The Australian Women's Register

Marjorie Tipping was a prolific writer and historian of art and colonial Australia. In 1990, based on her many published scholarly works, she became the first woman to earn the degree of Doctor of Letters by examination from the University of Melbourne. Tipping’s books include Eugene von Guerard’s Australian Landscapes (1975) Ludwig Becker: Artist & Naturalist with the Burke & Wills Expedition (1978), Melbourne on the Yarra (1978) and Convicts Unbound: The Story of the Calcutta Convicts and Their Settlement in Australia (1988).

Tipping was the first woman president (1972-1975) and fellow (1968) of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria. She was a member of the Victorian Council of the Arts and numerous other committees and community organizations, often in a voluntary capacity. Tipping was appointed as a Member of the Order of the British Empire (13 June 1981), for her contribution to the Arts.

Tipping was the patron of and one of the founders of the E W Tipping Foundation for Mentally Retarded Children and Adults, established in 1970. Tipping travelled on six continents; her interests included music, theatre, archaeology, Australiana, and Chinese art.

Source(s): Personal Communication (2002), Who’s Who of Australian Women, Who’s Who 2002.

Ruth Crow and her husband Maurie, long term members of the Communist Party, were active in various progressive movements, in later years becoming especially involved with the North Melbourne Association.

(Source: Historical Note Melbourne University Archives)

Emily Cruickshank was married to F. Cruickshank until 1902 when he died. She was the sole breadwinner for her family of three children.

(Source: Historical Note Melbourne University Archives)

Grace Cuming was the wife of W.J. (Bill) Cuming, of the Cuming, Smith & Co. family.

(Source: Historical Note Melbourne University Archives)

Dorothy Derham was the daughter of H. and Grace Derham (née Taylor and one of four sisters including Mrs Aeneas Gunn), graduated at the University of Melbourne (B.A. 1919, Dip.Ed. 1920, M.A. 1921) and taught English and French to the examination forms at Ruyton Girls’ School. She was first cousin to Alfred and Enid Derham, and a close friend of the latter.

Enid Derham was a poet and an academic who photographed her travels to Egypt, the Mediterranean, Europe, and England during 1927.

Frances Derham was born in Melbourne in 1894 and married Alfred Derham. As a trained artist and qualified art teacher, she taught and lectured for over sixty years and had a profound influence on early childhood art in Australia. After teaching at Preshil in Kew, Frances Derham tutored at the Kindergarten Training College. She was closely involved with Christine Heineg in the establishment of the Lady Gowrie Child Centres in 1939. A former President of the Art Teachers’ Association of Victoria, Vice-President and founding member of the Australian Society for Education through the Arts, Derham died in 1987.

An illustrator of many books on Australian plants, Betty Maloney and her sister, Jean Walker, studied art at Melbourne Technical College (now RMIT).

After teaching art at the National Fitness Council, Melbourne Church of England Grammar School and St Catherine’s School in Melbourne, she travelled to Europe.
With her sister she wrote Designing Australian Bush Garens and Australian Bush Gardens in 1966 and 1967.

The 86 watercolour illustrations used for the publication Proteaceae of the Sydney Region with Alec Blombery are in the Archives of the New South Wales State Library.

Also she illustrated books on mah-jong and thimbles – she maintained a collection of Victorian thimbles, was a co-founder, with her husband, of the Sydney Wagner Society and was involved with volunteer conservation groups, including the Society for Growing Australian Plants.

In the early 1990s her own garden at French’s Forest was approved by the National Trust as a Trust garden and she was presented with a terracotta plaque.

Julie Hammer was the first woman to command an operational unit in the RAAF, the Electronic Warfare Squadron, and was awarded a Conspicuous Service Cross for that command. She was the recipient of the 1996 Association of Old Crows (Australian Chapter) Award for Distinguished Service to Electronic Warfare. She was awarded the 2001 Sir Charles Kingsford Smith Memorial Medal by the Royal Aeronautical Society to recognise her contribution to Australian aerospace and delivered the 2001 Kingsford Smith Memorial Lecture. She is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers Australia, a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society and a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. She was the first woman in the RAAF to become a member of the General List on promotion to Group Captain 1996, and the first serving woman in the history of the Australian Defence Force to be promoted to One Star level, on promotion to Air Commodore in 1999. She served for three years from 1996 to 1998 as one of the Prime Minister’s representatives on the Governor General’s Australian Bravery Awards Council.

Born in Pressburg, Austria-Hungary where her father was the manager of a branch of J P Coats thread mills. The family returned to Paisley, in Scotland, with the outbreak of World War I.
She enrolled in the in the Scottish National Academy of Music in Glasgow, then studied singing under Francis Harford before joining the Carl Rosa Opera Company in 1935 and played at the London Lyceum Theatre and touring South Africa.
In 1937 she joined the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company as a principal soprano, touring the English provinces and later America. In 1939 she was invited to join the Australian Gilbert and Sullivan Opera Company as a principal for a year long tour of Australia and New Zealand.
She met and married Frank (later Sir Frank) Tait, the youngest of the five Tait brothers.
Her first book A Family of Brothers provides a history of the J C Williamson’s theatre enterprise and the contribution of the Tait brothers to Australian theatre. This was followed by Dames, Principal Boys…and all that: A history of Pantomime in Australia in 2001.

