Category - South Coast Women

Kezie Apps (born in Bega in February 1991) is (in January 2025) the co-captain of the Jillaroos, the Australian women’s national Rugby League team (the current world champions, having won the last three Women's Rugby League World Cup tournaments), and the NSW Sky Blues, the NSW Women’s Rugby League team.
‘I was born with League in my blood,’ Apps suggests...

Pearl Gibbs was an energetic and compelling advocate for Aboriginal rights.
In 1941, on 2WL in Wollongong, she became the first Aboriginal woman to speak on Australian radio. This was by no means her greatest achievement...

Bettie Fisher

Bettie Fisher was an Aboriginal singer, theatre administrator and activist who was once described as ‘a loudmouthed woman, rough, arrogant, independent of men, and has this animosity for whites'...

Elizabeth epitomises the South Coast’s pioneering women. 'They' (as the authors of ‘They Made This Valley Home’ contend) ‘survived isolation, hardships and the risks of childbirth to be homemaker, wife, mother, grandmother, cook, baker, butcher, garment maker, gardener, poultry famer, etc…they were the glue that held the family together.’ And, when called upon, they provided essential services to their fledgling communities...

Rose Hunt (1882 – 1967) was a battler, but Rose saw the value of opportunities! For that, she deserves to be remembered...

Emily Wintle’s fascinating story, as a South Coast pioneer, certainly deserves inclusion here.
But, there is also a second lesser-known story concerning her - one that Mark McKenna, Professor of History at the University of Sydney, indicates (writing in 'Meanjin', Summer 2018) 'is a story that continued to unfold long after it was published, unsettling the memories of the families involved, revealing previously hidden details and shifting at the edges as more information came to light' – that is just as intriguing...

Undoubtedly, there have been many exceptional teachers on the NSW South Coast. Bridget Johnston was one of them – the Sydney Morning Herald even deeming it appropriate to write a piece about her and include a picture of her in the Herald when she retired.
Bridget Ann Ryan was born at Duea River in 1859. She completed her formal education with a two-year teachers’ training course at Blackfriars Teachers’ College on Broadway in Sydney before receiving postings to Moruya Public School...

Ann White arrived in New South Wales from England with her two children on Christmas Eve 1846.
Her husband, Isaac, had arrived in March 1832 as a convict, having been transported following a conviction for housebreaking. In 1842, 1846 and 1847 he was granted Tickets of Leave (these enabled him to work for himself in specified geographical areas), before receiving a Conditional Pardon (which gave him freedom to move anywhere within NSW) in 1848...

Two women are often mentioned as having greatly influenced the history of Eden. One was Sabina Pike who, like Ann White, built a hotel in town and was a hotelier. The other was Flora MacKillop who never resided in or visited Eden, but whose death had a significant impact on the town.
From the 1890s, Sabina Pike (or ‘Aunty Pike’ as she was known) had operated Eden’s Commercial Hotel and then Eden’s Great Southern Hotel...

Flora MacKillop was the mother of Saint Mary MacKillop...

Elizabeth Pearl Corkhill was born on 11 March 1887 at Tilba Tilba, She was the second of three children of William Henry Corkhill, a grazier, cheesemaker and amateur photographer, and his wife Frances.
Pearl grew up on her father’s property, and received her early education from a governess. She later attended Tilba Tilba Public School. After training at Burilda private hospital in Summer Hill, Sydney, she graduated as a general nurse in 1914. On 4 June 1915 she joined the Australian Army Nursing Service, Australian Imperial Force, as a staff nurse...

‘Kitty’ Porter was another South Coast nurse who served with distinction in World War I but, unlike Pearl Corkhill, she was not to enjoy a long and fulfilling life upon her return to Australia...

Bernice Smith was born in Bega in 1903. Her father, Walter Smith, was Editor of the Bega newspaper for 47 years...

Dagmar Berne was born in Bega in 1865 and lived with her family in Denmark House (named by her father, Frederic, after the land of his birth) at the lower end of Auckland Street, down from the Bega Primary School.
When Dagmar was about ten years old, her father drowned. He was an auctioneer who was washed from his horse near Frogs Hollow whilst riding back from a land sale at Candelo. Her mother subsequently remarried...

Dr Grace Cuthbert and Dr Marie Wing both become highly respected Australian specialists in their two different fields of medicine after having been Pambula G.P.s....

Jane Duren (1867 – 1947) was an Aboriginal Yuin woman from Moruya.
She came to prominence as a member of the Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association (AAPA), an early and united Aboriginal activist group, for two very significant reasons: in 1926 she wrote to King George V alerting him of plans to move the Batemans Bay Aboriginal community from its reserve in the town and advising him that Aboriginal children were being excluded from the local primary school, and then in 1927 for her advocacy for the repeal of the existing Aborigines Act and for its replacement by another Act that was more acceptable to Aboriginals and which would make no distinction between Australian Aboriginals and whites.
Jane Duren, therefore, was a significant local pioneer campaigner for Australian Aboriginal civil-rights...

