Newcastle East Women’s History Walk

Researched by Jude Conway, on the suggestion of the Newcastle women’s group AWE and the
Gender, Generation and Culture Network at the University of Newcastle

map by AWE
1. Awabakal
Stand at the top of the park at the end of Scott Street,
overlooking Newcastle ocean baths.

Newcastle harbour was called Muloobinba by the

Awabakal people who frequently camped on the southern
foreshore.

Awabakal men and women both went fishing. The

men used spears, while the women used hooks and
lines and supplied most of the fish. The hooks were
made of shell or bone and if they made their lines the
same as the Worimi women from the north of the
harbour they were made out of the inner bark of
young kurrajong trees

Awabakal woman Killigrant, back from fishing,

painted by convict artist Richard Browne when at the
Newcastle penal colony

Lieutenant Coke based in Newcastle in 1827 noted

that Awabakal women had the first joint of their little
finger of the right hand cut off as it interfered with the
drawing
in of the
fishing
lines.
An eye
witness
in
Sydney
wrote that it was the top two joints of the left
hand and was done when the females were
about three or four months old

With maybe a baby on their shoulders, or even

heavily pregnant the Awabakal women would
have been precision-balanced in their flimsy
bark canoes.
They had small fires on clay pads in the canoe
and cooked and ate the first catch of fish
before taking the rest back to camp to be
shared
Image by Richard Browne shows fire in canoe

Awabakal women also jumped off the rocks to catch lobsters, and told Lt Coke the water
was still at a depth of 10 or 12 feet.
2. Newcastle Ladies Surf Club
Look over the beach from site 1 rather than walk down to the beach, and imagine.

After Newcastle Surf Life Saving Club was established on 3rd January 1908, ten days later
women formed the Newcastle Ladies Surf Club. They gave an exhibition at the first surf
carnival held on the beach on March 28 that year, the first of its kind in Australia and
probably the world. Members of Sydney Club who competed were so much impressed by
the ability in the surf of the women’s team in the surf that they invited them to compete in a
carnival at Bondi on April 10. Attracted by the well-publicised appearance of the women’s
team thousands turned up. Members of the team were Misses Williams, Grahame, Halbert
and Muir and Mesdames Dunning and Dann. Their rescues were made after swims of more
than 150 yards and they were given a standing ovation. The Newcastle ladies surf club
membership grew to 62 in next to no time. The club had its own clubhouse.

The NSW Surf Life Saving Association stepped in. It banned women from taking part in any
form of surf competition. The women’s club eventually went out of existence.

Influenced by the second-wave women’s movement in the late 1970s a campaign to allow
women to join surf clubs and compete gained momentum. Some men regarded the proposal
as ‘blasphemy. The Surf Life Saving Association finally saw reason in November 1980

Newcastle Herald, page 1, 3 November 1980

Note: Female lifesavers in England had been patrolling beaches since 1955 and despite
Australia being the country that pioneered surf lifesaving, it was one of the last to admit
women.
3. Dymphna Cusack, writer
Move down sloping grass to look
at the side of 1 Murray Avenue

Possibly best known for helping

write Caddie the Story of a Barmaid
which was made into a film and for
Come in Spinner with Florence James, set in a hairdressing salon in a posh hotel in Sydney in
world war two. Made into a TV series. Cusack was born in Wyalong 1902; completed an arts
degree at Sydney University and became a high school English and History teacher.

Because she had a strong sense of social justice and episodes of an illness known as dog’s
disease, Dymphna had a number of run-ins with
the Department of Education. She reckoned in
1942 they “thought of the only place she was
likely to be bombed’ and posted her to Newcastle
Girls High.”

Dymphna fell in love with the city from when she

first arrived and wrote of the coast line sweeping
north and south in innumerable bays fringing the
great sweep of the Pacific, the harbour sparkling
below the winding shores of the estuary … the
twin arms of Nobbys and Stockton encasing it like
the pincers of a giant crab. She even liked the ‘sign
and seal of Newcastle’s existence, the smoke
stacks of BHP pouring out billowing white clouds
that turned grey as they rose in the upper air’

Newcastle was crowded with military personnel

in 1942 so it was difficult to find a place to find
accommodation. After a long search, found the
Perfect Flat, the Perfect View and the Perfect
Landlord, a flatlet in a run-down house in Murray
Avenue Newcastle East.

