The Australian Women's Register

Vicki Wilson started playing netball in 1972 at the age of seven. By the time she had hung up her skirt in 1999, she was one of Australia’s most decorated and successful players, having earned 104 test caps over the journey, more than any other Australian player. She represented Australia for fifteen years with the last four as captain. She played in four World Championship tournaments (the most of any Australian player), was a member of a victorious team three times (1991, 1995, 1999), and captained the world champion team in her last game in 1999. She was captain of the team that won the first ever gold medal for netball in the Commonwealth Games at Kuala Lumpur in 1998, although she says the most memorable moment of her career was winning the 1991 World Championship in Sydney. Arguably the best goal shooter in the world in the 1990s, when asked by a junior netballer in 1999 why she had such great shooting accuracy, her response was, ‘200 shots a day x 6 days a week, and that’s 200 shots that go in. I have been doing that since I was 20 years old’.

A trained physical education teacher, Wilson continued to teach while playing netball, moving to the position of Schools Sports Promotions Officer with the Department of Education in Queensland in 1992. Since then she has held a number of board member ships and government advisory positions, including membership of the Board of the Queensland Academy of Sport. She continues to coach and mentor talented players and works as a senior project manager with Sport and Recreation Queensland in the Queensland Department of Premier and Cabinet.

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.