The Australian Women's Register

Elizabeth Webb was an Australian household name in the 1940s. She began her career in journalism in Sydney in 1932 on radio station 2FC where she launched a series of talks entitled ‘The Women of the Outback’ and ‘Sidelights on Amateur Jackarooing.

Elise Barney was appointed to the position of postmistress at Brisbane, following the death of her husband Leiut. John Edward Barney.

Dr Eleanor Bourne was appointed first medical officer in the Department of Public Instruction in 1911. Her research on hookworm disease was used in the Rockefeller-financed hookworm survey of northern Queensland. During wartime, Dr Bourne served as a lieutenant of the Royal Army Medical Corps in London. She became medical officer to Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps.

Marcella Cameron worked as secretary for Enoggera and Virginia Brick and Pipe Company in Brisbane before being transferred to Virginia, 13km from the city, to oversee the company’s brick and pipe works. The works flourished under her management, and in the 1920s she secured a City Council contract for 10,000 pounds worth of pipes for the sewerage of Brisbane. Cameron was able to devise a scheme to protect the jobs of Virginia Pipe Works employees during the depression, earning her legendary status in the local community.

This is a summary of an article written by Lenore Coltheart in 200 Australian Women, edited by Heather Radi, Redress Press, 1988.

Jo Mackerras was an entomologist and parasitologist who began research into fly-borne diseases in cattle and fatal epizootics in fresh-water fish in 1918, with the help of a Walter and Eliza Hall Fellowship. With her husband Ian Mackerras, she joined CSIR’s Division of Economic Entomology in Canberra in 1929. From 1943 she was at the Land Headquarters Medical Research Unit in Cairns, where she led pioneering research into malaria control. Post-war, Mackerras worked again at CSIR, this time at Yeerongpilly, as a parasitologist. The lungworm, A. Mackerrasae, was named after her, and she specialised in Australian cockroaches.

Daphne Mayo studied sculpture in Sydney and London before travelling through France and Italy as a Royal Academy travelling scholar. She returned to Brisbane in 1925 and carved the Brisbane City Hall tympanum (1927-30); the Queensland Women’s War Memorial, Anzac Square (1929-32); and relief panels for the chapel at Mt Thompson Crematorium (1934). With Vida Lahey she founded the Queensland Art Fund. In 1960 she was appointed the Queensland Art Gallery’s first woman trustee. Her last large commission was a statue of Sir William Glasgow (1961-64).

Margaret Macfarlan and her daughter, Carmel took over the running of the Gladstone (Queensland) Observer in 1947 when her husband (Carmel’s father), Colin Macfarlan, died. Colin had built the newspaper into an organ that reportedly ‘accomplished more for the advancement of the town than all the public bodies put together’. Margaret followed in the tradition established by her husband, a fact that was acknowledged when she was awarded an MBE for services to journalism and the community in 1970.

The papers was sold to News Limited in 1969.

Margaret Gibson ran theCentral Queensland News for nearly twenty years in the 1960s and 70s. Established by her mother in 1937, who convinced some local businessmen that they should become shareholders and help her to purchase the Leichhardt Weekly (to be renamed the Central Queensland News), Gibson took over the running of the paper when her mother became ill in 1963. She was the first woman to be elected President and life member of the Queensland Country Press Association in 1978/79.

In 1921 at Melbourne’s Theatre Royal, Gladys Moncrieff performed the role of Teresa in Maid of the Mountains to great popular acclaim. After travelling through America and Europe for further training, she returned to Australia to play the title role in Rio Rita. Moncrieff made numerous popular recordings and sang on radio. She was featured on the Macquarie broadcasting network in the ‘Gladys Moncrieff Show’.

Ellen Whitty, best known as Mother Vincent, joined the Catholic Order of the Sisters of Mercy in Ireland in 1831. She was elected as Reverend Mother in 1849. Mother Vincent was invited with five Sisters to join the newly formed diocese of Queensland, and arrived there in 1861. She returned to Ireland in 1870 to recruit nuns and take up the position of assistant to the Queensland head of the Order.

While working as an author and journalist, Joice NanKivell Loch became a volunteer medical orderly with Quaker Famine Relief worldwide. In memory of her brother Geoff, who died in France during World War I, she wrote The Solitary Pedestrian. She reviewed books for the Sun-Herald in Melbourne, and worked as secretary to the Professor of Classics at Melbourne University. After the war, with her husband Sydney Loch, Joice travelled to London, then Dublin. Together they wrote Ireland in Travail. In later years, Joice and Sydney developed a strong connection with Greece, where they made their home. At the American Farm School near Thessaloniki, Joyce worked throughout the Greek refugee crisis following the massacre of Greeks at Smyrna.

Mary McConnel founded the Royal Children’s Hospital in Brisbane.

Jean Cullen was an illustrator and humorous artist who worked for Smith’s Weekly in the period 1941-1950. She also created the teenage cartoon character ‘Pam’ for the Brisbane Courier Mail , a character that Marie Horseman continued to develop after Cullen took her own life in 1950.

In 1945, Cullen published an adult illustrated book that was quickly banned called Hold that Halo, or, How to lose it in ten easy lessons. The comic narrated the trials and tribulations of a young woman during the second word war and was a stark commentary on the sexual double-standard as it applied to women.

Elvira Lyons was a founder of Sydney’s Catholic Welfare Bureau in 1941.