Dymphna in Newcastle with Timoshenko the cat she found 1942

(Photo located by Marilla North)

After the bombing of Darwin on 19 February 1942 the belief was that, as the main producer
of munitions, Newcastle was likely to be next. So with the other teachers she spent next
fortnight preparing girls high school for air raids.

No maps could be bought in town because, according to the locals with what Dymphna
called their salty sense of humour, all the maps had been given to the Japanese who visited
BHP before the bombing of Pearl Harbour and start of the Pacific war.
On Sunday night 8 June Dymphna was in bed when around 2.30 a.m. ‘a terrific explosion
sounding like crack of doom’ shook her building, rattled the windows and all the empty tins
she was collecting to help build a spitfire fell off the shelf. She jumped out of bed and saw
the sky was a blaze of light lit with a bluish glare and realised the Japanese were now
shelling Newcastle. The warden knocked on her door ordering everyone to the air-raid
shelter. She went down the dark narrow staircase and stepped
into the half-light of the brown-out and went round the corner
into Parnell Place.

MOVE across to the start of the mid-street park in Parnell Place

The second number 3 on left of the map – this is where the
underground shelter used to be

It was only a couple of hundred yards, but for Dymphna and her
friend Mary it seemed the shells, which were whizzing by in all
directions were aimed directly at them. They scuttled down the
stairs of the air raid shelter and groped for seats in the pitch
darkness. One old lady said to Dymphna ‘don’t you worry lass. I bin through three
depressions and they’re much worse.’ They were in the shelter for about 2 hours. When the
detonations subsided ‘we crept up out of the trench and watched the electric wires doing a
brilliant fandango’. Dymphna took the day off school to write an article for the Newcastle
Morning Herald

At the start of 1943 Dymphna was transferred to Newcastle Technical High School because
of the shortage of male teachers. It was based at the Tighes Hill Technical College because
the new school, partly funded by BHP, wasn’t finished (it is now Merewether High).
Dymphna was an inspirational teacher to a class of under-achievers but left at the end of
1943 and was invalided out of teaching in 1944 – found out later that the dog’s disease she
had was MS.

Out of her time in Newcastle came

• the play Shoulder The Sky set in an Australian League canteen based upon one at Tyrrell
Hall to service the troops from Stockton’s base camp;
• another play Morning Sacrifice about a female teachers staff room which could have been
based on some of the teachers at NGHS
• her novel Southern Steel depicting the tumultuous life of wartime Newcastle

The fictional families were blends of real people living in and

around Parnell Place in 1942. Her landlord the owner of 1
Murray Avenue, a wharf labourer & his wife with a son in the
RAAF, were a close-knit working-class family who had
showed her great kindness, and Dymphna learnt how the war
and hardships affected their lives.

When she was writing Southern Steel in London and the South
of France in 1950-52, she wrote to Miles Franklin that
[whatever the view] was outside her window, all she could see
were the beaches, the smokestacks, Nobbys and the thriving
port of ‘...Newcastle, with its ugliness, its exploitation, its
gallantry – it’s such a perfect epitome of the whole bloody
system.’
When the book was published to acclaim in 1953, one man wrote from Western Australia to
say it was untrue that Newcastle had been shelled. The media had been very restrained in its
provision of information during the war. Southern Steel was translated into German and
serialised in berlin in 1974 as ‘Clouds over Newcastle’.

In the 60s and 70s Dymphna returned to Newcastle occasionally. In 1963 she was guest
speaker at an Australian China Friendship Society meeting at Newcastle City Hall. In 1964
Dymphna had a ‘trip down memory lane’, back to the top of town and 1 Murray Avenue,
and throughout the 1970s an English lecturer at Newcastle CAE, Jacqueline Thorpe, used to
invite Dymphna up from Sydney to lecture on Australian literature

Dymphna Cusack died in 1981.

