Power of 100 book

One hundred women who have shaped Australia.
Stephanie Alexander Teresa Alfonsi Margaret Alston Betty Archdale Gillian Armstrong Tilly Aston Marie Bashir
Layne Beachley Susan Beal Dame Beryl Beaurepaire Dame Alice Berry Elizabeth Blackburn Cate Blanchett
Raelene Boyle Elizabeth Broderick Quentin Bryce Vivian Bullwinkel Eva Burrows Ita Buttrose Jan Cameron
Mary Bertha Carter Dawn Casey Caroline Chisholm Suzanne Cory Margaret Court Edith Cowan Eva Cox
Betty Cuthbert Marjorie Dalgarno Elizabeth Evatt Miles Franklin Dawn Fraser Cathy Freeman Mary Gaudron
May Gibbs Julia Gillard Peggy Glanville-Hicks Vida Goldstein Evonne Goolagong-Cawley Jean Hailes Janine
Haines Gabi Hollows Janet Holmes à Court Sister Elizabeth Kenny Jill Ker Conway Nicole Kidman Priscilla
Kincaid-Smith Joan Kirner Emily Kame Kngwarreye Katie Lahey Louisa Lawson Catherine Livingstone Helen
Lynch Dame Enid Lyons Elizabeth Macarthur Elizabeth Macquarie Eve Mahlab Tania Major Naomi Mayers
Wendy McCarthy Kim McKay Florence McKenzie Saint Mary MacKillop Dame Nellie Melba Naomi Milgrom
Dame Roma Mitchell Lucy Morice Sam Mostyn Dame Elisabeth Murdoch Juliana Nkrumah Oodgeroo Noonuccal
Margaret Olley Lucy Osburn Mary Penfold Eileen Pittaway Lady Primrose Potter Mary Reibey Gina Rinehart
Joan Rosanove Sarina Russo Edna Ryan Louise Sauvage Carol Schwartz Ann Sherry Fiona Stanley Jessie
Street Dame Joan Sutherland Lyn Swinburne Valerie Taylor Truganini Jessie Vasey Nancy Wake Edna Walling
Nancy Bird Walton Marion Webster Helen Williams Tammy Williams Fiona Wood Rose Yeung Carla Zampatti

One hundred women who have shaped Australia.
Stephanie Alexander Teresa Alfonsi Margaret Alston Betty Archdale Gillian Armstrong Tilly Aston Marie Bashir
Layne Beachley Susan Beal Dame Beryl Beaurepaire Dame Alice Berry Elizabeth Blackburn Cate Blanchett
Raelene Boyle Elizabeth Broderick Quentin Bryce Vivian Bullwinkel Eva Burrows Ita Buttrose Jan Cameron
Mary Bertha Carter Dawn Casey Caroline Chisholm Suzanne Cory Margaret Court Edith Cowan Eva Cox
Betty Cuthbert Marjorie Dalgarno Elizabeth Evatt Miles Franklin Dawn Fraser Cathy Freeman Mary Gaudron
May Gibbs Julia Gillard Peggy Glanville-Hicks Vida Goldstein Evonne Goolagong-Cawley Jean Hailes Janine
Haines Gabi Hollows Janet Holmes à Court Sister Elizabeth Kenny Jill Ker Conway Nicole Kidman Priscilla
Kincaid-Smith Joan Kirner Emily Kame Kngwarreye Katie Lahey Louisa Lawson Catherine Livingstone Helen
Lynch Dame Enid Lyons Elizabeth Macarthur Elizabeth Macquarie Eve Mahlab Tania Major Naomi Mayers
Wendy McCarthy Kim McKay Florence McKenzie Saint Mary MacKillop Dame Nellie Melba Naomi Milgrom
Dame Roma Mitchell Lucy Morice Sam Mostyn Dame Elisabeth Murdoch Juliana Nkrumah Oodgeroo Noonuccal
Margaret Olley Lucy Osburn Mary Penfold Eileen Pittaway Lady Primrose Potter Mary Reibey Gina Rinehart
Joan Rosanove Sarina Russo Edna Ryan Louise Sauvage Carol Schwartz Ann Sherry Fiona Stanley Jessie Street
Dame Joan Sutherland Lyn Swinburne Valerie Taylor Truganini Jessie Vasey Nancy Wake Edna Walling
Nancy Bird Walton Marion Webster Helen Williams Tammy Williams Fiona Wood Rose Yeung Carla Zampatti
Tess Livingstone

“It is time to ignite
the passion for
future generations
of women and
girls to achieve
their ambitions,
both personal
and professional.”

