The Australian Women's Register

Penny Sharpe was elected to the NSW Legislative Council on 11 October 2005 for the balance of the term of service of Hon. C. M. Tebbutt (resigned). She is a member of the Australian Labor Party. She was re-elected in 2011. In 2015 she resigned to contest the Legislative Assembly seat of Newtown but was unsuccessful. She was then re-appointed to the Legislative Council to fill her own vacancy.

A founder of the Winnunga Nimmityjah Aboriginal Health Service, Olive Brown was central in the fight to improve Aboriginal health services generally in the Canberra region.

Marian Eldridge was an acclaimed short-story writer, novelist and poet, and was instrumental in establishing the ACT Writers Centre. Her legacy is the Marian Eldridge Award to nurture promising women writers.

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

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.)

Glenda Hiroko Gauci was the first Asian Australian woman appointed as an ambassador in the Australian diplomatic service.

Margaret Holt was World Champion in Tae Kwon Do in 1994. During the week of competition, she won three gold medals in an open competition that included men.

In 1992, she dressed as a man in order to compete in the knock-out Karate Championships, only revealing her true identity after she had won the title.

In the 1950s Dorothy Green wrote to a friend, ‘I am now rising forty two and looking back on my life, I find have spent the greater proportion of it doing things I didn’t want to do at all.’ Nearly thirty years later she felt ‘nothing has changed’. Yet during the course of her long life, Dorothy Green produced poetry, literary criticism and journalism and taught and shaped the lives of many students. With a Bachelor of Arts in English, French and Philosophy and an Master of Arts with Honours in English, she worked as a journalist in New South Wales and Queensland, was the principal of a girls’ private school, before moving in to tertiary education, holding positions at Monash University in Melbourne and the Australian National University and Australian Defence Forces Academy in Canberra. Married to Henry Green, journalist, librarian and literary historian, with whom she had two children, she was also politically active, especially later in her life, when she was a founding member of Writers Against Nuclear Arms and an ardent environmentalist. She wrote a study of the work of Henry Handel Richardson as well as updating her husband’s History of Australian Literature and publishing several books of poetry and numerous works of literary criticism.

Bruna Romano migrated to Australia from Italy with her family in 1956. In 1967 she was awarded a Council of Legal Education Certificate from the Legal Education Committee of Victoria and was admitted as a solicitor and barrister of the Supreme Court of Victoria in May 1968. In mid-1968 she became the first woman to establish a law practice in the ACT, and remained head of the firm Romano & Co. until 2003. She was active in a number of community organisations in Canberra until the 1990s and continued to practise as a family law consultant.

Helen McCue is best known as a co-founder of Rural Australians for Refugees (2001). A trained nurse educator she worked with the World Health Organisation (WHO) in the Middle East in 1981, was then seconded to the United Nations Relief and Works Organisation (UNRWA) in Lebanon, and subsequently worked as a volunteer in refugee camps in Beirut 1982-83. In 1984 she co-founded the trade union aid body Australian People for Health Education and Development Abroad (APHEDA), and was its first Executive Director and regional adviser in South Africa and the Middle East until early 1994. She founded the Women Refugee Education Network (1996) and the Wingecarribee Community Foundation (2001), and was involved in the establishment of Wingecarribee Reconciliation Group (1997).

Merran Martin has taught English to migrants and refugees in Canberra since 1985. From 1973-75 she worked in the Department of Immigration teaching English in a migrant hostel, as a shipboard education officer, and in its Migrant Education Section in Canberra. Fluent in French and German from childhood she also taught English in Europe in the early 1970s. She is currently Education, Placement and Referral Officer, Special Preparatory Program Manager and Home Tutor Scheme Coordinator in the Adult Migrant English Program at the Canberra Institute of Technology.

In light of her future career as a journalist and literary editor, Pat Rappolt’s early education was somewhat remarkable. Living in the Cooktown region in Far Northern Queensland in the early twentieth century limited one’s options – she never received a formal education and was home schooled with her brother and two sisters by her parents. This did not stop her from enjoying a lengthy career in journalism, one which extended across four decades and four states and territories in Australia. Pat’s first journalist posting was on a Queensland provincial paper; her last was as the literary editor for the Canberra Times. Her importance in this role was acknowledged when a prize for young short story writers was named in her honour – The Canberra Times Pat Rappolt Literary Award.

Barbara Blackman was an author, music-lover, essayist, librettist, letter writer and patron of the Arts. Former wife of Charles Blackman, she worked for many years as an artist’s model. She conducted countless interviews for the National Library of Australia’s oral history program. In 2006, Blackman was presented with the Australian Contemporary Music 2006 Award for Patronage.

A member of the Liberal Party of Australia, Jeannie Ferris was elected as a Senator for South Australia to the Senate of the Parliament of Australia in 1996. She died in office in Canberra from ovarian cancer in 2007. During her parliamentary career she was appointed Government Whip in 2002.