In 1991 Hunter Valley Theatre Company scripted and performed

Southern Steel with Susie Porter appearing in her first professional
performance

4. Del de Glorion aka Adele Wynne, involved in theatre and community activism
Stand in park across from 25 Parnell place

Del de Glorion family was born into a theatrical

family. The family name was Wynne but ‘de Glorion’
was chosen when Del’s grandfather and great uncle
wanted a more spectacular name for their flying
trapeze act in the 1860s performing in Britain and the
continent.

In 1876 they came to Newcastle, and after a

successful season at the Theatre Royal the act
disbanded and the de Glorion brothers settled in
the city, setting up an advertising business.
Del’s great uncle began managing the Victoria
Theatre in Perkins street Newcastle. Del’s father
William began working there at age 11 as
program boy and later became stage manager.
Del, born in 1917 was a cranky baby and her mum used to pay a girl to take her for walks.
One time Del’s dad let them into a matinee performance at the Victoria Theatre. The
producer happened to mention they’d forgotten a prop to represent a baby in the last act.
Del’s father said ‘well my little baby’s out there’. So in the final scene Del was slipped
unseen into the cot and the actor lifted a proper baby out. The theatre went ‘oohhhh’. The
producer said to bring her down for every performance but her dad said ‘not on your life’.
That was Del de Glorion’s debut into the theatre world, not that she remembered anything
about it.

From a young age Del learnt dancing from

Madame Clark-Hawkes in a little room up in
the top of Palings music shop in Hunter Street.
She thought all the kids doing pliés looked like
pot plants.

When a director of a Shakespearean company

came the ballet school to ask for fairies for a
season of Midsummer Night’s Dream. Del, about
5 or 6, in the first theatre performance that she
could remember was chosen for Mustard
Seed… Bottom would ask ‘what’s your name
and I said ‘Mustard seed’. Then I had to say
‘What’s your will? And he’d say ‘Nothing .. but to help Peasblossom scrrrrratch my back’.

Del recalled that years after Ken Mantle was playing Bottom and he said ‘scratch my back’
in rehearsal so she told him ‘no, no, no, It’s …. scrrrrratch my back’.

When Del was 12, 1929 the family built and moved into Wynn Court at 25 Parnell Place

Robinson
Real Estate
images

When she left school Del became a

stenographer, and during WWII, she
worked at the Royal Newcastle Aero Club
in Broadmeadow (now District Park) which
was doing jobs for the RAAF, including
making aircraft parts.

Del working at the desk

Del joined the old
Newcastle Choral Society
ballet. Examples of her
theatrical activities are High
Jinks Newcastle City Hall,
1946, Del last on the right
The following year Del
acted in Noel Coward’s
Blithe Spirit at the City Hall.

In 1954 John Laman, who had formed a Gilbert & Sullivan Society, asked her to dance the
gavotte and the cachucha for the Gondoliers which played in the City Hall and Maitland and
Scone. That invitation was how she came to belong to the G&S Society for 23 years. When
they were doing the Yeoman of the Guard John Laman didn’t feel well and asked Del to
produce. She said ‘I’ll work it out but you take
charge’. He’d give her carte blanche to do what she
liked, then they’d discuss it. As well as ‘assistant
producer’ she was often choreographer e.g. in 1956
for HMAS Pinafore she had to teach eight “sailors”
the hornpipe.

Del who was now secretary for a Newcastle surgeon,

never married so had the time to also become a
producer for the Comedy Players at the Roxy, for
example Gypsy Love in 1966 and New Moon in 1968.
She used to do 2 productions a year - G&S & Comedy
Players - she was on the go all the time and never
missed a rehearsal, These were amateur groups and
any money raised was given to charity. When Del
retired as producer of Comedy Players in the 1970s,
Marjorie Biggins took over the job.

