The Australian Women's Register

Francie Kay completed her nursing training at Balaklava, South Australia. She ran a private hospital before entering the social work field. Kay went to Melbourne to study and returned to work in the TB Service where she travelled around South Australia visiting sanatoria. She worked in the service for 25 years and helped to rehabilitate many patients. She attended various conferences worldwide. She then moved to the Walkerville Nursing home and helped develop an assessment system and a day and craft centre. Following an overseas holiday Kay and returned to work for Burnside to look at their community services. It was discovered there were many problems with elderly people and Pine View was established and community activities were organised to provide companionship.

Honor Cameron Wilson studied physiotherapy in the 1930s. She joined the Australian Army during World War II serving in the Middle East, Perth and with a plastic surgeon in Heidelberg, Victoria. Wilson returned to the Physiotherapy department at the Royal Adelaide Hospital. She completed post graduate work in London and became a lecturer. Her interests included art, and she was involved with the Lyceum Club art circle.

Madge Parker was born on the Yorke Peninsula and lived near Ardrossan. Her father grew wheat, barley and oats. They moved to Adelaide when her father retired and Madge was 16. She went to London in 1939 to completed a course dealing cosmetics and came home via America. She worked in Sydney and was in Melbourne when she joined the Women’s Royal Australian Air Force (WRAAFS) where she completed an officers’ course.

Stroma Buttrose was a pioneering figure for Australian women in architecture. She was the first female Planning Assistant in South Australia, and the first female Commissioner of the Planning Appeal Board. She was the author of numerous architectural publications, most notably City Planning in Australia in 1975.

Gwenyth Hannon attended St Peter’s Girls’ School. Hannon won an Education Department scholarship to dentistry at University. Following her graduation, in 1932, she became an Education Department dentist. In this position she travelled around the state doing dental work at schools. She married a fellow dental student who had a practice on North Terrace. Hannon worked in the dental practice from the war years. Her husband was killed in 1945 and Hannon was one of the initial members and one of the first vice presidents of the War Widows’ Guild.

Helen Brookes was born in Melbourne and moved several times before settling in Adelaide in 1929. She started her working career at the Waite Institute with Dr Davidson. Later Brookes became a technical assistant and eventually senior lecturer as a systematic entomologist. Following her retirement, in 1982, she presented her insect collection to the Australian National Insect Collection in Canberra. Brookes was a member of the Lyceum and Minerva Clubs. In 1999, Year of the Older Person, Brookes was invited to a symposium in Canberra as an outstanding older woman scientist.

Jean Rooney, whose father was a teacher, lived in Mt Gambier, Adelaide and Port Lincoln. Rooney attended Adelaide teachers’ Training College and worked in Unley and Nailsworth for four years. She married Cliff Rooney, a high school teacher, in 1935 and had two daughters.

Margaret Hodge was born in Adelaide in 1918. She subsequently moved to a Western Australian jarrah timber camp where her father was a teacher in a two roomed school. After his death, when she was nine, Hodge and her mother returned to Adelaide to live with relatives. She attended Presbyterian Girls’ School (now Seymour College) on a scholarship. Here she was particularly influenced by two of her teachers – in English and current affairs. On leaving school she taught at the Wilderness School.

Margaret married Scott Hodge in 1940 and had five children, including one who was born with spina bifida. She joined the Lyceum Club in 1971 and served in a number of official capacities over the years.

Mary Miller was born in Yorketown, South Australia and spent her childhood on Yorke Peninsula. Her work in munitions factories during World War II led to her involvement as an organiser in the iron workers’ union and a life-long commitment to the labour movement. In the mid-1950s she qualified as a primary school teacher and became active in child welfare and Aboriginal education.

Catherina van der Linden was born in 1912 and grew up in Nigmegen, Holland where her father was a tailor. She married in 1940 soon after the outbreak of war. Her first child was born in 1943. Following the war her husband, who had been a Company Secretary, was unemployed and three children were born. Van der Linden reluctantly agreed to emigrate in 1955 after her father’s death. The family travelled in the luxurious ‘Johan Van Oltenbernavalt’ and were shocked by the accommodation at both Bonegilla Migrant Reception Centre in Victoria and Woodside in the Adelaide Hills. Their longest stay was at the Glenelg hostel from whence Mrs van der Linden returned to Holland in 1958 with the children, vowing never to return. However she decided to reunite the family 18 months later and worked outside the home in clerical and nurses’ aide positions.

When she died at the age of 111 on 26 January 2024 she was believed to be the oldest living person in Australia and the oldest living Dutch person in the world.

