The Australian Women's Register

During World War II, Sylvia Muir, along with fellow Queensland Joyce Tweddell, became a prisoner of war (POW) when she was captured, together with many other nurses, by the Japanese after the fall of Singapore in February 1942. She was interned in Sumatra for three and a half years before her recovery from the camp at the cessation of the war.

In 1931, Ellen O’Donnell, along with Zara Dare, became Queensland’s first female police officer, serving with the service for nearly 31 years. As Ellen was never officially sworn in as an officer, she did not wear a uniform or receive officer’s wages. She also was never part of the superannuation scheme. Her duties were restricted to assisting lost children, escorting female prisoners, and working with victims of domestic and sexual violence. Queensland’s decision to allow female officers into the police service was extremely controversial, with opinions divided across the state.

Kate Cable was the longest serving postmistress in Australia. On 1 July 1927 she was appointed postmistress at Macrossan, on the Flinders Highway, west of Townsville, earning 15/- per week.

Kate outlived the official history records of the postal service of Queensland. Her 59 years service at the Macrossan post office officially ended when the exchange went automatic on 31 March 1986; however Kate continued to maintain her links with Australia Post and the district, acting as Community Mail Agent for the collection and distribution of mail. Her duties as a postmistress involved sorting incoming and outgoing mail, banking, money orders and operating the old cordless pyramid switchboard.

Elizabeth Brentnall was state president of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in Queensland from 1886 to 1899 and afterwards an honorary life president until her death in 1909. She first called for women’s suffrage in her presidential address to the WCTU annual convention in 1888. The WCTU formed a separate suffrage department in 1891.

The Lyceum Club Brisbane, founded in 1919, was directly modelled on the London Lyceum Club. It is a club for women interested in the arts, science, contemporary issues and the pursuit of lifelong learning. The club is apolitical and non-sectarian. Membership of the club is open to women who have university, conservatorium or other tertiary qualifications of a standard approved by the Management Committee; have published original work in literature, science, art or music; or have given important public service

Henrietta Willmore received no formal musical training, but overcame this to emerge as a proficient pianist, much in demand in musical circles. As an accompanist or soloist in numerous concerts, she introduced a widening repertoire of classical music, frequently in collaboration with her friend Richard Thomas Jefferies. Her long teaching career began in 1867 through economic necessity when her husband’s attempt to establish a printery ended in insolvency. Henrietta became music mistress at Mrs Thomas’s Academy for Young Ladies. She pioneered organ recitals and organ-based concerts in Brisbane. She toured South Africa in 1896. Her final appearances were chamber music recitals in Brisbane in 1911 with members of the Jefferies family and her protégé Percy Brier.

Willmore believed in women’s political rights and responsibilities; serving on the executive of several women’s organizations. The Willmore Discussion Club was formed in 1931 in her honour. She was awarded the Medal de la Reine Elisabeth, a medal instituted on 15 September 1915 and awarded to both Belgians and non-Belgians for services to Belgium and its citizens as a consequence of the 1914-1918 war. It was awarded particularly for relief of the suffering of the civilian population and the sick and wounded.

Julie Attwood is an Australian Labor Party member (MP) of the Queensland Parliament for the seat of Mount Ommaney. She was elected 13 June 1998. Julie is currently Parliamentary Secretary to the Queensland Treasurer. Prior to her parliamentary career Julie was a manager at the Commonwealth Employment Service at Indooroopilly. She has a Graduate Diploma of Case Management and Client Service with Deakin University in Melbourne, Victoria.

Patience Rosemary Thoms was elected as the eighth president of the International Federation of Business and Professional Women at the Eleventh International Congress (1968) in London, England and held that position until 1971. She was the first International President from Australia, and also the first from the Southern Hemisphere. She had previously served as Australian President from 1960-1964. She was the Women’s News Editor of The Courier Mail for twenty years from 1956.

Veronica Lesley (“Bonny”) Barry was an Australian Labor Party member for the seat of Aspley. She was elected to the Queensland Legislative Assembly in 2001 and was Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education and Training and Minister for the Arts, Rod Welford. Barry lost her seat in the state election held 21 March 2009. Veronica is a registered nurse with over twenty years experience.

Estelle Thomson was a member of the Queensland Naturalists’ Club, contributing flowers, paintings and drawings to the club’s annual wildflower show. She published Flowers of Our Bush (1929), a guide to Queensland wildflowers, which described and illustrated coastal species. From 1929 to the 1930s Estelle ran a weekly ‘Wildflowers’ column in the Brisbane Courier, illustrated by her own line drawings. This was followed by her column ‘Nature’s Ways’ in the Telegraph which she maintained until 1950.

