The Australian Women's Register

Jenny Aitchison was elected as the Member for Maitland representing the Australian Labor Party in the Legislative Assembly of the New South Wales Parliament in 2015.

Anna Flanagan began playing hockey when she was five years old. She made her international debut when she was eighteen and went on to represent Australia as a member of the Australian women’s hockey team at both Olympic and Commonwealth Games.

Angie Ballard was paralysed as a result of a car accident as a child. Her first Paralympic Games were in Sydney (2000). She went on to win a bronze medal in Athens (2004) and two silver medals at the Paralympic Games in London (2012). She was a gold medal winner at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in 2014.

Susan Hollingsworth was a widow with three of her eleven children and six grandchildren living at home in Hall, a small village in the north of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT – now the ACT) when World War One broke out. When two of her sons-in-law enlisted with the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) she offered safe haven to her daughters and their children who moved back to Hall. Her son Clyde died in France in 1917 aged 23 years. Susan was well-known as a supporter of the Red Cross in their fundraising ventures.

Ellen Rohrmann was living with family in Singapore when World War I broke out. Declared an enemy alien by the ruling British, she and other relatives were transported to Australia and initially interned at Bourke, New South Wales before being moved to the Molonglo Concentration Camp in the Federal Capital Territory where Ellen died in 1918.

Catherine ‘Katie’ Sheaffe represented the Tharwa community on the Federal Capital Territory War Food Fund committee during World War I.

The Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory was established by the Commonwealth Seat of Government Supreme Court Act, 1933. It commenced operation from 1 January 1934 as the superior court of record for matters originating in the ACT. It has unlimited jurisdiction within the territory in civil matters (although matters involving less than $250 000 are usually brought in the Magistrates Court), and hears the most serious criminal matters.

Within the Australian court system it is one of eight state and territory Supreme Courts having unlimited jurisdiction in their respective parts of Australia. These Supreme Courts are second only to the High Court of Australia as the final court of appeal in the Australian judicial hierarchy.

Read more about Sigrid Thornton in our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.

Read more about Marie-Louise Uhr in our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.

Read more about Isobel Mary White in our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.

Read more about Maila Stivens in our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.

Read more about Rachel Perkins in our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.

Read more about Ann Moyal in our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.

Read more about Pauline Fanning in our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.

In 1948 Hazel Dobson was commissioned by the first Minister for Immigration, Arthur Calwell to investigate the living conditions and social problems of newly arrived refugees. Her report successfully recommended the employment by the Department of Immigration of professionally qualified social workers to assist migrants and refugees experiencing settlement difficulties. It also successfully recommended the enlistment of community organizations in helping new arrivals settle through what became the Good Neighbour Movement. She became the first Director of The Department of Immigration’s Assimilation and Social Welfare Section and continued in that role until her death.

Read more about Jan Anderson in our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.

Sylvia Parsons was a dressmaker and women’s fashion retailer who owned a popular dress shop in Kingston during the second half of the twentieth century. Parsons was active in the Canberra community and hosted regular fundraising fashion shows for local charities.

A former World War II refugee from Latvia, Zenta was asked to work at the CSIRO to assist communication between a Ukrainian refugee entomologist and his work colleagues. Working in CSIRO Entomology, specialising in assisting those working with Diptera (flies), became the rest of her life’s work. Her assistance was so valued that there are now at least two genera and 19 species named in her honour.

The Canberra Branch is the oldest of four located in the Australian Capital Territory. All four belong to the Monaro Group of the Country Women’s Association of NSW. The Canberra Branch was founded in 1946. By March 1953 the members had raised enough funds to build their own rooms on the edge of what was then the Central Business District of Canberra. In the early 1980s high-rise office blocks were being built next to the rooms and the branch was able to negotiate the sale of its lease to a developer who provided the branch with a large area of the ground floor of a new building on Barry Drive. The branch provides education, health and social welfare support to its community with the funds it raises and through its crafts and cooking.

Anne Godfrey-Smith was a poet, theatre director and producer, broadcaster, political activist, and scientist. After studying biochemistry at university, she moved into a career in the theatre starting at the Launceston Players in Tasmania. In 1954 she moved to Canberra and became the manager-producer of the Canberra Repertory Society. It was in Canberra that she made her name as a poet (under the nom de plume Anne Edgeworth), publishing the popular collections, Poems for Off-Duty Hours (2007), Turtles All the Way Down (2000), and Poems of Canberra (1997), among others. She was passionate about community work and was active in the environmental conservation movement, the women’s movement, anti-war campaigns and Indigenous rights’ advocacy. Later in life, she devoted a lot of time to community radio.