Margaret Edith Atkins grew up at Kensington Park where she attended kindergarten and small private schools despite the cerebral palsy and received regular physiotherapy and speech pathology. After leaving school she enrolled in a playgroup course at the Kindergarten Training College and commenced voluntary work in kindergartens. She later worked as an equipment maker for the Kindergarten Union and designed and made toys. Atkins decided to return to study social work at university but was initially refused entry to the course at Adelaide University. She completed a Bachelor of Arts with Honours majoring in psychology. Atkins gained a full-time teaching position with the Education Department as a teacher of intellectually handicapped children and was also supervised by the Department’s psychologist to allow her to gain membership of the Australian Psychological Society. She was employed at the Woodville Special School where she developed innovative teaching methods and designed equipment. During her career Atkins held positions as Deputy Head at Strathmont Centre for Intellectually Retarded Children, Head of Barton Terrace and Kings Park special schools, and then in 1975 the Ashford Special School. She retired on the grounds of invalidity in 1977 and become a resident at the Julia Farr Centre. Here she was funded by the Centre to undertake research into leisure activities for the residents and was able to travel overseas. After her health improved Atkins felt that she needed to return to a more home-like environment and was able to move to an aged care facility. She then became very active in community activities and events, WEA and University of the Third Age. Margaret Atkins was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for her service to education in special education on 26 January 1982.

For service to child development, in particular as the director of the Lesley Cox School of Music, Movement and Drama, and to the community, Lesley Cox was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia on 26 January 1998.

Cox was introduced to Dalcroze Eurhythmics by Heather Gell. Dalcroze Eurhythmics was established by Emile Jaques-Dalcroze (1865-1950) a Swiss composer and pianist who, in the early years of the twentieth century, researched the effect of human movement on musical perception, and the impact of musical elements on movement technique. He called his approach to music education ‘Eurhythmics’. It means, literally, “good rhythm”. Cox went to Sydney to study with Gell during the 1940s and again in 1957 to complete her Licentiate. She established the Lesley Cox School of Music, Movement and Drama and published books and sound recordings on the subject.

Heather Gell was a pioneer of eurhythmics and a dance teacher. After obtaining the Diploma of the Kindergarten Training College, Adelaide, in 1918, she studied at the London School of Dalcroze Eurythmics for two years. Gell returned to Adelaide to set up her own studio in 1923. She became a specialist in Eurhythmics and taught at the Kindergarten Training College. In 1930 Gell returned to London to study for the Licentiate degree at the Royal Academy of Music. On her return she was appointed to the Elder Conservatorium.

In 1934 Gell directed the Girl Guides’ farewell to Lady Zara Hore-Ruthven and in 1936 the ‘Heritage’ pageant for the State’s Centenary celebrations. She returned to London in 1937 before settling in Sydney where she established the School of Music and Movement. From 1938 she began presenting “Music Through Movement”, a weekly radio broadcast for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, which lasted 27 years. Gell stayed in Sydney until her retirement, establishing the Dalcroze Society of Australia and the Dalcroze Teachers’ Union.

Heather Gell was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire services to music on 31 December 1977. She returned to Adelaide in 1982 and died in 1988. In her Will, she left a bequest to be used to establish, assist, and promote Dalcroze Eurhythmics in Australia. The Heather Gell Dalcroze Foundation is the result.

Ene-Mai Reinpuu left Estonia with her parents as refugees fleeing the threat of Soviet invasion, arriving in South Australia in 1949. Ene-Mai married Villi Reinpuu, also from Estonia and they had two children.

Reinpuu had a life long involvement in ethnic community and multicultural organisations. She served as secretary (1967-1986) and president (1987 – ) of the Estonia Society of Adelaide. She was honorary secretary of the Council of Estonian Societies in Australia 1976-1978, 1985-1987 and 1994-1996. Reinpuu was chosen as an Australian representative at the ‘Kongress of Estonia’ held in Estonia in 1990. She was vice-chairperson of the Estonian Cultural Festival of Australia and a member of the organising committee since 1958. She served as a member of the Council of Baltic Women (affiliated with National Council of Women), was the Estonian community representative on Multicultural Communities Council of South Australia, and a founding member of the Friends of the Estonian Museum.

Katie Langloh Parker grew up on her father’s property, Marra Station, northern New South Wales. Married at the age of 18, she led an exciting social life in Australian colonial capitals until 1875, when she moved to her husband’s property, Bangate Station, near Angledool, New South Wales. There, she started collecting stories and vocabularies from the local branch of Yularoi people, which she subsequently published in several collections between 1896 and 1930. In 1905, she published her only purely ethnographic work The Euahlayi Tribe, an account of her life at Bangate. Her second marriage to Percy Randolph Stow marked the end of her outback life.

