The Australian Women's Register

In 2017, Michellie Jones was made a Member in the General Division of the Order of Australia ‘for significant service to athletes who are blind or have low vision, as a gold medallist at the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games, where she served as a guide to para-triathlete Katie Kelly, and to sport as a triathlete’.

In 1938 Jess Sams won a nationwide fishing contest for heaviest catch with a 330lb striped marlin.

Linda McGill was one of the Olympic stars banned by the amateur swimming authorities as punishment for alleged misbehaviour in 1964 at the Tokyo Olympic Games. Five months after being suspended, she became the first Australian to swim the English Channel. In 1967, she set a women’s record for the swim of 9 hours 59 minutes and 57 seconds, a time that came very close to beating the men’s record (9 hours and 35 minutes) as well. Three months later, she became the first person to swim across Port Phillip Bay in Victoria, Australia. She swam the twenty-five miles from Portarlington to Frankston in 13 hours.

Kerryn McCann won Commonwealth gold medals in the marathon at Melbourne in 2006 and Manchester in 2002. Her win in the 2006 games was extremely exciting with the lead changing six times in the final two kilometres of the race, before McCann pulled clear in the final two hundred metres around the athletics track inside the Melbourne Cricket Ground. McCann described the race as “probably the greatest victory I’ve ever had, or the greatest race I’ve ever run’.

In August 2007, McCann was diagnosed with breast cancer and passed away in December of 2008.

Marjorie Smith is an icon of the swimming world and greatly admired for her dedication to the community and particularly children and young people. She was the first woman to surf at Dee Why beach, Australia, and was the heart and soul of the Dee Why Ladies’ Amateur Swimming Club for many years. Over a 70 year period she taught hundreds of thousands of children how to swim on a voluntary basis across New South Wales. In honour of her many years devoted service to the community she was awarded the Order of Australia (OAM) in 1991. She was awarded Life Membership of the Dee Why Ladies’ Amateur Swimming Club (the oldest ladies swimming club in Australia) in 1961, Warringah Amateur Swimming Association in 1980, the New South Wales Swimming Association’s Merit Service Award in 1985, the Australian Union of Old Swimmers Life Membership in 1976 and Dee Why Beach Netball Club in 1980.

A member of the Australian Labor Party, Nicola Roxon was elected to the House of Representatives for Gellibrand, Victoria, in 1998, and was re-elected in 2001, 2004, 2007 and 2010. She became Shadow Minister for Health in 2006 and on the election of the Labor Government in November 2007, she became the Minister for Health and Ageing.

She continued to hold that portfolio in the Gillard Labor Government until she was appointed Attorney-General on December 14, 2011; the first woman to hold the position in the Australian parliament.

She resigned from the portfolio in February 2013 and retired from parliament on 5 August 2013.

Mary Hayter (known always more formally as Mrs. Hayter or, in wartime, as Lieutenant Hayter) was an active community worker and nursing sister who served with distinction in WWII.

Marie Byles was the first woman to qualify to practise law in New South Wales. As Honorary Solicitor, she worked with Jessie Street to change the law regarding women’s guardianship of their children. Establishing her own legal practice allowed her to devote herself to bushwalking, mountaineering and conservation of the environment. She was responsible for reserving Bouddi Natural Park north of the Hawkesbury River. A Pacifist, Byles was a devotee of Gandhi and developed an interest in Buddhism. A founding member of the Buddhist Society of New South Wales, she became an international authority on Buddhism and wrote several books on the subject.