Welcome to The Power of 100, a wonderful collection of stories
of achievement. The year 2011 marks the 100th anniversary of
International Women’s Day, a global day celebrating the economic, political
and social achievements of all women around the world.
In tr odu c tion
The Westpac Group conceived The Power of 100 as our way to recognise
Australian women who have helped to shape our nation. From the early pioneers
through to the social justice fighters, scientists, business leaders, philanthropists,
artists and performers, writers, political and community leaders, we have chosen
100 women who have progressed the growth of our nation and in doing so
have more broadly helped women in Australia.
I have been inspired by the stories of these remarkable women who have helped
to shape Australia. There are, of course, names which will be familiar to all, but
I was most excited to learn about those women who are not household names –
the women who have until now gone mainly unrecognised.
This is by no means a definitive list and I’m sure there will be vigorous conversations
about the many more women that we have not been able to include in the book!
It is time to ignite the passion for future generations of women and girls to achieve
their ambitions, both personal and professional. I hope that like me, you find The
Power of 100 a dazzling reminder of what each of us can achieve.
Gail Kelly
CEO, The Westpac Group
3

In a vital decade in which the Blue Mountains were first crossed by white
explorers in 1813 and the colony’s first bank was established in 1817, Sydney
progressed under the steady, benevolent guidance of Governor Lachlan Macquarie,
supported by the talents, interests and compassion of his vivacious wife, Elizabeth
Macquarie. Like her husband, Macquarie hailed from the western highlands of Scotland.
E liza beth Macquarie born 1778 / died 1835
Sydney pioneer
After disembarking on 31 December 1809,
Macquarie took a keen interest in the welfare
of the many neglected children she noticed
roaming Sydney’s streets. She became patroness
of the Female Orphan School and of the Native
Institution School established at Parramatta in
1814. Several years later, a visitor related how
she met about 30 of the children, who “under the supervision of Mme Macquarie … the
advances they have already made are truly astonishing, and think how valuable a work!”
Like generations of later Sydneysiders, Macquarie enjoyed watching the boats on Sydney
Harbour from the rock formation on the eastern headland of the government gardens,
a vantage point now known as “Mrs Macquarie’s Chair”. It was at her suggestion that the
road inside the government Domain, named Mrs Macquarie’s Road, was built. Her idea
was to give others a chance to enjoy the vistas and sea breezes that she loved.
The Macquaries’ son, Lachlan, was born in Sydney in 1814. When the family sailed
for Britain in 1822, leaving a happier, more prosperous society than the one they found,
it was a wrench for them and for the throngs of people who cheered them from small
boats and the harbour shores.
4

“The voice
of the century.”
Luciano Pavarotti
Dame Joa n Su therla nd OM AC DBE
born 1926 / died 2010
Internationally renowned soprano

Ca th y Freema n
OAM born 1973
Olympic gold medal winner
“In life
there
is no
finish
line.”
Running barefoot and free in Mackay, north Queensland,
where she remembers the scent of melaleuca and eucalyptus
trees, Cathy Freeman, a “little Aboriginal girl who could run fast”,
had one dream – winning an Olympic gold medal. It came true on
25 September 2000 in the 400 metres in Sydney, the result of
rare natural talent, years of hard work and family support. “In the
last 60 metres of the race, I felt the noise of the crowd for the first
time. Their cheers had a strange effect on me – it was like I was
being lifted up and carried towards the finish line.”
Gold medal dream achieved, Freeman had to find new dreams
and new mountains to climb because, in her words, “in life, there’s
no finish line”. Through her Catherine Freeman Foundation she is
focused on literacy among young indigenous girls, particularly in
the community of Palm Island where her mother was born. The
Foundation creates educational and wellbeing programs through
early literacy teaching, school scholarships, after-school activities,
non-truancy incentives and opportunities for children to holiday
in other parts of Australia to gain a wider perspective.
8

