three Summer Olympics, moving to a career as a television sports reporter, media presenter and sports administrator, including being elected to the boards of Swimming Australia, the Australian Sports Drugs Agency and the Australian Olympic Committee. She was appointed chief executive officer of the Victorian Institute of Sport in September 2024. Following her mother’s death from ovarian cancer in 2001, Livingstone started the organisation Ovarian Cancer Australia.

Livingstone was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in 1997 for service to swimming as a representative at state, national and international levels.  She was inducted onto the Victorian Honour Roll of Women in 2006 and appointed an  Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in June 2025 for distinguished service to sports development and administration, to the promotion of women in sport, and to community health.

Charlotte McGibbon was unlucky to reach her peak in the early 1940s when there was no international competition due to World War II.

Specialising in the javelin, she was the first Australian woman to beat 40 metres and won every national championships from 1940 to 1952.

She was unlucky to miss Olympic selection in 1948 but, in the Empire Games of 1950, became Australia’s first international throws medallist with her gold medal in the javelin.

Marjorie McQuade represented Australia in the Olympic Games in London in 1948 and in Helsinki in 1952. At the 1950 British Empire Games in Auckland, New Zealand, McQuade won three gold medals: in the women’s 110-yard freestyle, the 4×110-yard freestyle relay and the 3×110-yard medley relay.

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.