The Australian Women's Register

Bernice Agar was a highly successful portrait photographer based in Sydney, whose work featured prominent Australian society figures. Agar was also an early fashion photographer. Widely published, her glamourous works were characterised by a strong preference for artificial light and crisp outlines. Her technique favoured strong frontal lighting. Few of her society portraits survive today.

Rose Simmonds was a Brisbane-based photographer who was the only female member of the Queensland Camera Club. She consistently won prizes in competitions run by the club and by the Australasian Photo-Review. She worked in the Pictorialist style from 1926-1932, using the bromoil process to achieve romantic effects, and in the Modernist style from 1933-1940.

Known as D.C., Dorothy Coleman was a successful commercial photographer known for her photographs of society people in Brisbane. An innovative photographer, D.C. was highly sought after for the effects she could achieve in portraiture and dance photography. D.C.’s photography was published widely in newspapers and magazines of the time. She employed and trained a number of women photographers and colourists in her photographic studio.

Elsie Lambton is best known for her commercial work. Trained by Ada Driver, Lambton opened two photographic studios in Townsville during the Depression and WW2.

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.

Jan Fullerton was the Director General of the National Library of Australia (NLA) from 9 August 1999 until June 2010. She was the first woman to hold this position and had been part of the NLA since she began working in the film department in March 1967.

Under Jan’s leadership, the NLA collection became much more accessible to students, researchers and the general public. Both the Picture Australia website and the digitisation of Australian newspapers occurred during her time as Director General.

In 2005 Jan Fullerton was awarded an AO ‘for service to librarianship through the facilitation of wider community access to the collections of the National Library of Australia, the preservation of cultural heritage in digital forms, and collaboration with other collecting agencies nationally and internationally’. Jan was also made an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities in 2006, awarded the HCL Anderson Award in March 2010 and a Doctor of Letters honoris causa by the University of Queensland in December 2010.

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.