Image from www.the.herald.com.au/story/1296420/acting-great-dies-aged-96/#slides#2

That decade Del joined the Newcastle East Residents Group which helped save much of this
area of Newcastle East from development. When she needed care Del de Glorion had to
move out of her home in 2011. She died in a Mayfield nursing home in 2013.
5. Jean Perrett teacher, community activist
Move along the park until opposite 3 Parnell Place

Jean Perrett was a quiet modest woman who was not

easy to research. Possibly born in 1913 in Kempsey and
posted to Newcastle as a teacher. A Jean Perrett passed
the home nursing examination held at the Newcastle
Ambulance Transport Brigade on 12 December 1939.

She was either a primary teacher or there was a Jean

Perrett who was a long-serving typing teacher at Home
Science High where she played records on a wind-up
gramophone and the students had to type to the rhythm
of the Toreador’s Song from Carmen.

In 1960 it is definite that ‘our’ Jean Perrett helped form

the Newcastle East Civic Association which complained about council proposals for Pacific
Park and wanted to participate in development decisions made about the area. Doug
Lithgow from the Northern Parks and Playgrounds Movement remembers Jean from the
campaign to stop the council flattening out the sand hills at Nobbys for car parking and
using the breakwater for road to the carpark! Jean was teaching at the Catholic School on the
corner of Tyrrell and Perkins Streets and in August 1966 she invited Doug to speak with her
class about the fight to stop a motorway being put through Blackbutt Reserve.

In 1971, the Askin Liberal government proposed ‘‘developing’’ Newcastle East by

demolishing the historic houses, and replacing them with high-rise. The Newcastle East
Residents Group (NERG) was formed in response by Jean Perrett and other residents. In
1972 Jean, as secretary of NERG was calling for a “freeze” to stop a car park being built next
to Customs House. In 1973, the time of green bans, the residents group asked the Builders
Labourers Federation (BLF) to ban all demolitions and building east of Watt Street until a
plan in which the public participated was formulated.

In 1975 the Lord Mayor Joy Cummings and the council were concerned that derelict and
unoccupied buildings like the Golden Sands Hotel in Telford Street needed to be
demolished. Joy promised that the residents group would be consulted on any future
development proposals. The residents voted for retention of bans on demolitions.
In 1975 Mundey and other NSW leaders of the BLF were expelled from the union by the
federal leadership under Norm Gallagher.

Image from Newcastle Morning Herald 1976

In 1976 the council wanted to demolish buildings other than those agreed to in consultation.
The BLF National president cum NSW secretary came to town to say that the buildings
should be demolished immediately. The secretary of the Newcastle Building Workers
Industrial Union said the green bans were in operation until his group said they were not.

NERG asked for more effective assistance from the Newcastle Trades Hall Council (NTHC)
to endorse the green ban. They did. Keith Wilson, NTHC secretary said ‘Jean Perrett was
miles ahead of us. We can’t speak too highly of Jean Perrett, very quiet unassuming placid
person but deep there she had a fighting heart second to none. She was sharp as a tack.’

In 1977 NERG was attacked for holding up council’s plans for the top end of town. Ald
Robertson of the Citizens Group, told an audience of businessmen that there was a ‘A little
lady in Newcastle East with a gestetner and typewriter who is running the city’.

In a NMH article entitled ‘Little

lady who turned the tide’ in
1980, politics journalist Brian
Cogan wrote that Jean Perrett
was undoubtedly one of
NERG’s tough minded members
who stalk the local corridors of
power with some effect.

Jean also played a prominent part in the creation of the foreshore park. So that ‘little lady’ in
Newcastle East and her friends ensured that a small but significant part of the city reflected
the aspirations of the local residents.

Jean Perrett died on June 1 1985 at the Mater hospital in Waratah.