Barbara Hanrahan was an artist, printmaker and writer. She was born in Adelaide in 1939 and lived there until her death in December 1991. Hanrahan spent three years at the South Australian School of Art before leaving for London in 1966 to continue her art studies. In England she taught at the Falmouth College of Art, Cornwall, (1966-67) and Portsmouth College of Art (1967-70). From 1964 Hanrahan held a number of exhibitions principally in Adelaide and Sydney, but also in Brisbane, Canberra, Perth, London and Florence. Hanrahan’s novels include The Scent of Eucalyptus (1973), The Peach Groves (1980), The Frangipani Gardens (1988) and Flawless Jade (1989).

Dora Hunter was raised by two missionaries, Miss Ruby Hyde and Miss Delia Rutter, firstly at Quorn and then at Eden Hills, South Australia. She started working as a servant in a private home, and later got a job in a kindergarten. Following that, she worked as a Child Care Worker at the Central Methodist Mission in Adelaide for nine years. She did two years’ training in the Aboriginal Task Force at the Institute of Technology in Adelaide, and worked in a government position as an Aboriginal Community Worker. She has been involved with the Aboriginal Evangelical Fellowship and the Young People’s Branch of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. She enjoys playing music, and has often played in old people’s homes and children’s homes as well as at church meetings.

Maude Tongerie was born in 1928 at Anna Creek, about 80 miles west of Oodnadatta in South Australia. She lived with her people (Arabunna) until the age of nine, when she was taken to the Finke River Mission for an eye treatment. She then went to live with an aunt in Oodnadatta so that she could learn English, and from there she went to Colebrook Home, a non-Government Aboriginal mission, in Quorn. At the age of 15 she started to work as a domestic with a family near Adelaide. She married George Tongerie, a young Aboriginal man who served in the Air Force during the war. In the early 1970s Maude became involved with the Department for Community Welfare, and worked as a social worker with Aboriginal families, particularly in the juvenile courts. In the 1980s she and her husband instituted successful community housing and training programs in Oodnadatta and were both appointed Members of the Order of Australia in 1988, for ‘contributions to the Aboriginal Community’.

Vim Wlehelm was named after the Vickers Vimy, a reconditioned WWI fighter bomber that flew from London to Australia and landed on the day she was born. Her father, Roy Klopper, was an early enthusiast of flying and had built his own aeroplane as a young man. Her mother, Jessie Sullivan, was a midwife and matron of the local hospital at Crystal Brook, north of Adelaide, South Australia. They named their daughter Eileen Vimy but she was nearly always Vim. Jessie died when Vim was ten, and Vim left school at the age of twelve to look after her four siblings. She picked up her formal education again at the age of seventeen when she went to Royal Adelaide Hospital to be a nurse. In 1943 she married a young doctor, Don Wilhelm (with whom she had two children), and graduated top of the state in 1944.

Once graduated, Vimy trained as a family planning nurse at the Marie Stopes Centre in London and learned to appreciate the worth of volunteering. Returning to Australia in 1960 and with some encouragement from Ruby Rich of the Racial Hygiene Association, Vimy joined the Family Planning Association of Australia (FPAA), where she eventually served as president and chief executive officer, on a full-time, volunteer basis. “She ran the organisation as efficiently as she appears to have done everything else in her life,” notes a friend. “She turned it from an organisation that had virtually no profile at all, into one that was respected by the medical community and by the community at large.” She was later appointed Patron of the Australian Federation of Family Planning Associations (AFFPA), and in 1976 was awarded the Order of Australia in recognition of her pioneering work in family planning. Between 1976 and 1997, Vimy held the Presidency of the NSW Committee of UNICEF and was elected a Life Member in 1994.

After leaving UNICEF in 1997, Vim, at the age of 78, immediately offered her services to the University of New South Wales alumni association as a volunteer.

Maggy Pinkie Mack (Katipelvild), of Ngarrindjeri descent, was born on the lower Murray River in South Australia, probably around 1867. At the age of 16, she was given in marriage to an up-river man, John Mack (Telwara). She took part in ceremonies and learnt new songs and stories. After he died, she went back to her own country, and her second husband.

Pinkie Mack was a song-woman, and she recorded some of her songs on an Edison wax cylinder. She was nostalgic about the past and her people. After the death of Albert Karloan, she was the only remaining fluent Yaraldi speaker.

In later years, Mack lived in a small cottage near the river and not far from Tailem Bend, where she sometimes sold freshly caught fish to a local shop. Children, grandchildren and various relatives called in to see her on the way to other places.

Judy Trew Thandripilinha (‘Poisonous Snake’), of Yarluyandi descent, was born in c.1865, probably on Goyder Lagoon in South Australia. She took the name ‘Trew’ from one of the early station people. Her first husband was Kuranta (‘Sticknest Rat’), also called ‘Lagoon Charlie’, and her second husband was the highly respected old Wangkangurru man, Yarinjili Todd.