The youngest of four children, Connie Hobbs was born in Sydney, educated at St Benedict’s School, Broadway but destined for a life on the stage. She left school early, probably at age 11 to tour and train with J.C. Williamson’s company. Her last role was at the age of 93 in the television medical drama All Saints. In between times, she packed a lot of acting, across a variety of media and forms. She entertained troops during World War II, played Dolly Levi in The Matchmaker, the stage play that became the musical Hello Dolly and appeared in numerous radio plays and television programs, including Bellbird, A Country Practice, Father Dear Father and Brides Of Christ. Perhaps one of her best known rolls was that of Madge Allsop, Dame Edna Everage’s long-suffering bridesmaid in the film Les Patterson Saves The World.

According to Tony Stephens, who wrote her obituary for the Sydney Morning Herald, ‘Hobbs was diminutive, beautiful, rebellious and fiercely independent. She could not be persuaded to reveal her true age until she was 90.’

Hobbs is survived by her daughter, Marilyn, and three grandchildren, John, Alexander and Elizabeth.

A member of the Tasmanian Greens, Cassy O’Connor was elected to the Tasmanian Parliament in the House of Assembly as a representative for Denison in July 2008. She was elected in a recount after the retirement of Greens colleague, Peg Putt. She was re-elected in 2010.

Dr Judith Robinson-Valéry was a leading international figure in the study of French literature. She completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Sydney, staying at the Women’s College while Betty Archdale was in charge, and received her doctorate at the Sorbonne, Paris.

Robinson-Valéry was the first woman to be appointed a full professorship at the University of New South Wales, taking up her appointment in the foundation chair of French and as the head of the school of Western European Languages on 21 February 1963.

In 2005, she was awarded France’s highest decoration, the Legion of Honour (Chevalier).

A member of the Australian Labor Party, Ellnor Grassby served in the Legislative Assembly for the Australian Capital Territory from 1989 to 1995. She held the ministerial portfolio of Housing and Urban Services in 1989.

In 1962 Ellnor married Al Grassby who became Labor Member for Murrumbidgee in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly in 1965, then Federal Labor Member for Riverina in the House of Representatives from 1969 to 1974 and Minister for Immigration 1972 to 1974.

Sue Walpole was appointed the Australian Sex Discrimination Commissioner in 1993, becoming well-known in the role. She assisted with education campaigns which were designed to make the Sex Discrimination Act more accessible and available to women. She held the position until 1997.

Elizabeth Bilney was a founding member of the Women’s Electoral Lobby in the Australian Capital Territory during the mid-1970s and took a lead in the campaign for working mothers’ access to childcare. She made a significant contribution to the acceptance of the right of children to good care and the responsibility of government to support this in Australia.

Elizabeth also edited and managed the publication of The Heritage of Australia (1981) for Macmillan of Australia in association with the Australian Heritage Commission; she established the journalHeritage Australia for the Australian Council of National Trusts, and was publishing co-ordinator for the National Gallery of Australia, and publications manager for the National Library of Australia.

Beulah McAppion is descended from several pioneer families in Canberra’s Ginninderra district, the Southwells, Gribbles and Currans. Her grandfather, Henry Curran, was the last Ginninderra blacksmith. Educated at Hall Primary School and Canberra High School, she joined the Commonwealth Department of Price Control in 1942 and following the war served as a clerk in he Commonwealth Superannuation Retirement Benefits Office until 1968. She then managed a cake shop and in the 1980s worked as a volunteer visitor in the Red Cross service for home bound people. From 2002 she was a volunteer counsellor with the Uniting Church.

Born to English parents, and daughter of the Surveyor General, Mary Emily Twynam married wealthy pastoralist James ‘Jim’ Cunningham and became an important and formative figure in the developing pastoralist community in the Tuggeranong district. She was a compassionate, sensitive and intellectually curious woman whose capacity for friendship and kindness turned her homestead ‘Tuggranong’ into the social focal point of the community. Her early married years were taken up with raising eight children and battling with the bouts of serious depression that would shadow her for her entire life. As her children grew she found time to indulge in her love of gardening as well as pursue her passion for poetry and the written word. Cunningham was also an outspoken advocate for conscription during the two referenda in 1916 and was dedicated to fundraising for soldiers in the Great War.

Elizabeth McKeahnie was a successful, independent pastoralist between 1882 and 1911, at a time when women generally did not run their own properties. She owned and operated Blythburn, an 810ha dairy and cattle property next to her parents’ property, Booroomba, near Tharwa. She usually worked the property singlehanded, when necessary employing only women to assist her. McKeahnie was also a poet, publishing poems in the local newspaper, particularly after the deaths of friends and relatives.