The Australian Women's Register

Marlene Goldsmith was a Member of the NSW Legislative Council from 19 March 1988 to 5 March 1999. She was a member of the Liberal Party.

Dawn Fardell was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly in 2004 at a by-election as the independent member for Dubbo. She was re-elected in 2007, but was defeated at the 2011 election.
Before entering parliament, she served as a Dubbo City Councillor from 1999-2005.

A Ngambri-Ngunnawal elder, Matilda House has a long-established connection to Canberra and its surrounding regions as one of the traditional custodians of the land.

Marion Halligan was an acclaimed author of novels, short stories, reviews, essays and gastronomic writing.

(This entry is sponsored by generous donation from Christine Foley.)

Dorothy Horsfield worked as a journalist in Australia and overseas. Her published novels include Dream Run (1992) and Venom (2006)

(This entry was sponsored by a generous donation from Christine Foley.)

Dorothy Buckland-Fuller was a sociologist and social activist of some longstanding, with a distinguished career in ethnic and multicultural politics, particularly as they impact upon women of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. She was a peace activist, an environmentalist, a feminist and committed to the cause of reconciliation with indigenous Australia.

Of Greek heritage, Buckland-Fuller had a long involvement with the Greek Community of New South Wales, and her valuable contributions were acknowledged in 2001 when she was granted Life Membership to the Council of the Greek Orthodox Community of Sydney and New South Wales. In 1974, she established the Australian-Migrant Women’s Association, an organisation designed to bring together immigrant and Australian-born women.

She was active in the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, serving as president in 2002-4. As a sociologist, she taught and conducted action research. Her life has been a case of putting that theory to practice. In her own words, she was an ‘action oriented person’.

Dorothy Buckland-Fuller passed away in Sydney on 5 July 2019. She will be remembered for her words resounding in the ears of all those who knew her over her great life: “I will continue to work for equal rights for all and the betterment of our society for as long as I live”.

Francesca Merenda began work with Department of Immigration in 1969 as the first ever Italian speaking welfare worker. She was a member of the group appointed by Malcolm Fraser in 1977, and chaired by Sir Frank Galbally, to review post-arrival migrant programs and services.

Francesca Merenda had a long association with Co.As.It. Italian Association of Assistance, including as a member of the Board of Directors after the Association was incorporated in 1984.

Only daughter of Sydney newspaper proprietor Sir James Reading Fairfax, Mary Elizabeth played an active part in Sydney society, lending her support to numerous charitable and women’s organisations from the RSPCA to the YWCA.

In 1970, The Australian Women’s Weekly published an article entitled ‘The Quiet Millionairess’. It was this same year that Vera Ramaciotti established the Clive and Vera Ramaciotti Foundation in memory of her brother – who died three years previously – and herself, with $6.7 million in proceeds arising from the sale of the Theatre Royal in Sydney, left to the siblings by their father Gustavo. The magazine claimed that Vera was ‘Australia’s least-known millionairess’ and ‘possibly the most private woman in Australia’, adding that she ‘physically shrinks from seeing her name in print’.

Mary Windeyer was president of the Women’s Suffrage League of New South Wales from 1891-1893, and co-founder of the Ashfield Infants’ Home and the Temporary Aid Society.

Margaret Jones was Literary Editor for the Herald and worked as a journalist in the London and New York bureaus of John Fairfax Ltd, before becoming Foreign Editor for the Sydney Morning Herald in the 1970s. She reported from North Korea and North Vietnam, and was staff correspondent in Peking, China. Described as a ‘trailblazer for women journalists’, Jones wrote for the Herald newspaper for a total of thirty-three years.

Tory Wicks was a hockey player, coach and administrator whose commitment to the sport extended over fifty years and did not diminish upon her retirement. A fit and reliable player on and off the field (she played full back) she once declared, ‘I know of no better passport around the world than a hockey stick’.

Norma Kirkby was 105 years old when she died. With her husband, Gordon, she built up the Success Poll Hereford Stud and Reno Poll Merino Stud. She supported numerous charitable organisations in the Moree district for over fifty years.

Elizabeth Evatt was the first Chief Justice of the Family Court of Australia and the first woman to preside in an Australian Federal Court.

In August 2020, a specialist domestic violence resource was established and named in her honour. The Evatt List, operating in the Federal Circuit Court of Australia across selected registries, will identify high-risk cases, enabling them to be fast-tracked with appropriate security arrangements in place.

In Mexico in 1968, at the age of 17 years and 19 days, Maureen Caird created a record that could never be broken when she became the youngest Olympic track and field winner. Her event, the 80 meters hurdles, was increased to 100 meters at the next Olympic Games. As junior in 1969, she set two world records over the new hurdling distance of 200 meters.

Caird was an outstanding junior athlete and although she is best remembered for her hurdling, she was also a junior champion pentathlete (1967) and long jumper (1968).

Caird retired prematurely in 1972 when recurring stomach pains she experienced were diagnosed as cancer.

Clare Dennis dominated breast-stroke swimming from 1931 to 1935, becoming the first Australian woman to win a gold medal in the British Empire Games in 1934. An outstanding junior swimmer, she broke the world record at 15 years of age in the 220 yards breast-stroke, ensuring her selection in the team to represent Australia at the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. She was the youngest member of the team, but still came home with the gold medal in her event – the first female Olympic Champion since Fanny Durack in 1912 and the last Australian swimmer, male or female to win Olympic Gold until 1956. She was the youngest Australian to win Olympic Gold until Shane Gould in 1972. She was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 1985.

Jessica Crisp was a pioneer in the sport of sailboarding. In 1986, two years after the Olympic debut of the sport, she won the first of two consecutive world youth titles.