Vida Golds tein born 1869 / died 1949
Melbourne suffragist and feminist
“All the men in parliament
cannot represent one woman
as adequately as one woman
can represent all women.”
Vida Goldstein, 1909
9

Emil y Kame Kn gwarreye
born 1910 / died 1996
Artist
One of the
great abstract
painters of
the 20th
century.
“An Aborigine community in the boundless red desert of central Australia
nurtured a gifted artist who was full of dynamism and creativity.
Emily Kame Kngwarreye, who lived in a remote region on the edge of the
Simpson Desert for more than 80 years, had no exposure to the Western
art world for most of her life. Nevertheless, she is highly admired by
international art experts and collectors as one of the great abstract painters
of the 20th century. The sophisticated artistic expression in her paintings
is often compared with that of Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock.
In fact, the development of her art is regarded as being parallel to that of
contemporary art itself.”
So wrote Japanese art critic Akino Yoshihara during the 2008 retrospective
The Genius of Emily Kame Kngwarreye at the Osaka National Museum of Art.
Among the 120 works displayed was Big Yam, one of Kngwarreye’s last works,
its pink, earthy lines painted on black, evoking patterns of cracked desert
surfaces, yam vines and ancestral connections. Osaka National Museum of
Art director Akira Tatehata wept when he first saw the exuberant painting
at the National Museum in Canberra, looking on it as “a religious painting,
sublime and dignified – one of the great paintings of the 20th century”.
Kngwarreye did not begin painting on canvas until she was in her late
70s, when she painted Emu Woman in dot style in 1988, at the outset of an
extraordinary eight-year blaze of creativity in which she produced 3000
works. Kngwarreye had been introduced to Western materials in the early
16

“Kngwarreye possessed the true abstractionist’s
mastery of form and colour, with the added
underpinning of a strong traditional cultural base.”
1980s at a batik-making workshop at her community, Utopia, 230 kilometres
north-east of Alice Springs where she was an Anmatyerre elder and leader of
women’s ceremonies and song cycles. While aware of the response her work
generated, Kngwarreye was happy to remain in the place she loved, where she
painted until the last weeks of her life.
In 1996, Susan McCulloch, co-author of the Encyclopaedia of Australian Art,
wrote of Kngwarreye’s “ability to take risks, continually to pursue new stylistic
avenues. Where many artists, especially in later years, are content to repeat
past successes, Kngwarreye, despite failing eyesight, would explore new
avenues, usually in conjunction with her previous styles.’’
In 2004, Kngwarreye’s Earth Creation was auctioned for more than $1 million,
a record for an Australian female artist.
Susan McCulloch
17

Dame Alice Berr
y DBE
born 1900 / died 1978
Country women’s advocate
Berry represented six million rural
women in 27 countries.
After attending a one-teacher school at Cobar in north-west New South
Wales, where her father managed a goldmine, Alice Berry grew up
understanding the challenges of rural Australia. As an adult, it was those
challenges – limited education and healthcare services, rough roads, irregular
mail and poor communications – that motivated Berry’s work as a Country
Women’s Association leader.
Alice married Henry Berry, a wool classer and grazier, in 1921. After working
a sheep property near Tumut in the Snowy Mountains they moved to outback
Queensland with their two daughters in 1927. Aware of the potential of the
CWA to bridge isolation, Berry founded a new branch at Mount Abundance,
near Roma. Five years later the family moved to the 17,000-hectare Woolabra
station near Charleville.
Practical and skilled, Berry worked hard on the family property. After Henry’s
death in 1948 she stepped up her involvement in the CWA, serving as deputy
president and president in Queensland, and leading delegations to Associated
Country Women of the World conferences in Copenhagen in 1950 and Toronto
in 1953. She was the first Australian elected ACWW president, a job she did
with good humour and energy for six years, representing six million women in
27 nations. In 1962, Berry was elected national CWA president. In retirement,
she served the organisation for years as archivist.
22