Olive Constable (1876 – 1939) defied the norms of her era to become a successful journalist, editor and businesswoman. Her reportage leaves an enduring legacy.
Olive served as editor of the Moruya Examiner for over a quarter of a century, from 1913 until her death in 1939...

Academic, adult educator, economist, feminist, public servant and socialist, Persia Campbell (1898 – 1974) has, arguably, made more of an impact on the international scene than has any other individual from the South Coast...

Charmian Clift – a legendary Australian writer and a newspaper columnist, and a rebel who cared nothing for convention – was a Kiama girl.
She was born in Kiama in 1923. Her father was a supervisor at the Bombo Headland Quarry and she grew up in a modest quarry workers’ cottage at the southern end of Hothersall Street. Her childhood home is still there and a nearby reserve is named in her honour...

Like Charmian Clift from Kiama, Olga Masters from Cobargo was another extremely successful author whose works drew heavily on childhood experiences of living on the NSW South Coast.
Olga Lawler was born in Pambula in May 1919. Her father, Leo, was a labourer and the family was constantly on the move as he sought work. Eventually they settled in the Cobargo area, and until age 15, Olga attended Cobargo Public School...

Mary Braidwood Mowle (1827 – 1857) is probably best known for having kept diaries describing mid-nineteenth century life in rural NSW. Her first set of diaries, kept from 1850 to 1852, relate to her time living on properties around what is now Canberra. Then, from 1853 to 1855, she kept diaries whilst living in Eden where her husband was the sub-collector of customs.
Her Eden diaries have been described as ‘providing the most intimate glimpse that has survived of life in the mid-nineteenth century in a small but important seaport (Eden). She detailed ships' movements, the arrival and departure of south coast and Monaro families, and whaling operations at Twofold Bay, as well as the day-to-day work involved in raising and educating a young family, the hazards of childbirth and childhood illnesses, and the social interchanges in a small community.’...

Women have made a great contribution to the conservation of the flora and fauna and natural places on the far south coast.
Three local women prominent in the conservation movement on the far south coast were Jean Greenland, Doreen De Oleveira and Hazel Meadham...

Not every South Coast author was to receive national or international recognition, but many became well-known locally. ‘Kate O’Connor’, as an example, was one of these, achieving her ‘fame’ in the Bega area...

Having read this ‘autobiography’ of author Jackie French on her website, we concluded that anything we attempted would be second-rate:
‘Jackie French AM is an Australian author, historian, ecologist and honorary wombat (part time); 2014–15 Australian Children' Laureate; and 2015 Senior Australian of the Year...

Eva Theresa Mylott (1875 – 1920), ‘The Moruya Nightingale’, was a world-renowned contralto and opera singer...

Eva Mylott and Marie Narelle were cousins. Both became world-renowned singers – Eva as a contralto, Marie as a soprano. They occasionally performed together...

Deborah Cheetham Fraillon ‘is the single most outstanding Indigenous classical music artist that Australia has produced’ and is the Chair of Vocal Studies at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. She was born in 1964 in Nowra. Her mother was a Yorta Yorta woman (from lands along the Murray River). At 3 weeks old she became...

In January 1970, The Australian Women’s Weekly ran a double-page spread article about Betty Long, Narooma’s ‘The Kelp Lady’. The article described how Betty and her daughter, then age 17, and son, then age 15, would collect kelp that had been washed up on Narooma’s beaches and painstakingly process it into an...

‘One person can make a difference’ is a quote that has been attributed to many, including John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa and Albert Schweitzer. And if this saying appropriately describes any one person from the NSW South Coast, then Alexandra Seddon surely must be that individual. Alexandra is a wildlife carer who, over several decades, acquired a number of significant South Coast properties that she transformed into conservation areas...

Sleeper cutting was physically an extremely hard job for men. And, therefore, it was not a vocation usually associated with the ‘gentler sex’, ‘the fairer sex’. Irene King, however, was born a sleeper cutter, became a very successful sleeper cutter, and is reputed to be the only woman in N.S.W. to have held a sleeper cutter’s licence.
Irene was born in 1905 in Gippsland, Victoria. Her Dad was a sleeper cutter...

Mary Harriet Bate was a noted collector of botanical specimens for Australian botanists in the 1880s. Her significant contributions to Australian botany are perpetuated and recognisable in the names of several species that she first gathered from the Bermagui River-Mt Dromedary-Tilba area. Mary was born in Sydney in October 1855. She was one of nine children born to Henry Jefferson Bate and Elizabeth Kendall Bate. From the age of 14 until she married at the age of 30, Mary lived on the family property "Mountain View" at Tilba Tilba...

Sarah Porter was born near Wolumla in October 1860, was raised on her parent’s dairy farm, and was educated locally. A childhood accident had left her blind in one eye but, nevertheless, she became a competent horsewoman. In 1886, she married Ernest Alfred Maddock, a solicitor's clerk. By 1890 they had a son and three daughters. Encouraged by her husband, who had begun cycling in England before migrating to Australia, Sarah Maddock began riding a bicycle in 1893....

‘I like people, I like serving them’ was Mrs Mac’s business credo.
And serve the Pambula community and visitors to Pambula she did – for almost 50 years, and up until she had turned 102 years old...