The Australian Women's Register

Thelma Jarrett originally trained as a teacher and taught at Tintern Ladies’ College in Melbourne from 1927 to 1939. During World War II she worked as an assistant administrative superintendent at the Munitions Supply Laboratories in Maribyrnong. In 1952 she became the general secretary of the Good Neighbour Council of Victoria, a Commonwealth-funded organisation to help post-World War II refugees and migrants assimilate into Australian society, a position she held until 1970. She was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 1957 in recognition of her work.

In 1952 she also joined the Soroptimists Club of Melbourne, was President of the Victorian division from 1964 to 1966, and in 1969 became the first non-British person to become vice-president of the Federation of Soroptimist Clubs of Great Britain and Ireland, and was then elected President in 1972.

She was President of of the Business and Professional Women’s Club in Melbourne from 1955 to 1957 and also represented the Victorian branch of the National Council of Women on the State division of the United Nations Association of Australia from 1971 to 1983, being secretary and executive director from 1973 to 1975, and was the honorary secretary of the UNAA’s Status of Women Committee from 1976 to 1984.

Kate Baker was awarded an Order of the British Empire in 1937 for services to Australian literature in recognition of her lifetime’s work: to support and promote Australian literature nationally and internationally.

For forty years she was actively engaged in the Australian literary scene, volunteering her time on committees, speaking at literary meetings, judging literary competitions, profiling her literary peers, and writing for newspapers and magazines. She believed in the importance of supporting the literary journals of the time; becoming a regular subscriber to most Australian literary journals.

Her final years were devoted to assisting in establishing an Australian collection of art and literature through the Fulbright Scholarship programme at Pennsylvania State University in the United States of America where Australian literature was taught in the 1960s and 1970s.