In October 1945, shortly after her husband Major-General George Vasey
died in a plane crash near Cairns after surviving Crete, Greece and the
Kokoda Trail, Jessie Vasey channelled her grief in a letter to other widows:
It hurt my husband very much that the families of the men he had
loved so greatly, the men who had died so uncomplaining for Australia,
should suffer privation and want because of that sacrifice.
“It was her inspiring leadership
that made it certain that, after
World War II, the widows of that war
would not be left to suffer neglect.”
Sir Ninian Stephen
Jessie Vase y CBE OBE born 1897 / died 1966
Founding president
of the War Widows’
Guild of Australia
Vasey raised funds through donations and raffles, soon supplemented
with handmade goods sold at the War Widows’ Shop. With about a third
of war widows lacking adequate housing, she established the Vasey Housing
Auxiliary, investing £1000 in properties that escalated in value through
subsequent decades as they housed hundreds of widows and children.
The Guild’s motto remains: “We all need each other. It is in serving each other
and in sacrificing for our common good that we are finding our true life.”
Vasey was also instrumental in securing an increase in the war widow’s
pension and government support for war widows’ housing. She provided
a voice and focal point for a generation of war widows whose needs
could easily have been overlooked by government.
23

“For
women
who
weren’t
born
Ita Bu ttrose AO OBE born 1942
yesterday.”
Editor and writer
26

“Through it all, that name’s been more than
a calling card, it’s been a brand, a mission
statement, a promise and a guarantee.”
“You know you’ve made it when, like Madonna,
Kylie and George W., the world is on first
name terms with you. Ita Buttrose reached that
status decades ago and for much of the time
since she’s been the most famous woman in the
Australian media. She ran our most successful
magazine through its golden period, showing an
unerring feel for her readers’ lives. She worked
for every major media company and mogul in the
country. Then, finally, she went out on her own,
launching a magazine named after who else but
herself. Through it all, that name’s been more
than a calling card, it’s been a brand, a mission
statement, a promise and a guarantee.”
Andrew Denton
27

Ja n in e Ha in es AM born 1945 / died 2004
“give a damn”
Politician
Janine Haines, the first woman to head an Australian
political party, led the Australian Democrats from
1986 to 1990, effectively wielding the party’s balance of
power in the Senate to lift environmental issues high on
the political agenda and strengthen Medicare legislation
to make the system more user-friendly. Haines helped
energise a generation of young women to become more
politically active, especially in South Australia, where her
campaign slogan “Give a Damn” had a strong impact.
She was an articulate, popular figure across the political
spectrum and with the public, who admired her dry sense
of humour. In one of her wry, memorable observations
she said: “It has been my misfortunate lot over the last
25 years of my life to belong to three of the most reviled,
underrated and overworked professions in the world.
In that time I had been, occasionally simultaneously, a
mother, a teacher and a politician. If one of me wasn’t
being blamed for the problems of the world one of
the others was.” When Haines died of a neurological
condition in 2004, Democrat founder Don Chipp paid
tribute to her as the best leader the party ever had.
40

“Working four jobs to fund my overseas
ventures and contest endeavours meant
very little time was left for surfing itself. A typical
week would consist of 60 hours waiting tables, folding
T-shirts, teaching people to roller blade or delivering
pizzas and a total of one hour of surfing. Not the best
regime for becoming a world champion, but with every
working hour my passion and perseverance grew.
I appreciate everything I achieved because I had to
work so hard for it, but by the time I made it on tour
and to competition day, I was completely exhausted!
The Layne Beachley Aim for the Stars Foundation
was established to prevent girls and women alike
from having to go through similar challenges. A little
bit of finance or just the knowledge someone believes
in her personal ambition is all it takes for a female
to achieve greatness and ultimately happiness.”
La yn e Beachle y born 1972
World surfing champion and creator of the Aim for the Stars Foundation
“To dream takes courage.”
41