Barbara Blackman was an author, music-lover, essayist, librettist, letter writer and patron of the Arts. Former wife of Charles Blackman, she worked for many years as an artist’s model. She conducted countless interviews for the National Library of Australia’s oral history program. In 2006, Blackman was presented with the Australian Contemporary Music 2006 Award for Patronage.

Jean Devanny was a novelist and prominent member of the Communist Party of Australia with a particular interest in the position of women in Australian culture and society. A staunch labour activist, she was also an admirer of the work of birth control activist, Marion Piddington. Initially living in Sydney, she eventually moved to Queensland, where she was caught up in the 1935 canecutter’s strike. Her best known novel Sugar Heaven was based on these events.

Her energy was much admired by many of her contemporaries. Katherine Susannah Prichard, for instance, wrote that ‘Jean Devanny is wonderful. No one I know is so vital, magnetic, absolutely devoted and disinterested. She is a great woman…I wish I could give all my time to Party work as she does.’

A member of the Australian Labor Party, Trish White was elected as the Member for Taylor in the House of Assembly of the Parliament of South Australia at a by-election, which was held on 5 November 1994. She served as a Minister for three years in the Rann Government holding the portfolios of Education, Transport, Urban Development and Planning and Information Economy. She was re-elected in 1997, 2002 and 2006, but did not re-contest the 2010 election.

Described as ‘a tall, angular, brusque, energetic woman, prone to bad language’. Lilian Cooper completed her medical training, despite opposition from her parents, at the London School of Medicine for Women in 1890. She travelled to Australia in 1891, settling in Brisbane, Queensland, where she became the first female doctor registered in Queensland. Some years later, she travelled back to Europe, via the United States. She received a doctorate of medicine from the University of Durham in June 1912.

Cooper settled again in Brisbane after the end of the Great War and established a large and successful practice. In 1926 she bought a house called Old St Mary’s in Main Street, Kangaroo Point, Brisbane and settled there in semi-retirement, becoming a foundation fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in 1928. She retired in 1941 and died in her home on 18 August 1947.

Ann Bressington was elected to the Legislative Council of the Parliament of South Australia as an Independent at the election which was held on 18 March 2006.

Clara Harrod and her sister Emma were among the first white women to settle in the Barrier Ranges district of New South Wales.

A member of a stong Australian Labor Party family, Elaine Darling was the first woman from Queensland to be elected to the House of Representatives in the Australian Parliament in 1980. She was the fifth woman elected to the House of Representatives, and the second female Labor member of that House. She represented the electorate of Lilley until her retirement in 1993.

When Elaine Darling first arrived in parliament in 1980, as one of three women elected, the custom was still to refer to parliamentarians as a collective as ‘The Honourable Gentlemen of the House.’ When the Speaker of the House, Billy Sneddon, called the House to order, he asked the Honourable Gentlemen to sit. Elaine Darling remained standing and, when asked to explain herself, said ‘Mr. Speaker, I am no gentleman’. That custom changed, and slowly, progressively, others did too.

A member of the Liberal Party of Australia, Kathy Martin was elected to the Australian Senate as a Representative for Queensland at the 1974 federal election. She remained in the Senate until 1984, when she resigned to contest a seat in the House of Representatives under her married name, Kathy Sullivan. She served as the Member for Moncrieff, Queensland, from December 1984, until her retirement in 2001. She held the position of Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1997 to 2000. She was the first woman to serve in both Houses of the Federal Parliament and held the distinction of being the longest serving woman in that institution when she retired.

A member of the Australian Labor Party, Mary Crawford was elected to the House of Representatives of the Australian Parliament as the Member for Forde, Queensland, at the 1987 federal election. In 1994 she was appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Housing and Regional Development in the Keating Government and held that position until her defeat at the 1996 election. A complete record of her parliamentary service, including a link to her first speech, can be found in the Parliamentary Handbook of the Commonwealth of Australia (see below).

A member of the Liberal Party of Australia, Kay Elson was elected to the House of Representatives of the Australian Parliament in the seat of Forde, Queensland in 1996. She was re-elected in 1998, 2001 and 2004, but retired before the November 2007 election.

A member of the Liberal Party of Australia, Teresa Gambaro was elected to the House of Representatives of the Australian Parliament in the seat of Petrie, Queensland in 1996. She was re-elected in 1998, 2001 and 2004, but was defeated at the election which was held in November 2007. Her appointments included Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Defence in July 2004; Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Foreign Affairs and trade in 2006 and in 2007 Assistant Minister for Immigration and Citizenship. She returned to the Australian Parliament at the 2010 federal election representing the electorate of Brisbane, Queensland.

Pauline Hanson was elected to the House of Representatives of the Australian Parliament as the Member for Oxley in 1996. Originally a Liberal Party candidate for the seat, the Party disendorsed her in February 1996, less than a month before the election. She contested the seat as an Independent and was successful. She remained in Parliament for one term only, suffering defeat at the 1998 election. Before entering the Federal Parliament, she served for one year as a Local Government Councillor for Ipswich City Council. She continues to hold political ambitions, and has stood unsuccessfully as a candidate for the Australian Senate in 2004 and was a candidate again at the Queensland state election, which was held in March 2009.

A member of the Liberal Party of Australia, Andrea West was elected to the House of Representatives of the Parliament of Australia as Member for Bowman, Queensland in 1996. She remained in Parliament for one term only as she was defeated at the 1998 election.