The Australian Women's Register

Margherita Stefani ran the Amalfi Boarding House and wine saloon in Kalgoorlie with her husband.

Mary Smith nee Steedman was the first white woman to live in Bardoc, approximately 30 km from Kalgoorlie. She ran the Bardoc Hotel from 1896 until 1924.

Savina Patroni migrated to Australia from Italy in 1951. She lived in the Somerville garden district of Kalgoorlie and raised a family while also working on the family market garden.

Lyn Dale is a writer and documentary film maker with a passionate interest in the telling of the stories of ‘ordinary’ Australian women. She has written extensively on the lives of women in the military and has used her own family history to write about the experience of female immigration to Australia.

Lyn comes from a military background. Her father and four uncles served in WWII. The eldest of five children of John Murray Kane (former stockman, drover and soldier) and Betty Johnston, Lyn was educated in Perth Western Australia, apart from 2 years at boarding school in the wheatbelt area of WA. Early work as a machine embroiderer fuelled a lifelong interest in embroidery and sewing.

After enlisting in the Australian Army in 1964 and serving for 5 years, Lyn married a Vietnam War Veteran and spent the next decade living in mining towns in Western Australia. When the marriage ended in 1981 Lyn and her 2 daughters moved to Perth, where Lyn later secured an administrative position at Murdoch University. She remained there for 21 years before her retirement in 2009.

Working with Perth Film Maker Samantha Bergersen, Lyn has produced two historically significant documentaries. Maggie’s Journey, made in 2004 tells the story of Lyn’s paternal grandmother, Maggie Kelly (married name Kane). Twenty-five year old Maggie was one of a group of young female domestic servants who, in 1900, emigrated to Western Australia on a “bride ship”. The story is told through photographs, diary extracts, letters and other ephemera.

In 2011 received a grant from the Department of Veterans’ Affairs to produce a 90 minute documentary that tells the stories of 16 women who served in the Australian Army from 1951 to the 1990s. Lady Soldiers received high acclaim for its historical significance. In 2012 Lyn began work on a book of the same name, to ensure that material collected for but not used in the documentary would not be lost to future generations.

Una Mitchell was Headmistress of Canberra Girls’ Grammar between 1937 and 1947. She left Canberra to return to her home state to become Headmistress of St Hilda’s Anglican School for Girls in Mosman Park in Perth. She retired in 1967 and was appointed Chairman of the Conference of Independent Girls’ Schools of Australia. She was an inspiring Science teacher and highly respected principal, who had high educational and moral standards. She dedicated her life to ensuring the girls in her care were prepared for what she saw as a rapidly changing and modernizing world. She taught them to have ‘a high regard for personal integrity’, to be adaptable as well as to have ‘enquiring minds and the spirit of adventure’.

Ethel Scott was the first female police officer in Australia to attain the rank of Inspector. A prominent figure in policing in Western Australia, she was awarded the Queen’s Police Medal for distinguished service in 1970.

Gwen Roderick was the first Western Australian woman to be elected president of the National Council of Women of Australia – 63 years after it was founded. She brought to the presidency a passion for efficient management that served the association well during a difficult period in terms of its relationship with government.

Read more about Catherine Berndt in our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.

Read more about Hilary Mary Carey in our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.

Read more about Helena Clarke in our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.

Read more about Katherine Mary Clutterbuck in our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.

Read more about Frances Eileen Craig in our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.

Read more about Patricia Marcia Crawford in our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.

Read more about Sandra Gertrude Dann in our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.

Read more about Judy Davis in our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.

Read more about Frederica (Rica) Erickson in our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.

Read more about Raelene Frances in our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.

Read more about Nennie Harken in our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.

Edith Haynes was born in Sydney in 1876 and moved with her family to Western Australia in 1891. In 1900, having worked at her uncle’s law firm, she applied to the Barristers Board of Western Australia to sit the examinations necessary to practise as a lawyer. The board refused her request on the grounds that a woman was not a ‘person’ under the Legal Practitioners Act 1893. Haynes challenged the decision in the Supreme Court of Western Australia, but it was upheld; she was never admitted to practice. Edith Haynes died in 1968.

Read more about Penelope Hetherington in our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.

Read more about Dorothy Hewett in our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.