Like Emily Bronte (Ellis Belle) and George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans),
Miles Franklin wrote under a masculine-sounding pseudonym out
of a well-founded suspicion that no mainstream publisher would take a
female author seriously, let alone one who challenged prevailing social
mores about the role of women as compliant, obedient homemakers.
Franklin grew up with a keen appreciation of the best and the worst of life
in the Australian bush. After relative prosperity on a grazing property
near the Brindabella Ranges outside Canberra, drought and
loss of wealth drove her family to a struggling dairy farm near
Goulburn, which had a small house with a leaky roof.
Miles
Author Fra n klin born 1879 / died 1954
Henry Lawson
regarded
the book as
“Australia’s first
real novel”.
Franklin produced her best-known novel, My Brilliant Career, while a
teenager. Unable to find an Australian publisher, she wrote to Henry
Lawson for help. Through Lawson, who regarded the book as “Australia’s
first real novel”, it was published in Edinburgh.
Struggling to make a living, Franklin worked as a secretary in Chicago
and London, and as a volunteer nurse in Ostrvo, Macedonia, during World
War I. In Australia, the publication of All that Swagger in The Bulletin in
1936, after it won the S. H. Prior Memorial Prize, enhanced her reputation.
Franklin was a complex character. While craving independence she feared
loneliness; while deeply suspicious of marriage she enjoyed flirting; and
while eager to forge her own path she remained devoted to her family.
Generous in her promotion of other writers’ work, Franklin endowed her
£9000 estate to create the Miles Franklin Literary Award, Australia’s most
prestigious literary prize.
54

“If you want
real practical
wisdom, go
to an old
washerwoman
with a black
eye, patching
clothes at
the Rocks.”
Louisa Lawson was a gritty, intelligent woman who turned adversity
into opportunity. Born and raised in rural poverty in central New
South Wales, at 18 Lawson married Norwegian-born goldminer Niels
Larsen, whose name was later Anglicised. From 1867 to 1877, with her
husband frequently away, Lawson struggled to feed her five children,
working a 40-acre selection at Eurunderee, near Mudgee, where
she milked cows and took in sewing and washing. Writing was her
relaxation and escape. Some of her poetry, about the death of her
infant daughter, Annette, was published in the Mudgee Independent.
After the Lawsons separated she and her children moved to Sydney,
living at the Rocks, where she identified with the women around her,
“doing their best to bring up a family on the pittance they get from
their husband – and keep those husbands at home and away from the
public-house” as she told The Bulletin years later. “And listen to their
talk – so quiet and sensible.”
Louisa La wson born 1848 / died 1920
Publisher
Bolstering her own funds by running boarding houses, Lawson bought
the struggling Republican newspaper, producing most of the writing
with her eldest son, Henry. In 1888 she founded The Dawn, a monthly
journal for women that operated successfully until 1905. The Dawn
took a feminist perspective on political and social issues as well as
carrying features on health, fashion and food, and its speaking club
for women formed the heart of the women’s suffrage movement.
At one point, Lawson employed 10 women as printers and typesetters,
drawing the wrath of the all-male typographical union which demanded,
unsuccessfully, that she sack her staff. Lawson’s press published her
son Henry’s first book, Short Stories in Prose and Verse, in 1894.
55

Step ha n ie
Alexander OAM born 1940
Chef, food writer and educator
Any keen home cook knows that the best cookbooks never
remain pristine but tend to be slightly splattered and
dog-eared from constant use. In at least 500,000 homes,
Stephanie Alexander’s iconic work The Cook’s Companion,
published in 1996 and revised in 2004, feels like an old, trusted
friend. Her motivation for writing the 1100-page book was a belief
that “we were raising children and young adults with little, if any,
understanding of what to do with fresh food in their daily lives”.
After graduating from university and working as a librarian, Alexander travelled in France,
one of her favourite destinations, and returned to open her first restaurant in 1966. Her
second restaurant, Stephanie’s, in a National Trust building in Melbourne’s Hawthorn, was,
in her words, “at the heart of everything culinary in Australia” for 21 years. She trained
staff, pioneered new techniques and championed small producers of fresh ingredients.
In 1997, with three partners, she opened the less formal Richmond Hill Cafe and Larder.
In 2001, Alexander turned her attention to educating children about growing, harvesting,
preparing and sharing healthy food, creating a kitchen garden at Melbourne’s
Collingwood College. When the concept flourished, she established the not-for-profit
Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation in 2004 to raise funds and expand
the program nationally. By 2010 the Foundation was running in 140 schools in all states,
supported by government funding.
56