(Source: Farewell to a grand dame of light opera by Elisabeth Kumm and Grand lady of the stage by Philip Jones)

Ola Cohn was the first Australian sculptor to carve large commissions free-hand in stone. She created the statue for the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden in Adelaide, South Australia, and carved the famous Fairies’ Tree in Melbourne’s Fitzroy Gardens. Examples of Ola Cohn’s work in bronze, stone and wood are in state and provincial galleries nationwide. On 1 January 1965, Cohn was appointed a Member of the British Empire for her work in the service of art, especially sculpture. Her studio home in Gipps St, East Melbourne, is now known as the Ola Cohn Memorial Centre.

After leaving school Dorothea Henslowe worked as a teacher and governess. During World War I she was a Voluntary Aid at Hornsey Hospital at Evandale after which she returned to teaching. After both her parents died in 1935, Henslowe travelled to Canada and then settled in Battery Point, Hobart. She worked in an honorary capacity for the Australian Board of Mission, a missionary organisation of the Anglican Church that works largely in Asia, the Pacific and with Aboriginal communities, for over 30 years.

Margaret Forrest was one of Australia’s early botanical artists, and the wife of Western Australia’s first Premier. She was born Margaret Elvire Hamersley in 1844, to Edward Hamersley and his French wife Anne Louise (Cornelis). They left London with their two young sons aboard the Shepherd, and arrived at Fremantle in 1837. Edward quickly acquired land around Perth and Fremantle, and became involved in viticulture and horse breeding. In 1843 the family made the first of two voyages back to Europe, and on this first extended sojourn, Margaret was born at La Havre, France, in October 1844. The Hamersley’s returned to the Swan River colony in 1850.

From an early age, Margaret Hamersley showed enthusiasm for watercolour painting, spending much time studying and sketching wildflowers. She later travelled on sketching trips with other noted botanical artists Marianne North and Rowan Ellis. She married John Forrest on 29 February, 1876 at St. George’s Cathedral, Perth, and became heavily involved in political life, accompanying her husband on overseas and interstate trips. Lady Forrest was an active member of Western Australia’s first society for artists and exhibited six wildflower watercolours in the Wilgie First Annual Exhibition of Paintings in 1890. She was a founding member of the Western Australia Society of Arts and the Karrakatta Club which was organised to broaden women’s outlook by bringing them in contact with the fine arts. After her death in 1929, her collection was bequeathed to the Art Gallery of Western Australia in 1933.

Source: http://www.anbg.gov.au/biography/forrest-margaret.html [accessed 15/03/2002] and Australian Garden History, vol. 7, no. 6, May/June 1996, p.12.

While studying at the Adelaide School of Design under H P Gill, Principal, and Louis Tannert, Master of the School of Painting, Rosa Fiveash chose to specialise in painting Australian flora. She was commissioned by the conservator of forests, John Ednie Brown, to illustrate his Forest Flora of Australia and orchidologist R S Rogers to illustrate his works on South Australian orchids. The Botanic Gardens of Adelaide and the State Herbarium have a collection of her original flower paintings. It was Fiveash who introduced the art of china painting to Adelaide.

Ellis Rowan was a botanical artist who had no formal art training. She received encouragement from her family and husband, Frederick Charles Rowan, whom she married in 1873, to develop her own style in painting wildflowers.
Her work was exhibited in both Australia and overseas for which she won a variety of art prizes.

Along with her sister Harriet (q.v.), Helena was educated by her father Alexander Walker Scott, an entomologist and entrepreneur. After the publication of Australian Lepidoptera, the sisters were elected honorary members of the Australian Entomological Society.

Jean Blackburn was a feminist, socialist and staunch advocate of the critical importance of good quality teaching and resources in shaping children’s’ lives. After completing an economics major at the University of Melbourne in1940 she became a research assistant for the Department of Economics. A mother who experienced the isolation of suburban living, she worked with Winifred Mitchell in organising the New Housewives’ Association to help overcome this isolation.

She later completed a Diploma in Education and began her teaching career. In 1969 she was seconded as a consultant to the Committee of Enquiry into South Australian Education issuing the Karmel Report in 1973. This was the first of several such appointments. In 1983 she conducted a public enquiry into Victorian senior secondary education, issuing the Blackburn Report in 1985.

As a young parent with children growing up in Canberra, Lyndsay Connors was one of many whose lives were enriched by the philosophy of Jean Blackburn. Along with many other active members of the public education community and the feminist movement at that time, Lyndsay Connors found in The Karmel Report, Schools in Australia, and, in particular, in Girls, Schools and Society a set of directions for the continuing struggle for quality and equality in education.