Additionally, Thomson lectured at women’s clubs and schools, illustrating her lectures with delicately hand-coloured lantern slides. During the 1940s Estelle gave a series of children’s talks on wildflowers on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and produced a series of paintings of poisonous plants for the University of Queensland’s Medical School. She deposited specimens in the Queensland Herbarium, including some collected on the Granite Belt and at Caloundra. Estelle was also an expert on Queensland birds.

Writing in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Rosa Praed covered many genres in her extensive bibliography, including books for children as well as adults. Rosa Murray-Prior began writing in her teens, contributing résumés and stories to the family’s handwritten Marroon Magazine. She married Englishman Arthur Campbell Bulkley Praed, and four years later Rosa and her husband returned to England, where she continued to write. Praed revisited Australia only once, however she continued to rework her memories, and published her autobiography My Australian Girlhood in 1902. Other biographical work included Australian Life; Black and White (1885). She maintained contacts with relations and friends in Australia until her death. Writing as Mrs Campbell Praed, she produced more than forty-five books over the next four decades, approximately half of which deal with Australian material.

One of the oldest women’s clubs in Queensland, the Brisbane Women’s Club was formed in 1908 under the sponsorship of the Queensland Women’s Electoral League. Originally called the Women’s Progressive Club, the name was changed to the Brisbane Women’s Club in May 1912. Ardent feminist and women’s rights campaigner Margaret Ogg was one of the 59 founding members.

The objectives of the club were to provide a social centre for women workers in the cause of reform and to encourage free discussion on subjects of public importance, including social, political and municipal matters. The club lobbied the Brisbane City Council and the State Government for the betterment of the community. In an effort to improve the life of rural women, the club was instrumental in the establishment of the Queensland Country Women’s Association in 1922 and the Bush Book Club in 1921. The Brisbane Women’s Club celebrated its centenary in 2008 and continues to provide a social and cultural centre with a philanthropic charter.

Eleanor Constance Greenham was the first native-born Queensland woman to graduate in medicine. The first student to be enrolled at Ipswich Girls Grammar School in 1892, she excelled academically, graduating from the University of Sydney in 1901. Later that year she began work as a resident medical officer at Lady Bowen Hospital in Brisbane, before leaving to work in a private practice in 1903. Paving the way for other Queensland women in the field of medicine, the Queensland Medical Women’s Society elected Greenham to honorary membership in 1945, as well as being made an honorary member of the British Medical Association (Queensland Branch) in 1953 for fifty years of uninterrupted membership.

Tania Major first came to prominence in 2004 as the youngest person elected to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. In 2007 she was named Young Australian of the Year. She spoke to opinion makers, the public and government about sexual violence and rape in the Aboriginal community, asking Prime Minister John Howard to help lift the “blanket of shame” that was preventing such assaults being reported.

Gertrude Concannon was a highly successful Australian-trained lyric soprano. Later in her life she contributed to Australian music with equal significance through her teaching, composition, and encouragement of younger musicians.

Educated in Liverpool, England, Mary Agnew moved to Queensland in late 1890 to join the Queensland Department of Public Instruction, taking the position of Kindergarten Instructor. Agnew was given the task of raising the standard of education for young children. Applying the methods of Friedrich Frobel, Agnew introduced a syllabus based on the importance of education through activity and play, stressing that young children could not spend long periods of time each day engaged in intellectual learning. Influencing departmental policy on infant and kindergarten work, it was only in the last years of her career that her revolutionary work in pre-school education began to be implemented.

Margaret Ogg is best known for her extensive political, social and feminist activities. Additionally she was a poet, writer and an accomplished musician, playing viola in the family quartet, as well as holding membership with the Musical Association. A staunch monarchist and anti-socialist, Ogg actively toured outback townships in Queensland promoting women’s suffrage, and encouraging pioneer women to become involved in state and national affairs. As founder, co-founder and member of many Queensland women’s organisations, she was consistently at the forefront of political and social campaigns to secure reforms for the Queensland’s women and children. Ogg remained an active member of the Brisbane political and cultural scene up until her death.

Immigrating to Australia in 1856 to begin her career as a teacher, Margaret Berry was soon appointed to the position of headmistress and teacher trainer at Brisbane National School in 1860. She later moved to the Brisbane Girls’ Normal School, where she became the first headmistress, serving there for forty-three years. Taking a stand for female teachers and students in Queensland, Berry was the only female teacher to give evidence to the Royal Commission into Education in 1874. She also campaigned for the equal pay of female teachers, as well as stressing her faith in the ability of senior girls to undertake advanced scientific subjects.  Late in her career, she became an official examiner of female teachers.

Berry always expected the highest standards from her pupils and above all, she wanted her them to maintain a cultured mind and charming personality.