“There is no greater joy than
sharing food, conversation and
laughter around a table.”
57

N a n c y Bird Wa lton AO OBE born 1915 / died 2009
Pioneer aviator, and commercial and outback
medical service pilot
“All through the ’20s,
it was the age of the
arrival of aeroplanes.
There was a magnetic
line between myself
and any aeroplane
in the sky.”
“The freedom of the air. The freedom of
flight. You completely remove yourself
from the world. And you can voluntarily
remove yourself from ... everything that’s
near and dear to you. And you voluntarily
return. You haven’t seen Australia unless
you see it from the air. The coastline, the
colours of the inland. The claypans, the
forests. It’s just all so beautiful. You’d
never see that from the road. People
climb mountains to see these things.
You see that every time you take off.”
72

“Australia has offered me
opportunities that would
have been beyond my
parents’ understanding
when they stepped off that
boat in Adelaide in 1966.”
Ju lia Gillard born 1961
27th Prime Minister of Australia
Julia Gillard, a “£10 pom” who arrived as an immigrant from Wales at
age four, made history in 2010 as the nation’s first female prime minister.
A strong competitor with a good sense of humour and an easy style, Gillard
was educated in state schools in South Australia and at the University of
Adelaide and the University of Melbourne.
A lawyer by profession and a former industrial advocate and political staffer,
Gillard entered federal parliament as the member for Lalor, in Melbourne’s
outer western suburbs, in 1998. In her maiden speech she noted: “Australia
has offered me opportunities that would have been beyond my parents’
understanding when they stepped off that boat in Adelaide in 1966. It would
have been inconceivable to them that their child, and a daughter at that,
could be offered the opportunity to obtain two degrees from a university
and to serve in the nation’s parliament.’’ At the August 2010 election, Labor,
under Gillard, was re-elected.
73

Nurse and cancer
support leader
Being diagnosed with cancer and undergoing treatment is traumatic
but difficulties are compounded when the patient is unfamiliar
with English and European culture. After surviving kidney cancer in 1992,
Rose Yeung put the experience to positive use. In 1995 she helped found
CanRevive, a voluntary non-profit organisation that supports cancer
patients and their loved ones, especially Chinese-speaking Australians.
Yeung continues to oversee fundraising.
Rose Yeun
g born
1940
“I love the
opportunity
to share
the joys
and tears of
many and to
make many
friends along
the way.”
Yeung came to Australia from Hong Kong in 1958 and trained as a nurse
at St Vincent’s Hospital, in Sydney’s Darlinghurst. Her family has a history
of cancer, and through her own vigilance when symptoms arose, her illness
was diagnosed. Her left kidney was removed but she was able to avoid
chemotherapy. “I was 52, ready to enjoy life a bit, having brought up three
children and cared for an extended family. I was not ready to go. Having
come through the experience I thought it would be good to help others and
give hope. The focus is on emotional support.”
CanRevive has six staff and 60 volunteers who make home and hospital
visits, provide phone support and help groups of Cantonese- and Mandarinspeaking
patients in the Sydney CBD and at Hurstville in the city’s south.
Medical professionals offer monthly seminars in Cantonese and occasionally
in Mandarin and English with interpreters. Bereavement counselling and
carers’ support is also provided. More than 200 new patients are helped each
year. In 2005, Yeung received a New South Wales Community Services Victor
Chang award and in 2009 a Rotary International Community Service Award.
“I love the work and the privilege to travel the journey with so many others.”
80

