The Australian Women's Register

For her services to literature, Mary Gilmore was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire on 1 February 1937. The major themes of her work covered nationalism, the spirit of pioneering, motherhood, women’s rights, history, Aboriginal welfare, treatment of prisoners, health and pensions.

Joan Hammond was appointed DBE 1974, CMG 1972, CBE 1963, OBE 1953. She received the Sir Charles Santley award from the Worshipful Company of Musicians, London 1970, ‘Musician of the Year’. In 1988 she was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Green Room Awards Association as well as the Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Recording for the Australasian Sound Recording Association, in 1994.

Sister Philippa, as she preferred to be known, took the religious name of Sister Mary Philippa at her Religious Profession to the Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy on 10th January 1918. After graduating from the Teachers’ Training College at Ascot Vale, she became a teacher in several Victorian Schools. In 1928 she transferred from teaching to nursing, completing her training at Mater Misericordiae Hospital, Brisbane. In 1935 she became foundation matron at the Mercy Private Hospital, where she introduced general nurse training.
From 1954 to 1959 she was appointed Provincial of the Sisters of Mercy in Victoria and Tasmania, after which she returned to the Mercy Private Hospital.
In 1979 Sister Philippa was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire for outstanding service to the people of Victoria and beyond, especially in the Health Care Field.
Two years later, on the 1 August, the University of Melbourne awarded Sister the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Laws in recognition of her services to women and family life. She was the first nun to receive the award from the University.

Janet Cosh was the only child of Dr John and Louise Cosh (née Calvert). Janet attended the University of Sydney, where she studied English, History and the Classics. She moved to the Southern Highlands in 1934, where she took a keen interest in local history and the natural environment. In her late sixties, Janet devoted her life to the study of the native flora of the Southern Highlands, New South Wales and became a highly respected amateur botanist. After Janet’s death, her bequest to the University of Wollongong provided funds and botanical resources which were used to establish the Janet Cosh Herbarium.

Pat Lahy trained in physical education and established the first formal training course in counselling for people with disabilities in Australia. She was the first woman to hold the position of Dean of Arts at the University of Sydney.

Feminist playwright, actor, and teacher Sandra Shotlander is a regular feature at Melbourne’s La Mama Theatre, and at Women Playwrights International conferences around the world. She has founded several theatre companies including Mime and Mumbles deaf theatre group, and believes strongly in the importance of women creating their own narrative and telling their own stories.

Actor and teacher Dr Elizabeth Jones has been the Artistic Director of La Mama Theatre since 1976. For 20 year prior she was a teacher of English, History, Drama, and Politics in Australia and Indonesia. She has worked over many years as an advocate for refugees and First Nation’s peoples, and is invested in La Mama being a place of support for minority and independent artists.

Becky Llewellyn migrated to Australia in 1969. She has worked as a special education teacher, a disability access consultant and as a composer. Becky’s composing career began in the mid-1980s. She studied at the Adelaide Elder School of Music and in 1991 founded the Composing Women’s Festival in Adelaide.

Violet Ida Chomley was born in 1870 to parents William Downes Chomley and Sarah Simmonds (Cooper). Violet attended the Presbyterian Ladies’ College and afterwards studied at the University of Melbourne, receiving a Bachelors degree in mathematics in 1890 and a Masters degree in 1893. After graduation Violet was employed as a secondary school teacher.

In 1902 Violet left Australia and travelled overseas for approximately six months. She settled in England in mid-1903 and began teaching soon after, first at the Christ’s Hospital Girls’ School and then at the Bedford High School. In 1921 Violet took up a position as a full-time secretary and in 1936 she was elected to the Bedford Town Council. Violet Chomley passed away in Bedford on March 26, 1957.

Barbara Bee was a TAFE vocational education teacher for over thirty years and an adult literacy teacher at the Sydney Institute of Technology.

Doris Chadwick was born in 1899 to parents Sheldon Western Chadwick and his wife Annie. Her father was a former editor of the Daily Examiner and the Newcastle Morning Herald.

Doris held a Bachelor of Arts degree and originally trained to be a secondary teacher, however she relinquished those duties to undertake journalistic work for the New South Wales Education Department. Doris was the assistant editor of the Department’s School Magazine from July 1924 to 1948 and editor from 1949 to 1962.

Carmel Bird’s first collection of short stories was published in 1976. Since this time she has produced novels, essays, anthologies, children’s books and also guides for writers. In the 1980s and 1990s she worked as a literary editor for Fine Lines, Australasian Post and other literary journals.

Carmel graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Tasmania and, after obtaining her teaching diploma, worked for a time as a teacher.

In 1946 Jessie Hope Black became the first woman to be appointed a curator at the National Museum of Victoria.

Peta Searle was the first female Australian Football League (AFL) coach, appointed development coach for the St Kilda Football Club in 2004. She was also the first Victorian Women’s Football League (VWFL) coach to lead a team to five consecutive premiership wins.

June Epstein published more than fifty works in a variety of different genres. Often her biographical works told the stories of people with disabilities, in an attempt to raise public awareness about the disabled.
q of Music, London, where she obtained a teachers diploma. On completion of diploma she was awarded a London University Scholarship to study for a Bachelor of Music.

In 1942 June became the music teacher at Frensham School, New South Wales, and from 1946 to 1949 she was Director of Music at Melbourne Church of England Girls’ Grammar School. During this period, June also began taking a weekly choral class at the Kindergarten Training College, Melbourne (later the Melbourne College of Advanced Education, Institute of Early Childhood Development). She remained with the institution until 1976, during which time she became Senior Lecturer-in-charge of Music.

In 1986 June was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in the General Division for her service to the arts and to the welfare of people with disabilities.

Val Plumwood was an eminent Australian environmental philosopher.

Jane Macartney was a well-respected and much-loved member of both Irish and Victorian society during the nineteenth century. She dedicated much of her time to working with the sick and poor and was involved in the establishment of an Orphan Asylum, the Carlton Refuge, the Melbourne Home and the Lying-In Hospital.

Jane was the wife of Hussey Burgh Macartney, the Dean of Melbourne from 1852 until his death in 1894.

Betty Feith is a teacher and volunteer whose work inside and outside the classroom has reflected her ideals of a peaceful, just and inclusive society, and her abiding Christian faith. Betty was a co-founder of the Volunteer Graduate Scheme for Indonesia, a programme established in the early 1950s that pioneered the concept of international volunteering as it is understood today. Betty herself worked in Indonesia in a volunteer capacity during the mid-1950s and again in the 1990s, both times with her husband, political scientist Herb Feith. Betty has taught at schools and tertiary institutions in Melbourne and Indonesia, and the Asian Studies and Indonesian history courses she taught in Melbourne during the 1960s and 1970s were among the first of their kind in Victoria. Betty has had a lifetime involvement in church and other service, including for the Christian World Service (renamed Act for Peace), the Division of Social Justice (Victoria) in the Uniting Church of Australia, and other ecumenical organisations.