Upon the outbreak of World War 1 in 1914, Annie Wheeler, a widow from central Queensland living in London, took it upon herself to improve the lines of communication between Queensland soldiers abroad and their loved ones Back home. Taking up residence near the Australian Army Headquarters and the Anzac Buffet in London, she endeavoured to contact all soldiers from central Queensland, be they injured, on leave or at the trenches. By keeping a detailed index card on each soldier, she corresponded with servicemen on the battlefield, forwarded packages and mail, whilst also providing comfort to those in hospital. Becoming known as the ‘Mother of Queensland’, by 1918 she provided reliable correspondence for over 2300 soldiers. Each fortnight Mrs Wheeler sent home detailed letters which were published in the Capricornian and the Morning Bulletin.

The Returned Sailors and Soldiers Imperial League of Australia made her an associate member in 1920. In the same year, she was presented with an O.B.E.

After her death, a memorial plaque was erected at Mt Thompson Memorial Gardens in Brisbane, Queensland.

Vida Lahey began her art studies in Brisbane around 1903, before training at the National Gallery School, Victoria (1905-1906, 1909); she lived in London from 1915, moving to Paris after the war, where she studied at Colarossi’s Academy. She exhibited regularly in Brisbane and Sydney during the 1930s and 1940s, specialising in still lives, interiors and some landscape. Lahey had a strong commitment to the arts, teaching both adult and children’s art classes, and along with Daphne Mayo was heavily involved in raising funds for, and promoting, the Queensland Art Gallery. She served on the gallery’s Art Advisory Committee (1931-37) ‘and often argued for a proper purchasing policy and a qualified full-time director – which occurred only in 1949’. She was commissioned by the Gallery to write Art in Queensland 1859-1959 which was published in 1959 and remains ‘a basic text for Queensland art history’. According to Nancy Underhill, Lahey’s main contribution was ‘to encourage excellence and public involvement in the visual arts, especially in Queensland, and to serve as a point of contact between Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne'(Heritage). Vida Lahey was appointed to The Order of the British Empire – Member (Civil), 1 January 1958, for services to art in Queensland. Her painting ‘Beach Umbrellas’ was featured on the 1996 $1.20 stamp for Australia Day.

Ada Smith was appointed Typist in the Land Tax Branch, Brisbane in November 1911. She worked in various other positions, including Confidential Typist to the Deputy Commissioner of Taxation, Central Office, Melbourne (1921-1924) and Personal Typist to State Commissioner of Taxes, Queensland (1924-1942), retiring in December 1954. In recognition of her work in the Taxation Office she was awarded the Imperial Service Medal, 29 March 1955.

Thalia Kennedy was educated at the University of Queensland, majoring in english, history and latin, and winning a University Blue for hockey. She joined the staff of the Ipswich Girls’ Grammar School in January 1942, as an english and history teacher, later being promoted to Deputy Principal and serving as Principal from 1965 to 1981. She introduced Thursday afternoon activities and computer education and appointed a student counsellor. In 1982 the Thalia Kennedy Centre was opened at the school. She was appointed MBE – Member of The Order of the British Empire (Civil) – 13 June 1981 for services to education and the community.

Ruth Molphy, who completed her medical training in Brisbane and England, was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire for services to medicine on 20 June 1987. She distinguished herself in the field of anaesthetics and medical administration at the Royal Brisbane Hospital and the Prince Charles Hospital Brisbane.

Jessie Vasey founded and became President of the War Widows’ Guild of Australia. For her work in the field of social welfare she was the recipient of both the CBE (8 June 1963) and OBE (8 June 1950).

Edith Hurman, after commencing her early education in Perth, finished her medical training at Sydney University in 1922 and overcame many obstacles in order to become the first doctor to set up private practice in Cudal, New South Wales in 1925. With Muriel Amanda Rodda, a trained nurse, she was instrumental in the establishment of the town’s hospital in 1928. Edith Hurman remained in Cudal and worked in that hospital until her retirement in 1961. She subsequently wrote a booklet entitled The beginnings, in 1980, in which she told the story of how the Cudal Hospital was established. She was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire for her services to medicine in New South Wales on 1 January 1966.

Teresa Brophy had a distinguished career as an anaesthetist in Brisbane, Queensland. On completion of her medical training in Brisbane and London, she held both academic and hospital appointments in Brisbane. In addition, she was vice-chairman of the Australian Resuscitation Council from 1976. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire on 11 June 1976 for her services to medicine.

Dr Nancy (Nan) Giese was a pioneer of education and the visual and performing arts in the Northern Territory. She was strongly involved in planning and setting up the first tertiary institutions and for ten years was elected Chancellor of the Northern Territory University, now Charles Darwin University.