In 1986 and 1989 she was crowned world windsurfing champion. In 1993 she became the first Australian, male or female, to win the highly competitive World Cup Sailboarding series. She repeated the feat in 1994.

Joan Hartigan was Australia’s number one ranked women’s singles tennis player between 1933-36 and was, quite possibly, the first Australian woman to make her mark internationally when she made self funded tours of Europe in 1934 and 1935. She won three Australian Open singles titles (1933-34, 1936) and reached the semi finals at Wimbledon twice, in 1934 (losing to Helen Jacobs) and 1935 (she lost to the legendary Helen Wills Moody.) She remained near the top of Australian women’s tennis until the war years, achieving a ranking of eighth after her efforts at Wimbledon. Tall and athletic, Hartigan was renowned for her power game, rather than as s serve and volley player.

Jane Lock was born in Sydney but grew up in Melbourne where she learned to play golf. By the age of 16 she had a single figure handicap, at 17 she won the first of three successive Australian junior championships and in 1975, she achieved the double, winning both the Australian senior and junior championships.

Jane Lock represented Australia more than thirty times and set course records in six countries. She turned professional in 1980 and played on the American circuit.

At the age of 27, Jeanne Collison was responsible for developing the first Australian heart-lung machine and leading a team of seven male doctors through the first successful open-heart surgery in the southern hemisphere.

A promising pianist in her school days, Daphne Akhurst attended the State Conservatorium of Music in New South Wales, becoming a music teacher and performer. While studying, she became an enthusiastic tennis player, winning the schoolgirls’ singles championship in 1917-20. In 1923 she won the County of Cumberland ladies’ singles, and two years later, the Australasian championships. She went on to win the Australasian championships a further four times. Akhurst travelled to the United Kingdom, where she competed at Wimbledon, reaching the singles and doubles semi-finals and the mixed doubles final (with Jack Crawford). Akhurst out-performed all of the Australian men in the competition and was ranked third in the world by Ayres’ Almanac.

Akhurst married Royston Stuckey Cozens, a tobacco manufacturer, in 1930, and retired from serious competition in 1931. The pair had one son. Akhurst died of an ectopic pregnancy in 1933.

The trophy for the women’s singles winner at the Australian Tennis Open is names in her honour.

Marie Hamilton was educated at Presbyterian Ladies’ College, where she was dux, and later, coach of the school hockey team. She was treasurer of the New South Wales Women’s Hockey Association from 1914 to 1916, and for twenty-one consecutive terms from 1928 to 1948.

Hamilton’s fiancé was killed at Lone Pine, Gallipoli. In 1918 she become a student of medicine at the University of Sydney, living at the Women’s College, and in 1920 captained the university hockey team. Between 1932-1934 and 1945-1954, Hamilton chaired the All Australia Women’s Hockey Association. From 1926 she was assistant medical officer in the Department of Public Health. With Dr Elsie Dalyell she worked on the treatment of venereal disease in women and established a venereal disease clinic at the Rachel Forster Hospital. From 1934 she worked in private practice as a pathologist.

Hamilton’s enthusiasm for hockey was ongoing, and she travelled with women’s hockey teams overseas. She was made a life member of the State and the All-Australia women’s hockey associations.

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.

The seventh child of William Henry Harris, gentleman, and Susan Mary (née Clarke), Vida Jones was educated at home. She married John Alexander Stammers Jones, a keen sportsman with a talent for cycling and horseriding, in Darlinghurst, Sydney, in April 1910. At their home in Lithgow, Vida Jones began driving, and in 1923 toured northern New South Wales and Queensland. She participated in a number of events organized by the Royal Automobile Club of Australia (R.A.C.A.), and in 1925-26 drove her Crossley at an average of 78 miles (125 km) per hour to win the ‘Weekender Trophy’, one of several events along the new Maroubra Speedway. She won a gold medal in a 24-hour event in 1927 – one of few women to do so.

In 1929, Vida Jones drove the family’s new Alfa Romeo in the Sydney Bicycle and Motor Club’s hill climb at Prospect, and the R.A.C.A. Kurrajong hill climb, gaining the fastest time in both events. The following year, she beat sixty-seven male rivals in the Light Car Club’s acceleration test on Bondi Promenade, making 18.4 seconds for the quarter mile.

Vida Jones gave up competitive driving after her husband died of cancer in 1933. She died thirty-three years later at her home in Darling Point.

Born in 1886 in Marrickville, Sydney, Annette Kellerman was a New South Wales swimming champion who left for England aged 18 to help her cash-strapped family. In Europe, she built a name for herself in long distance swimming and exotic swimming and diving demonstrations. By 1906 she had moved to vaudeville theatre in America as ‘Australia’s Mermaid’ and quickly progressed to the big screen. Kellerman enjoyed tremendous success as a silent movie star in mythological underwater films, including Neptune’s Daughter.

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.

From Rylstone, New South Wales, Constance Moulds moved with her parents to Rouse Hill in 1908. There, eleven years later, she married George Francis Moulds. She gave birth to a son, Lawrence, in 1923.

At Riverstone, her home, Constance began to train trotters full time. She and George bought their own trotter, ‘Tiny Loche’, who won her first three starts and became a valuable breeding mare. In 1924, Constance became the only woman to be granted a trainer-driver licence by the New South Wales Trotting Club. She came second in a race meeting that year; but a fortnight later, having weighed in for her next race, was told that she could not compete as ‘men might be inhibited by chivalry from protesting against interference by women drivers’ (Greg Brown, ADB).

In 1932, George Moulds was killed while driving ‘Charming Ribbons’. Constance continued training, often forced to enter her horses in competition under the name of her son, Lawrie Moulds, who was by then a premier reinsman.

Constance Moulds was buried at Rouse Hill in 1972.