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 Ă 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 Ă 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.�

W

elcome 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 trodu 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

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I

n 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 be th Ma cqua rie

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.

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“The voice of the century.�

Luciano Pavarotti

Da m e Joa n Su ther la n d

born 1926 / died 2010

Internationally renowned soprano

OM AC DBE

Ca th y Fr eema n OAM born 1973

Olympic gold medal winner

“In life R there is no finish line.”

unning 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.

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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

Em il y Ka m e Kn gwa rr eye born 1910 / died 1996

Artist

“A

n 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

One of the great abstract painters of the 20th century.

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

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“Kngwarreye possessed the true abstractionist’s mastery of form and colour, with the added underpinning of a strong traditional cultural base.”

Susan McCulloch 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.

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Da m e Alice Berr y

DBE born 1900 / died 1978

Country women’s advocate

Berry represented six million rural women in 27 countries.

A

fter 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.

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I

n 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.”

Jessie Va s e y

Sir Ninian Stephen CBE OBE born 1897 / died 1966

Founding president

Vasey raised funds through donations and raffles, soon supplemented

of the War Widows’

with handmade goods sold at the War Widows’ Shop. With about a third

Guild of Australia

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.

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“For women who weren’t born yesterday.”

Ita Bu ttros e Editor and writer

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AO OBE born 1942

“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.”

“Y

ou 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

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Ja n in e Ha in es

AM born 1945 / died 2004

“give a damn” Politician

J

anine 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.

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“W

orking 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 Bea ch le y

born 1972

World surfing champion and creator of the Aim for the Stars Foundation

“To dream takes courage.”

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L

ike 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.

Author

M iles Fra n k lin

born 1879 / died 1954

Franklin produced her best-known novel, My Brilliant Career, while a teenager. Unable to find an Australian publisher, she wrote to Henry

Henry Lawson regarded the book as “Australia’s first real novel”.

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.”

L

ouisa 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.”

Lou isa La wson Publisher

born 1848 / died 1920

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.

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S tep ha n ie Ale x a n d er

OAM born 1940

Chef, food writer and educator

A

ny 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.

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

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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.”

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“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.”

“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 Gilla rd

born 1961

27th Prime Minister of Australia

J

ulia 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.

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B

eing 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,

Nurse and cancer support leader

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.

Ros e Yeu n g

born 1940

Yeung came to Australia from Hong Kong in 1958 and trained as a nurse

“I love the opportunity to share the joys and tears of many and to make many friends along the way.”

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.”

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Va lerie Ta ylor

AM born 1935

Filmmaker, shark expert and marine conservationist

F

or 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.”

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I

n 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.

Tru ga n in i

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.

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Ma y Gibbs

MBE Born 1877 / died 1969

Children’s author and illustrator

W

hen 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

“Gibbs’ work was like a breath of fresh air.

Australian children now had a national identity.”

Australian flora and fauna.

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.

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Pe ggy G la n 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”.

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T

he 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 b e th E va tt The election of the Whitlam government saw Evatt return to Australia as deputy president of the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration

AC born 1933

Lawyer and judge

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.

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.

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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 Ă 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