The Australian Women's Register

Daphne Pirie was a nationally ranked track and field athlete who captained the Queensland women’s athletics and hockey teams and represented Australia in hockey. She then became a world-ranked Master’s Athlete, winning eight gold medals in international competitions. In 1989 she was awarded an MBE for services to hockey and appointed an Officer in the General Division of the Order of Australia in June 2012.

For an entire decade, Olympic swimmer Susie O’Neill won a medal at every single international swimming competition. She holds a record 35 Australian titles and eight Olympic medals. Dubbed ‘Madame Butterfly’, O’Neill achieved world number one ranking in both the 100m and 200m butterfly events. She was also ranked world number one in the 200m freestyle from 1999-2000.

Libby Lenton’s competitive swimming career was launched in 2003 at the Telstra Australian Championships when she broke the Australian record for the 50m freestyle. She broke her own record later that year, becoming the first Australian woman to swim the distance in less than 25 seconds. She set Commonwealth and Australian records in the 50m and 100m freestyle at the FINA World Cup and was named Australian Swimming Discovery of the Year.

By 2004, Lenton was a dual Olympic medallist, winning gold in the 4x100m freestyle relay with Alice Mills, Petria Thomas and Jodie Henry, and bronze in the 50m freestyle. At the Telstra Trials in Sydney, preceding the Olympics, she broke the 100m freestyle world record with a time of 53.66. In 2006, Libby Lenton won five gold and two silver medals at the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne. That year she broke the world record for the 100m freestyle at the Telstra Trials (also in Melbourne). She won five gold medals and one silver at the 2006 World Short Course in Shanghai, becoming the World Short Course record holder in the 100m and 200m freestyle and 100m butterfly.

Glynis Nunn is the only Australian to have won an Olympic multi-discipline athletics event. She won gold in the heptathlon at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games.

Loris Williams was a passionate advocate for the right of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to use archives as a means of reconnecting with their family, country and Indigenous identity. She was the first Aboriginal person from Queensland to gain professional archival qualifications and only the second Aboriginal person to do so. She spent the last 11 years of her life helping Indigenous people to reconnect with their Indigenous identity and encouraging her professional colleagues, non-Indigenous as well as Indigenous, to recognize the significance of this work.

Tanya Harding has won a medal at every Olympic softball tournament since the sport made its debut in 1996. She is one of only three Australian women to win medals at four Olympic Games, the other two being teammates Melanie Roche and Natalie Ward. Harding is regarded as one of the greatest pitchers ever to represent Australia, and has played an important role in some of the team’s most exciting games.