The Australian Women's Register

A member of the Australian Labor Party, Jean Hearn served as a Senator for Tasmania in the Senate of the Australian Parliament from 1980 until the expiration of her term in 1985, when she retired.

Her first husband died in 1944 in a prisoner of war camp in Java, an event that sparked Jean Hearn’s life-long commitment to pacifism. She established the Tamar Community Peace Trust in 2015, seeking to promote a non-violent approach to conflict resolution.

Jean Hearn passed away in 2017.

A member of the Australian Labor Party, Kay Denman filled a casual vacancy in the Senate of the Parliament of Australia as a Senator for Tasmania in 1993. She was elected in 1998 and served until her retirement from parliament in June 2005.

A member of the Liberal Party of Australia, Shirley Walters was elected to the Senate of the Australian Parliament to represent Tasmania in 1975. She was re-elected in 1977, 1983 and 1987 and retired in 1993. She was the first woman to represent Tasmania in the Senate, and was known for her social conservatism. Her father, Sir Eric Harrison, served as the inaugural deputy leader of the Liberal Party under Sir Robert Menzies.

A member of the Australian Labor Party, Michelle O’Byrne was elected to the House of Representatives of the Australian Parliament as the Member for Bass, Tasmania in 1998. She was re-elected in 2001, but was defeated at the 2004 election. In 2006 she was elected to the State Parliament of Tasmania in the House of Assembly as the Member for the state seat of Bass and was re-elected in 2010.

A member of the Australian Labor Party, Jodie Campbell was elected to the House of Representatives of the Parliament of Australia in 2007 as the Member for Bass, Tasmania. She formerly served in local government as a councillor (2002-07) and deputy mayor of Launceston (2005-07). She did not contest the 2010 election.

A member of the Australian Labor Party, Julie Collins was elected to the House of Representatives of the Australian Parliament as the Member for Franklin, Tasmania in November 2007. She was re-elected in 2010.

A member of the Australian Labor Party, Silvia Smith was elected to the House of Representatives of the Australian Parliament as the Member for Bass, Tasmania in 1993. She remained in the federal parliament for one term, suffering defeat at the 1996 election, when the Keating Labor Government was swept from power.
From 1997-2003 she served as a Legislative Councillor in the Tasmanian State Parliament representing the electorate of Windermere as an Independent Labor member.

Helene Chung is an Australian Chinese, fourth generation Tasmanian who, in 1974, became the first non-white reporter on Australian television. A former Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Beijing correspondent, she was also the first female posted abroad by the ABC.

Tarenorerer was a Plairherehillerplue, of the north tribe. As a teenager, she was abducted by Aboriginal men and sold to sealers living on the Bass Strait Islands. She had returned to mainland Tasmania by 1830, where she led a small group of Aborigines comprised largely of men. Her warrior mob was greatly feared by Aborigines and whites alike.

Mrs Waterworth arrived in Tasmania with her husband at the age of 30. She became actively involved in the women’s movement in her forties, after the birth of three sons. Waterworth stood for parliament twice (though unsuccessfully) and was active in the National Council of Women, the Child Welfare Association, the Free Kindergarten Association, and the Board of Censors of Moving Pictures, among other groups.

Alicia Petersen grew up in a small rural community in Tasmania, and worked in the clothing industry. She was a speaker for the Citizens’ Social and Moral Reform League in 1906, and a member of the Women’s Political Association, but maintained a non-party stance. Petersen was a founder and life-president of the Australian Women’s Association, and the first woman in Tasmania to stand as a political candidate. In 1913 she contested the federal seat of Denison but her campaign was sabotaged by the press. She stood again, unsuccessfully, in 1922.

Jessie Rooke was heavily involved with the British Women’s Bible and Prayer Union in Sydney before she joined the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. Moving to Tasmania in the 1890s with her family, she formed the Burnie branch of the WCTU and became president in 1894. Rooke also played a vital role in the development of the Tasmania Women’s Suffrage League.

Daughter of the Swiss born Elise Lehmann, Louise Lovely began her stage career at the age of eight, playing Eva in Uncle Tom’s Cabin at the Lyceum in Sydney. She subsequently appeared in many stage and screen productions. In 1912, Louise moved to Hollywood with her husband Wilton Welch and became a star, cast in at least 24 films for Universal Studios and nearly a dozen western films for Fox Studios. She returned to Australia in 1924.

The daughter of missionaries Francis and Rebecca Oakes, Mary Hutchinson attempted to establish a Christian mission in Tonga with her husband John Hutchinson, but the pair were forced to retreat. In 1832, John Hutchinson was appointed superintendent of the Female House of Correction (the female factory), with his wife as matron. Of their twelve children, six died in infancy. John Hutchinson’s recurring illness meant that Mary was often charged with running the institution. On her husband’s retirement, she became matron-in-charge of the smaller ‘factory’ at Launceston. She retired in 1854.

Julie Duncan was a highly regarded journalist and journalism educator who developed some of Australia’s earliest journalism courses.

Marie Bjelke-Petersen is best known as a writer, but as a young woman she enjoyed playing sport and was, it has been argued, instrumental in introducing the sport of netball to Tasmania.

She migrated with her family to Hobart, Tasmania in 1891, where her brother, Hans Christian, established the Bjelke-Peterson Physical Culture school in 1892. Marie joined as instructor in charge of the women’s section; she also taught the subject in schools. It was during that time, it is suggested, that the Bjelke-Petersen’s learned about a new game called basketball that was being played in the United States. Marie introduced drills designed for the game in to the Physical Culture program that she taught in the schools.