Va lerie Ta yl o r AM
born 1935
Filmmaker, shark expert
and marine conservationist
For decades, the films and books
of shark experts Valerie and Ron
Taylor have enthralled the world and
been used by the makers of Hollywood
films. Their first major underwater film
production, Shark Hunters, was sold
to Australian and American television
in 1963. The Taylors are pioneers
in the field of shark research and
conservation. Valerie is the patron of
the marine division of the National
Parks Association of NSW and in 2008,
along with her husband, was awarded
a Lifetime of Conservation Medal by
the Australian Geographic Society.
“Take the opportunity. Seize the day. Go for it.
We’ve always done that, pushed ourselves and
done things when perhaps we shouldn’t have.
And it’s paid off.”
81

In photographs, Tasmanian indigenous leader Truganini looks out on a
world that hurt and baffled her with an intense, unflinching gaze. Born
in south-east Tasmania, Truganini was brought up in her traditional culture,
hunting and diving for shellfish. Before European settlement in 1803,
Van Diemen’s Land, as it was then known, had several thousand indigenous
inhabitants. By 1830, historian Geoffrey Blainey records that: “Disease
had killed most of them but warfare and private violence had also been
devastating.” Influenced by the fact that her mother and brother had
been killed by Europeans and her sister captured by sealers, Truganini
and her tribal husband, Woorrady, worked with the local Protector of
Aborigines, George Augustus Robinson, who promised her people a
better life if they moved to Wybalenna, a settlement on Flinders Island.
The settlement was a failure, however, and Truganini was among the
last 47 inhabitants transferred to Oyster Cove, south of Hobart, in 1847.
There she resumed a semblance of her traditional life.
Truganini born c 1812 / died 1876
Indigenous leader
When the last known full-blood indigenous male on the island, William
Lanney, died in 1869 and his body was dissected by scientists, Truganini
feared for the fate of her own remains after death. She spent her last
years in Hobart and was buried in the grounds of the female penitentiary.
Her body was later exhumed and her skeleton displayed in the Hobart
Museum until 1947. In 1976 her wishes were finally honoured when she
was cremated and her ashes scattered in the d’Entrecasteaux Channel.
She suffered mightily from being
born in the wrong place at the wrong time.
90

Ma y Gibbs MBE Born 1877 / died 1969
Children’s author and illustrator
When Prince Christian of Denmark – the first European prince with
Australian blood – was born in 2005, Australia’s gift was a classic:
a first edition of May Gibbs’s Snugglepot and Cuddlepie. Gibbs, who arrived
in Australia from Kent, England, at age four, “could almost draw before I could
walk”. After growing up in Perth, she studied art in London before becoming
a newspaper illustrator and cartoonist.
In 1913 she settled in Sydney’s Neutral Bay, where her home, Nutcote Cottage,
is now a popular museum. There she created the gumnut babies’ images, initially
on the cover of Ethel Turner’s book, The Missing Button. English-born Turner
had made her mark with Seven Little Australians, published in 1894, in which
she wrote not of “model children” but of Australian children with their “lurking
sparkle of joyousness and rebellion and mischief”.
Gibbs and Turner were part of an important literary era that captured children’s
imaginations with stories in Australian settings. Writing with a distinctive and
fresh Australian voice for an audience raised on European tales and traditions,
Gibbs created culturally relevant stories within a world based on native
Australian flora and fauna.
“Gibbs’ work
was like a
breath of
fresh air.
Australian
children
now had
a national
identity.”
Sarah Prince
When it appeared in 1918, Snugglepot and Cuddlepie was a hit and has not been
out of print since. Gibbs dedicated the book to “The Two Dearest Children in the
World, Lefty and Bill” – her parents. She left her estate to the New South Wales
Society for Crippled Children, the Spastic Centre of New South Wales and UNICEF.
91

Peggy
Glan ville-Hicks born 1912 / died 1990
“The strength of her music is
impossible to guess from her charm
and humour. Her femininity is expressed in her
untiring protectiveness toward other composers:
her flair for quality is unerring.” Anaïs Nin
Composer
Glanville-Hicks, a high-profile music critic for the New York Herald
Tribune from 1948 to 1958, left two important legacies. One was her
body of work – ballet scores, chamber music, concertos and operas,
two of which were based on novels by Thomas Mann and Robert
Graves. The second was the Composers’ House in Paddington,
Sydney, which, under the terms of her estate, is managed by a
trust to provide “a haven and peace of mind which will enable the
composer in residence to further his or her creative work”.
114