Having served on the ACT Schools Authority as a parent member, Lyndsay Connors was then appointed as a full-time Schools Commissioner. Her later appointments included Chair of the Schools Council of the National Board of Employment, Education and Training; and Deputy Chair, Board, Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Following a period of 8 years as a director with the New South Wales Department of Education and Training, she was appointed in 2000 to chair a Ministerial Working Party Review in Victoria, ‘Public Education: The Next Generation. She was the Australian College of Education Medallist, 2001.

In 2017, Lindsay Connors was awarded an Order of Australian in the General Division for ‘distinguished service to national public education policy, to improved school performance and equitable funding delivery, and as a role model and mentor of young women.’

(Source: Biography supplied by Dr Shirley Randell AM)

Vivian Bullwinkel was the sole survivor of the 1942 Banka Island massacre. Post-war, she was Matron of Melbourne’s Fairfield Hospital.

Nancy Wake, whom the Gestapo code-named ‘the White Mouse’ was the Allies’ most decorated servicewoman of World War II. The youngest of six children, Nancy Wake came to Australia with her parents when she was 20 months old. In the early 1930s she went first to England and then Paris as a freelance journalist and there met and married Henri Fiocca, a wealthy French industrialist. When the French government surrendered, after the German Army invaded in May 1940, Nancy Wake joined the French Resistance working as a courier and saboteur. For these ‘special operations in France’ Wake was awarded the George Medal (17 July 1945). Wake worked for the Intelligence Department at the British Air Ministry, after the war. She married John Forward, in 1957, before returning to Australia to live. In December 2001, Nancy Wake left Port Macquarie, New South Wales to live in Europe.

On 22 February 2004 Nancy Wake was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia. The award recognises the significant contribution and commitment of Nancy Wake, stemming from her outstanding actions in wartime, in encouraging community appreciation and understanding of the past sacrifices made by Australian men and women in times of conflict, and to a lasting legacy of peace.

Nancy Wake moved to London to live in 2001. She died there, in Kingston Hospital on 7 August 2011.

Following the birth of her children, Beryl Beaurepaire became involved with charity work and the women’s organisations of the Liberal Party. She summarises her liberal feminist views as follows: ‘If you’re a feminist you believe in equal opportunities and rights for women, but you also believe that women accept equal responsibilities.’ (As cited by Emma Grahame in Australian Feminism: A Companion, OUP, 1998)

Dame Beryl passed away at her home in Mt Eliza, Victoria, on 24 October 2018.

Dame Elisabeth Murdoch was widely regarded as the ‘queen of Australia’s philanthropic community’. She was Patron of the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne, Victoria and supported 110 charitable organisations annually.

Pat Giles commenced her working life as a nurse. After completing a Bachelor of Arts as a mature age student, she was an Organiser with the Hospital Employees Union of Western Australia from 1974 until 1981. In that year Giles was elected as an Australian Labor Party (ALP) Senator for Western Australia, and held the position for twelve years. During this time she was directly involved in the United Nations Decade for Women meetings, leading the government delegation to Nairobi in 1985.

Giles was a founding member and inaugural convenor of the Women’s Electoral Lobby (WEL) WA in 1973 and was the first woman on the executive of the West Australian Trades and Labour Council. She was a member, later Chairperson, of the first Australian Council of Trade Unions Women’s Committee. In 2004 Giles completed her third and final term as President of the International Alliance of Women. In 2010, she was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia.

On 11 June 2001, Haines became a Member of the Order of Australia ‘for service to the Australian Parliament and to politics, particularly as Parliamentary Leader of the Australian Democrats, and to the community.’

Haines was appointed to the Senate to fill a casual vacancy in South Australia in 1977. In 1986 she became the first woman to lead an Australian political party when she was elected leader of the Australian Democrats.

(Source: http://www.itsanhonour.gov.au/honours_list/resultDetail.cfm?awardsID=709341 accessed 17/04/2002 and Emma Grahame in Australian Feminism: A Companion.)

Susan Hawthorne is a writer, publisher and circus performer.

With Renate Klein she established Spinifex Press, specialising in feminist publications, in the early 1990s.

Her biography on CyberFeminism states that ‘she has degrees in Philosophy and Ancient Greek Language and has taught in the fields of Philosophy, Education, Literature and Women’s Studies.’

Kate Deakin (1850-1937) was Alfred Deakin’s sister and close companion. She was tutor to his two eldest children and taught music at various times during her life.

In 1924 Florence Wallace (as she was then known) became Australia’s first certificated woman radio telegraphist and in 1924, the only woman member of the Wireless Institute of Australia. She was the founder and director of the Electrical Association for Women, established in 1934. In 1939 she founded and directed the Women’s Emergency Signalling Corps, which later became the starting point for the Women’s Royal Australian Naval Service (WRANS). Rosemary Broomham wrote in the biography of Florence McKenzie in 200 Australian Women that altogether Mrs McKenzie trained over 10,000 servicemen in Morse, visual signalling and international code, and she trained 3000 women, a third of whom went into the Services. On 8 June 1950 Florence McKenzie was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for her work with the Women’s Emergency Signals Corps.