Sue Salthouse has worked in the area of social justice since 1996, playing an active role in the systemic advocacy for women with disabilities. She lives in Canberra where she runs her own consultancy company that specialises in work in the disability sector and conducts social research, policy analysis and advice in a number of areas beyond disability advocacy, including project development and management, conference facilitation and TAFE teaching. She has worked extensively with Women in Adult and Vocational Education (WAVE) to develop leadership training projects for women, including women in Aboriginal communities. In 2013 she works hard in a voluntary capacity for Women with Disabilities ACT and Rights International (Australia).

In 2015, Sue was Canberra Citizen of the Year, in recognition of her outstanding commitment and contribution as a disability advocate. In late 2019, Sue was further acknowledged for her enormous contribution to the public good when she was awarded the honour of 2020 ACT Senior Australian of the Year.

Sue Salthouse died in a motor vehicle accident in Canberra on 20 July 2020.

Read an interview with Sue Salthouse in the online exhibition Redefining Leadership.

Wendy Craik has been described as ‘a woman of many firsts’ (Wisdom Interviews). In 1992, she became head of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) a position she relinquished in 1995 when she created another precedent by becoming the first woman to lead the National Farmers Federation. She was the first female Chief Executive of the Murray Darling Basin Commission (2004 -2008) and has held numerous positions on boards and advisory councils, including President of the National Competition Council (2002), Chair of the Australian Fisheries Management Authority (2000) , Chair of the National Rural Advisory Council, member of the Productivity Commission (2009 -) and chair of the Board of the Australian Rural Leadership Foundation (2010 – ). In 2000 she worked in private industry as Chief Executive of Earth Sanctuaries Limited – a listed company pioneering a private approach to wildlife conservation. Currently (2013) she is also on the boards of the WorldFish Center and Dairy Australia and is on the Council of the University of South Australia.

New Zealand-born Australian artist Rosalie Gascoigne, is acclaimed as one of Australasia’s most significant artists. She moved to the Australian Capital Territory in 1943 and remained there for the rest of her life. With no formal art training apart from studying sogetsu ikebana, Gascoigne held her first solo exhibition in Canberra in 1974 aged 57 and four years later was the first Australian woman to be invited to the Venice Biennale. By the time of her death in 1999 she boasted work in the collections of all Australian and New Zealand major galleries, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; she has been shown in public exhibitions in Europe and Asia. Gascoigne’s work, made with found objects, was inspired by her feelings for the Monaro region in which she lived.

Air Vice-Marshal Margaret Staib was the Australian Defence Forces’ (ADF) most senior female officer when she took over as Airservices Australia CEO on October 15, 2012. As the ADF’s senior logistician, AVM Staib served as Commander Joint Logistics and played a key role in implementing a $2.4 billion logistics reform program under the 2009 Australian Defence White Paper.

Ngingali Cullen, who was formerly known as Audrey Kinnear, was a co-chair of the National Sorry Day Committee that worked to achieve wide recognition of the wrongs suffered by Aboriginal people across Australia. Although scarred by the policies of forced removal of Aboriginal children from their families, it was healing those wounds that was her constant preoccupation. A proposal initiated by her led to the Journey of Healing campaign launched by the National Sorry Day Committee in 1999.

Following preparatory work and approaches to government by the National Council of Women (ACT) and the Nursery Kindergarten Society, the Emergency Housekeeper Service commenced in Canberra in April 1947. A Committee of Management, chaired by the National Council of Women, was established in February 1947 with representatives from the Canberra Mothercraft Society, the Nursery Kindergarten Society and the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA). An organising secretary, Ella Buttsworth, was appointed in March 1947. In July 1977, responsibility for providing the service passed to the ACT Division of the Australian Red Cross Society. With ACT self-government in 1989, Home Help Service ACT adopted its own constitution, becoming an incorporated association. It now operates as a community sector not-for-profit organisation that provides quality in-home support to the elderly and people with disabilities and their carers in the ACT, under the Home and Community Care Program and the Veterans’ Home Care Program.

Violet Josephine Bulger (née Freeman) was among the first Aboriginal children forcibly removed from their families under New South Wales’ Aborigines Protection Act, 1909. She raised eight children on her own near Yass after being widowed in 1939 and went on to raise many of her grandchildren. She was respected as an Elder in the Canberra Aboriginal community until her death in 1993.