The Australian Women's Register

Narelle Autio has received two Walkley Awards for photography: in 2000 for ‘The Seventh Wave’, and in 2002 for ‘School of Dance’, both published in The Sydney Morning Herald.

Trained mathematician Dorothy Dolling devoted much of her life to the work of the South Australian Country Women’s Association. During wartime she worked with the Allied Forces Information Bureau. Dolling also enjoyed a long career in journalism, writing for the Adelaide Advertiser from 1936.

Donna Maegrith is a poet and writer who has also worked as a journalist. She has also worked as a sub-editor at the Bulletin. She won a Walkley for her work at there.

Elizabeth Auld was born into a South Australian family that pioneered winegrowing in that state. As a child, she claimed that she wanted to be a spy: she spent her fifty year career working as a journalist for the Murdoch press instead.

She left school (St Peter’s Collegiate Girls’ School) in 1918 and with the encouragement of her godfather, Lionel Gee, she began work on The Register. Within a year, she had joined the reporting staff off that paper. With the help of Sir Trent De Crespigny, a leading physician, she compiled and edited one of the first medical columns in Australian journalism.

From Adelaide, Auld moved to Melbourne, and had a stint on Fleet Street when the Second World War ended. She returned from London to Melbourne, where she worked on the Woman’s Day.

In 1952 she went to Woomera, the only woman journalist to get to the Rocket Range at this time. The article she wrote on this was published on the front page of the London Daily Mail. She later worked on the Martin Collins column of The Australian, and retired in 1974. At age 94 she published a children’s detective novel.

Zoe Benjamin was a kindergarten teacher who founded and edited Australian Kindergarten Magazine. She was a lecturer at the Kindergarten Training College and gave broadcasts on the ABC’s Kindergarten of the Air. Benjamin’s publications included Education for Parenthood (1944), Talks to Parents (1947) and The Schoolchild and His Parents (1950).

Sylvia ran a bus service with her husband Sydney Birdseye from the early 1920s. Buses ran from Adelaide to Mannum, and by the 1930s were running to Port Augusta, Port Lincoln, Streaky Bay and Ceduna.

Dorrit Black held her first solo exhibition in 1930 at the Macquarie Galleries in Sydney. She established the Modern Art Centre to promote and teach modernism, and in 1944 founded Group 9 as a forum for modernist artists.

Laura Corbin founded the non-denominational South Adelaide Creche or Day Nursery in 1887, to care for the children of women who had to work during the day. By the end of her life, Corbin had seen over 37,000 admissions to the creche. She had ten children of her own.

Ruby Davy was the first Australian woman to receive a doctorate in music and to become a fellow of Trinity College of Music, London. Among her many compositions was Australia, Fair and Free, performed in Melbourne and Adelaide in 1934. With Issy Spivakovsky, she established the Davy Conservatorium of Music in her home at South Yarra.

Matilda Evans arrived in Adelaide with her family in 1851. Her first novel, Marian, or the Light of Someone’s Home was completed in 1861 while Evans was working as a governess near Mt Barker. After the death of her husband, Ephraim Evans, she opened a school at Angaston and resumed writing novels. Her works, which always had religious and temperance themes, included Vermont Vale: or Home Pictures in Australia (1866), Emily’s Choice: An Australian Tale (1867), Minnie’s Mission: an Australian Temperance Tale (1869) and Golden Gifts (1869). Evans opened Angaston House in North Adelaide in 1868. A collected edition of her fourteen novels was republished several times.

Gertrude Halley was a founder and treasurer of the Queen Victoria Hospital for Women. An eye and ear specialist, she was an honorary surgeon at the hospital. In 1913 she established the medical branch of the Education Department in South Australia.

Winifred Kiek moved to Adelaide with her family in 1920. She became the first woman to graduate BD from Melbourne College of Divinity in 1923, and began lecturing at Parkin College from 1930. In 1927 she was ordained as a minister of the Congregational Church, making her the first woman to be ordained to the ministry of any church in Australia.

Agnes Milne was a foundation member of the South Australian branch of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, and president of the Bowden Union for 26 years. She campaigned for improved working conditions for women, and wrote articles on women and work for the Journal of Agriculture and Industry. From 1906, Milne was managing the South Australian Co-operative Clothing Company, owned and run by women.

Janette Octoman became a justice of the peace in Adelaide in 1927. She was elected to the state executive of the merged Liberal and Country League in 1932. In 1937 she stood for the seat of Flinders but was defeated by a local farmer. Octoman was a founding member of the Tumby Bay branch of the Country Women’s Association. She stood for party endorsement three times at state level after the 1937 defeat, and once for the Senate, but was unable to win selection.

After working in the hotel and catering industry, Cecilia Shelley took on an active role in the Hotel, Club, Caterers, Tearooms and Restaurant Employees Union (HCCT&REU). She became secretary in 1920 and under her influence the HCCT&REU became one of the largest predominantly female unions in the country. Shelley was also an active member of the Australian Labor Party.

Martha Cox married selector David Cox, and lived and worked with him on their property in the Condobolin (western) district of New South Wales. Under harsh and isolated conditions, she cooked for workers, carried out household chores and farm work, and made her own butter, cheese, jam and soap. Toward the end of her life, she composed a detailed journal of her days on the land.

Anna Stewart, as Industrial Advocate for the Federated Furnishing Trades Society, successfully led the first Australian blue collar union campaign for maternity leave award provisions in 1975. She was a founding member of the Australian Council of Trade Unions Women’s Committee from 1977, representing the Vehicle Builders Employees’ Federation and then the Municipal Officers’ Association from 1982, and contributing to the ACTU’s Working Women’s Charter and the Maternity Leave Test Case. She also stood as a candidate for the Australian Labor Party in the Legislative Assembly seat of Frankston at the Victorian state election, which was held on 5 May 1979.

Jean Daley was the first woman in Victoria to stand for Federal parliament as an endorsed Labor candidate when she stood for the seat of Kooyong in 1922. As woman organiser for the Australian Labor Party, she established the Labor Women’s Interstate Executive in 1929.

A member of the Liberal and Country League, Joyce Steele was the first woman to be elected to the House of Assembly in the South Australian Parliament in 1959. She stood in the seat of Burnside. She was the first woman in the South Australian Parliament to achieve Cabinet rank as Minister for Education in the Hall Government from 1968-69, then moved to the Social Welfare Ministry in 1969. After major electoral reform in 1968, Steele stood for the new seat of Davenport at the 1970 state election and won convincingly. She retired before the 1973 election.

Agnes Rasp was the wife of Charles Rasp, founder of the global mineral resources company, BHP.

Margarethe Von Puttkamer was the first nurse at Broken Hill, New South Wales.

Ida Lucy Croft was the first woman pharmacist in Broken Hill, New South Wales.

As a small child, Kitty Lund entertained the Broken Hill community with her acting and dancing performances on the local stage. In later life, as Kit Harris, she published two popular books on handcrafts.

A member of the Australian Democrats, Heather Southcott was the first female member of that party to be elected to the South Australian Parliament. She was elected as Member for the district of Mitcham in the House of Assembly at the by-election, which was held in early 1982. Unfortunately she was defeated later in the year at the general election, which was held in November.

Heather Southcott passed away in November, 2014. For more information about her important life, please see her entry in The Encyclopedia Women and Leadership in Twentieth Century Australia that is linked to this page.

Nydia Edes was the first female Alderman on the Broken Hill City Council and a recipient of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Medal who worked tirelessly throughout her life for the improvement of women’s conditions.