The distinguished daughter of a prominent family, Elizabeth Evatt
graduated as the first female winner of the University of Sydney
law medal in 1954. Admitted to the bar in New South Wales and at
London’s Inner Temple, Evatt completed a master of laws degree at
Harvard Law School and from 1968 to 1973 worked at the England
and Wales Law Commission.
E liza beth E va tt AC born 1933
The election of the Whitlam government saw Evatt return to Australia
as deputy president of the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration
Commission. It was her subsequent work, however, chairing the Royal
Commission on Human Relationships, that put her at the heart of the rapid
social changes of the 1970s. The Commission’s recommendations ushered
in the highly controversial 1975 Family Law Act, allowing no-fault divorce
on the sole ground of irreconcilable differences after 12 months’ separation.
When the Family Court was established, Evatt became its first chief judge.
Lawyer and judge
Recalling that period in 2005 Evatt concluded: “Some of us may have
thought that this advanced model, based on equality, no fault and
conciliation, was ‘the end of history’ so far as family law was concerned.
But like Fukuyama, we were wrong. The story is by no means over ...
Sadly, the family law system has not yet achieved its optimum effects.
It is still struggling to find the best way to cut through the thicket of legal
technicalities and to pour soothing oil on the troubled waters of acrimony
and resentment, which so often accompany marriage breakdown.”
In 1988, Evatt became president of the Australian Law Reform Commission
and chancellor of the University of Newcastle. She was the first Australian
elected to the United Nations Human Rights Committee and was a judge
of the World Bank Administrative Tribunal and a commissioner of the
International Committee of Jurists.
115

The Power of 100. One hundred women who have shaped Australia.
Stephanie Alexander Teresa Alfonsi Margaret Alston Betty Archdale Gillian Armstrong Tilly Aston Marie Bashir
Layne Beachley Susan Beal Dame Beryl Beaurepaire Dame Alice Berry Elizabeth Blackburn Cate Blanchett
Raelene Boyle Elizabeth Broderick Quentin Bryce Vivian Bullwinkel Eva Burrows Ita Buttrose Jan Cameron
Mary Bertha Carter Dawn Casey Caroline Chisholm Suzanne Cory Margaret Court Edith Cowan Eva Cox
Betty Cuthbert Marjorie Dalgarno Elizabeth Evatt Miles Franklin Dawn Fraser Cathy Freeman Mary Gaudron
May Gibbs Julia Gillard Peggy Glanville-Hicks Vida Goldstein Evonne Goolagong-Cawley Jean Hailes Janine
Haines Gabi Hollows Janet Holmes à Court Sister Elizabeth Kenny Jill Ker Conway Nicole Kidman Priscilla
Kincaid-Smith Joan Kirner Emily Kame Kngwarreye Katie Lahey Louisa Lawson Catherine Livingstone Helen
Lynch Dame Enid Lyons Elizabeth Macarthur Elizabeth Macquarie Eve Mahlab Tania Major Naomi Mayers
Wendy McCarthy Kim McKay Florence McKenzie Saint Mary MacKillop Dame Nellie Melba Naomi Milgrom
Dame Roma Mitchell Lucy Morice Sam Mostyn Dame Elisabeth Murdoch Juliana Nkrumah Oodgeroo Noonuccal
Margaret Olley Lucy Osburn Mary Penfold Eileen Pittaway Lady Primrose Potter Mary Reibey Gina Rinehart
Joan Rosanove Sarina Russo Edna Ryan Louise Sauvage Carol Schwartz Ann Sherry Fiona Stanley Jessie
Street Dame Joan Sutherland Lyn Swinburne Valerie Taylor Truganini Jessie Vasey Nancy Wake Edna Walling
Nancy Bird Walton Marion Webster Helen Williams Tammy Williams Fiona Wood Rose Yeung Carla Zampatti