Judy lived and worked on old Clifton Hills and The Bluff, remaining in or close to her own country. She had an excellent knowledge of the bush, and taught her grandchildren about sites and stories, including her own main tradition, the Song Cycle of the Swan. Nearly all the sites recorded on the Diamantina in South Australia are based on her traditions. In c.1936 she organised the last expedition, by camel, to collect pituri from the traditional site west of the Mulligan.

Alice Warrika Oldfield, of Kuyani descent, was born on Callanna station in South Australia. She grew up on Millers Creek station where her parents worked. As a very small child, she was attacked and nearly killed there by the station geese. Though she was badly injured, it was the geese who were all mysteriously found dead the next morning.

Alice married Sandy Dinta Oldfield, the famous last Ngamini rainmaker. They lived and worked on stations on the Strzelecki and the Birdsville Track, mainly Etadunna. In the 1950s they retired to Marree, where Sandy died in 1964.

Alice was devoted to traditions and was a rainmaker in her own right, though this was ignored by people who came to visit Sandy. She kept traditions alive by organising the Wandji-Wandji corroboree at Stuart Creek in the early 1930s; she knew the karlapa, the Arabana women’s dance; and she made rain at a ceremony she organised in 1969, when she was almost totally blind. She was a speaker of Arabana, and most of what has been preserved of the Kuyani language is due to her.

Dorothy Leila Rankine, of Ngarrindjeri and Kaurna descent, grew up at Raukkan (Point McLeay) on Lake Alexandrina in South Australia. Her lifelong involvement with music and singing began with her family and the local Salvation Army church. She later became a soldier of the Salvation Army. After completing only primary education she moved to Adelaide in 1965, where she joined the Aboriginal Women’s Council and later the Port Adelaide Aboriginal Friendship Club.

In 1972 Rankine became a founding member of the Adelaide Aboriginal Orchestra, which later developed into the Centre for Aboriginal Studies in Music (CASM), of which she was chairperson until her retirement in 1986. She acted as counsellor, liaising with the local Aboriginal community and organising annual camps and concerts. She edited and contributed poems to the journal Tjungaringanyi; was elected chairperson of the urban committee; and was an active singer, trombonist and speaker. She appeared in the films Sister, If You Only Knew (1975) and Wrong Side of the Road (1980).

Dorothy Leila Rankine served on the boards of the Aboriginal Community College, the Aboriginal Community Centre, and the Aboriginal Sobriety Group. She was a member of the Australia Council, the Aboriginal Artists Agency in Sydney, and the Aborigines Advancement League of South Australia, and was a life board member of Warriappendi Alternative School. She contributed to Aboriginal education curriculum materials for South Australian schools, told Ngarrindjeri stories on ABC television, and was one of the founders of Camp Coorong, a Ngarrindjeri cultural centre.

Annie Coulthard (Yadandhanha), of Adnyamathanha descent, grew up at Wertaloona station where her father worked. There she was employed as a housemaid until about 1924, when she married her cousin Samuel Coulthard.

Annie and Samuel moved to Balcanoona where they worked for Ray Thomas, carting stones and sand for the new ‘Government House’, now headquarters of the Gammon Ranges National Park. After the birth of their first child in 1926, the family moved to the Adnyamathanha camp at Ram Paddock Gate on Patsy Springs, where they struggled to survive in a land ravaged by stock and drought. They moved to the Nepabunna run in 1930, when Thomas gave it to the Adnyamathanha. In the early 1940s, the Coulthards drove sheep between Balcanoona and Copley, and lived and worked on Idninha. In the early 1950s they moved to Wooltana and then to Nepabunna where, in 1973, Sam Coulthard died.

The last five years of her life Annie Coulthard dedicated to passing on traditional knowledge. She died in 1986 and was buried at Nepabunna beside her husband.

A member of the Liberal Party of Australia, Wendy Smith served as the Member for Silvan Province in the Legislative Council of the Parliament of Victoria from 1996-2002.
Her earlier community service included a period as a Councillor for the City of Kew from 1983-88. She was a candidate in the Legislative Assembly seat of Albert Park at the state election, which was held in 3 October 1992.

A lifelong political and social activist, Evelyn Barron served a full 12-year term in the Legislative Council of New South Wales (1964-76) as a member of the ALP. Prior to this she had unsuccessfully run as an ALP candidate for Collaroy in 1953.

Janice Knight ran for election only once. That was in 1991 as an ALP candidate for the New South Wales Legislative Assembly for Northern Tablelands.