The Australian Women's Register

Harriett Brims operated a number of successful photography studios in Queensland: the Britannia Studios in Ingham, c.1902-1903; as well as studios in Mareeba, Queensland, c.1903-1914.

Sigrid McCausland, a former Senior Lecturer in Archival Science at Charles Sturt University, Australia, was a leader in the international community of archival educators who made a particularly significant contribution to archival education. Her contribution to the field was acknowledged in 2016 when she was honoured with Fellowship of the Australian Society of Archivists.

Sigrid straddled, with distinction, both practitioner and academic roles during her career. Her practitioner roles were unusually varied and included work in government archives, private manuscript collecting archives in large research libraries, as well as many years as University Archivist at both the University of Technology, Sydney and the Australian National University.

In 2016, Sigrid was Secretary of the International Congress of Archives (ICA) Section for Archival Education and Training and also a regular member of the Archives and Human Rights Group.

Sigrid passed away in Brisbane, Australia, on 30 November 2016.

Leah Neale made her Olympic debut in Rio, winning a silver medal in the 4x200m freestyle relay.

Dr Evelyn Ruth Scott was an indigenous rights activist and social justice campaigner who played a pivotal role in the reconciliation process in Australia. She was a key figure in the ‘yes’ campaign of the 1967 referendum whereby 90 per cent of Australian voters chose ‘Yes’ to count Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the census, and give the Australian Government the power to make laws for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Rhyll McMaster began writing poetry at an early age, with several poems published in the Bulletin whilst still in high school.

After moving to Hobart in 1967, Rhyll worked in the editorial office of the journal Australian Literary Studies, which was then based at the University of Tasmania.

After returning to Brisbane in c.1969, then moving to a rural area near Canberra, Rhyll settled in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales where she began writing full time.

Rhyll’s first collection, The Brineshrimp was published in 1972 and has since published a further six collections, including Washing the Money: Poems with Photographs, joint winner of the C. J. Dennis prize and winner of the Grace Leven Prize in 1986, and Flying the Coop: New and Selected Poems 1972-1994, joint winner of the Grace Leven Prize for 1995. Rhyll published her acclaimed debut novelFeather Man in 2007, winning the inaugural Barbara Jefferis Award.

Alexandra Cameron was a music teacher, music educator, administrator and founder of a number of music performance programs in Victoria. As the first Inspector of Music in Victoria and through her publications, she influenced and shaped Victorian music education in the second half of the twentieth century.

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.

In 1931, aviatrix Maude ‘Lores’ Bonney broke the Australian record for the longest one-day flight by a woman and the following year she became the first woman to circumnavigate Australia by air. She was also the first person to fly from Australia to England and the first person to undertake a solo flight from Australia to South Africa.

Tia-Clair Toomey won a gold medal in the 58kg Weightlifting event at the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games. She was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in June 2025 for significant service to crossfit and weightlifting.

Georgia Sheehan won a gold medal in the Synchronised 3m Springboard at the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.

Shayna Jack won a gold medal in the 4 x 100m Freestyle Relay at the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.

Georgia Bohl won a gold medal in the 4 x 100m Medley Relay at the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.

Ashleigh Gentle won a gold medal in the Mixed Team Relay Triathlon at the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.

Meredith Hinchliffe has been involved with the arts in Canberra since 1977 when she joined the Crafts Council of the ACT as its Executive Secretary and then Director. She went on to work in organisations such as the National Campaign for the Arts, Museums Australia, ArtsACT, and the Donald Horne Institute for Cultural Heritage at UC, and has also worked as a freelance arts consultant and exhibitions curator since 1997. Meredith is a specialist on crafts including ceramics, textiles and furniture, and is an approved valuer under the Commonwealth Government’s Cultural Gifts Program. She has written about the arts for numerous arts journals and regularly contributed reviews of crafts and visual arts exhibitions and books to The Canberra Times from 1978 to 2009. Meredith has been a long-time advocate and lobbyist for the arts, and is a significant patron of and donor to arts organisations, especially the Canberra Museum and Gallery. In 2022 she was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in recognition of her significant service to the arts.