Unfortunately, injuries prevented her from continuing with her teaching career much past 1910. At this point, she picked up her career as a writer. She published her first novel The Captive Singer, in 1917 to much acclaim; it sold 100,000 copies in English and 40,000 in Danish. In 1935 she won the King’s Jubilee medal for services to literature.

In recent years, Bjelke-Petersen has become a gay and lesbian icon. She lived in an intimate relationship with Silvia Mills, who she met in 1898, and who, it is argued, The Captive Singer was about, for thirty years.

Judith Clarke took up the game of Royal Tennis in 1973 at the age of nineteen and went on to be a world beater, winning her first singles and doubles championships in 1985. Once at the top, she was never beaten in a singles match before her retirement in 1988.

Rosalie Parkes’ was a pioneer of netball in Tasmania and, after a twenty-five year involvement in the sport became an institution. She first represented Tasmania in 1939 at a carnival in Adelaide and became the first Tasmanian to tour with an Australian representative team when she travelled to New Zealand in 1948.

Between 1948 and 1960 she coached the Tasmanian Open Team and was made a life member of the Southern Tasmanian Netball Association in 1955. During her twenty-five year involvement with the sport. She served as President of the Southern Tasmanian Netball Association and liaison officer for the Tasmanian Netball Association. In order to honour her achievements and services to the sport in the region, the Creek Road Netball Pavilion was named after her. (The Building is now demolished.)

Rosalie never married, but she did have a partner, Owen Clarke, who died prematurely. Rosalie also died prematurely – she and her brother Frank, died in a house fire in 1994.

Julie Kent was a junior world champion diver who first competed at the Olympic Games in Los Angeles in 1984. Unable to train in Tasmania in the winter months (there was no indoor, Olympic standard aquatic centre in Hobart) she made the decision at the age of 15 to move to Montreal to train and prepare for competition. She lived there for two years, flatting with two other young athletes. She returned to Australia when the Australian Institute of Sport opened its diving institute in Brisbane.

After she stopped competing, Kent went on to a temporary coaching job with the AIS, then moved into radio advertising. In 1997, she was elected president of the Tasmanian Olympic Council, the first woman to hold the position.

According to her Sport Australia Hall of Fame citation, Evelyn Tazewell was the finest women’s hockey player of her time. She enjoyed a career in the sport as player, coach, umpire and administrator that spanned four decades to the 1960s. Among many important contributions to the sport, she was instrumental in the establishment of the Women’s Memorial Playing Fields at St Mary’s, Adelaide.

Matina Mottee is the Australian born child of Greek migrants who arrived in Australia in the early twentieth century. Her father emigrated from Greece in 1905 as a 12 year old and eventually settled in Tasmania where Matina was born.

Mottee was instrumental in establishing the Association of Non-English Speaking Background Women and in 1987 became that organisation’s first convener. In 1988 her extensive work on behalf of women in migrant communities was recognised when she was awarded the QANTAS Ethnic Communities Award. In keeping with her egalitarian ethics, however, she chose to interpret the award as honouring all immigrant women, not just Matina Mottee.

Upon accepting her award in 1988, Mottee said, ‘I have struggled from [a young age] for equality of opportunity for both my gender and my race.’ Her continued work on the behalf women of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, at an age when others might have considered retirement, indicates that her attitude and motivation has not changed.

Valerie Bush has been a long term environmental campaigner who stood as an Australian Democrats candidate in the 1995 New South Wales Legislative Assembly elections for Cronulla.

Elizabeth Robinson was a remarkable woman and an Independent candidate for Newcastle in 1932.

A member of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), Ann Barker served as the Member for Bentleigh from 1988-92 in the Legislative Assembly of the Victorian Parliament. She was defeated at the 1992 election, stood unsuccessfully as the ALP candidate for Oakleigh in the 1996 election. but returned to parliament as the Member for Oakleigh in 1999. She held the position of Parliamentary Secretary, Training and Higher Education from 2002-06 and served as Acting Speaker of the Legislative Assembly from 1999-2006. She was re-elected at the November 2006 election and served as Deputy Speaker of the Legislative Assembly from 2006-2010. She was re-elected in November 2010 when the Labor Government was defeated, but retired from Parliament at the 2014 election, when the ALP returned to Government.

Kerry Sculthorpe-Randriamahefa grew up on a farm at Nicholls Rivulet near Oyster Cove in southern Tasmania. After leaving school at 16 and working at a number of jobs, including secretarial work, waitressing and labouring, she travelled overseas. She received a Diploma in Natural Healing in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1972, and completed bilingual studies in Business and Commercial Practice in 1975. She lived in France and Madagascar before returning to Tasmania in 1977.

In 1981 she received her Bachelor of Arts (Social Work) degree from the University of Tasmania, and in 1987 completed a Graduate Diploma in Public Policy at the Australian National University in Canberra. She worked at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies in the research and administration sections before joining the Australian Public Service in 1987. Since 1990 she has been the manager of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission in Tasmania. She has participated in national forums on indigenous education, health, land rights and legislation, and published a number of papers and reports on Aboriginal issues.

Lucy Beeton spent most of her life on Badger Island, though she was sent to Launceston as a young girl to receive a Christian education. In adult life, the well-loved Beeton provided an education for the children of sealers on Badger Island and entertained visitors there.