Meredith Hinchliffe was inscribed on the ACT Women’s Honour Roll in 2000.

Marceine la Dickfos was born in Brisbane in 1921. In 1942 she married Lt. Wesley D. Sweetser of the U.S. Army Air Corps and three years later Marceine and their son sailed to America to join Wesley.

Marceine received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in theatre and drama at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and after being offered a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship in 1966, she completed a Master of Arts degree.

The following year Marceine began studying at Cornell University after receiving an Arts and Humanities Fellowship. Whilst at Cornell, Marceine acted, directed and won awards for poetry, play production and play-writing.

On completion of her studies, Marceine and her husband spent a year in England before settling down in Oswego, New York.

Aunty Eleanor Harding was a passionate advocate for the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, particularly in the areas of education and women’s issues.

Kerry Snell is a campaigner for equitable access to mainstream services and ensuring that people with disability are well represented through diverse leadership.

Read an interview with Kerry Snell in the online exhibition Redefining Leadership.

Anita Walters (née Osmond) compiled the first Australian nutritional content of foods table. Called Tables of composition of Australian foods, Special Report Series 2, the report was published by the National Health and Medical Research Council in 1946.

After working in nutrition, Anita became Australia’s first female supervising examiner of patents in the early 1970s.

Benita Willis is a long-distance runner who has represented Australia at the Commonwealth games twice and at the Olympics four times. In 2004, Benita won gold in the long race at the IAAF World Cross Country Championships in Brussels.

Hedwig Benz was the first full time interpreter at the Queen Victoria Memorial Hospital – a hospital for women – in Melbourne. Benz was awarded the British Empire Medal in 1972 in recognition of service to migrants in Victoria, for her work at the Queen Victoria Memorial Hospital. She played a valuable role in removing the responsibility from English-speaking children of migrants in liaising about their mother’s illness with hospital staff.

Jessie Hockings (nee Miller) was a child when her family migrated to Australia from England. After leaving London on 31 July 1909, they arrived in Brisbane on 20 September 1909. They then travelled to a property at Dulacca in the Western Downs region of Queensland.

In February 1923, at the age of 23, Jessie Miller married Frank Hockings and almost immediately moved to Thursday Island, where Frank and his brother ran the Wanetta Pearling Co. World War 2 interrupted those operations and the family moved backed to continental Queensland to run a dairy farm at Springbrook, which they purchased in 1945. Sadly, Frank passed away in 1952, but Jessie remained on the farm for another thirteen years. She moved down to the coast at Southport in 1965.

Regardless of where she lived, the Queensland Country Women’s Association (CWA) was a constant feature of Jessie Hocking’s life. She was a member for roughly sixty years, maintaining a tradition that ran in the family. Her mother, Jessie Strathearn Miller, was president of Dulacca (Qld) CWA and a younger sister was the secretary-treasurer of the same branch. Jessie was a founding member of the Springbrook CWA in 1957 and a three-time president during the 60s to 80s. She was secretary-treasurer of the Thursday Island branch during her time up there.

As well as the CWA, Jessie volunteered at the Red Cross, an aged care residence, and the local hospital ladies’ auxiliary.

In 1982, a British Empire Medal for Meritorious Civil Service, which she received on her 82nd birthday, acknowledged Jessie’s community work, which she continued to do until well into her 80s.

Jessie Hockings passed away in 1991 and is sadly missed by her family and friends. Her legacy lives on in an educational bursary awarded every year by the Springbrook-Mudgeeraba CWA. Since 1992 the branch has presented a local primary school student with the Jessie Hockings Encouragement Award. The $200 bursary aims to help a family ease the financial burden of their child transitioning to high school. It represents her prevailing belief in the importance of a good education.