Walk down Stevenson Place to the top of the stairs

– second number 5 on the map

In 1997 Newcastle City Council honoured

Jean Perrett by naming these stairs after her
and installing a plaque
It says in part ‘Jean Perrett with fellow
residents successfully fought a long and
courageous battle to protect the urban and
social fabric of the east end … attributed to
the vision of Jean Perrett.’
6. Zaara Street Parlours – red light district
Make your way to Zaara Street

In 1927 with the building of the Zaara Street Power Station

(demolished 1975), the status and value of the East End deteriorated. I
don’t know when the brothels, as they were called then, first started in
the area but in the 1960s the local gossip was that Zaara Street was a
red light district.
One house in Zaara Street that was reputedly a former brothel had two doors in every
bedroom. There were three brothels all up but only ever two operating at the same time.

Move along the street towards Scotties cafe

In 1976 one local woman lived in a flatette at 25 Zaara St paying $15 a week. She drove past
in the 1980s there was a red light out the front and it was a brothel.

25 Zaara Street highlighted in pink - no longer there

It was mentioned in Lost Newcastle (on Facebook) that a naïve young man supposedly went
in one time and enquired about the rates, "do you charge by the minute or hour or inch?"
The madam said "that depends young fella, drop your strides and I'll give you a quote. "

Up to 1979 the brothels were illegal but the Newcastle Drug Squad was reputed to have a
vested interest, so the brothels had problem free operations. After 1979 the NSW
government took a laissez faire-approach. In the 1980s the brothel at Zaara Street was a
member of the Newcastle East Residents Group and paid their dues regularly. In that
decade my mother Josephine Conway would sometimes visited the brothels in Zaara and
Union Streets to give the sex workers flyers about International Women’s Day and Women’s
Electoral Lobby

In 1994 or 1995 the last brothel in the street number 25 was closed under special order of the
local police and the names of all the women picked up by the cops were published in the
Newcastle Herald. Most of sex workers moved to other places in Newcastle but one woman
who had kept her occupation secret from her family and friends suffered so badly by the
outing she left town. Junkies moved into number 25 and it was gutted by a fire caused by a
candle around the end of the 1990s.
7. Joy Cummings a trailblazer, visionary, first female Lord Mayor in Australia in 1974
Make your way to Pacific Park –next to the Joy Cummings
Centre

A Different Perspective by her daughter Margaret Badger.

Mum grew up in Ramsgate on Botany Bay on the doorstop of Australia's then only National
Park - the Royal. It was there that her lifelong love of nature and the environment began.
In 1942, in the middle of the war, her father was transferred to Newcastle as officer in
residence at the Newcastle East Fire Station. They lived in Hellenic Court in Telford Street
adjacent to the Scott Street station.

Mum was not happy. Sooty and neglected, the Zaara Street power station, the railway
shunting yards and the derelict bond stores made it an unlovely place. Then she found the
beaches and the harbour and it was love at first sight. Even being woken by the air raid
siren, responding to shelling by a Japanese submarine, and forced to take shelter on a cold
June night, did not blunt her affections.
She worked as a seamstress, on uniform
detail, joined the Women's Firefighters
Auxiliary and reconnected with the Labor
Party, which she had joined at 15 in
Ramsgate.

She met Dad at a dance in Tyrrell Hall,

Telford Street in 1943. They married in
Christchurch Cathedral in 1946.

They shared a love of politics, history and

a sense of humour. Dad was, and always remained, her greatest fan.
They raised four children in Mayfield. Apart from the usual, "love 'em, feed 'em and keep
'em safe", she taught us about history, music, literature and politics, heritage and the
environment. We received in the post, battered copies of the Manchester Guardian and the
New Yorker. She and dad gave us a "world view", albeit a slightly leftist one. Both our
parents were very involved in ALP politics. In 1968, she a six year stint as an alderman for
East Ward on the Newcastle City Council, and for most of that time she was the sole
woman. A series of threats to local parks had sent her decidedly into mainstream politics.
She wanted to make a difference.

In 1974 came her surprise election, by her peers, as

Lord Mayor. One of the newly elected non-Labor
alderman had "crossed the floor". This made her
Australia's first female LORD MAYOR. (Only capital
cities and Newcastle and Wollongong have Lord
Mayoralties.)

While the media obsessed over what to call dad, she

got down to business. She was to be elected five times,
always with a substantial majority.

She left politics in late 1983, after a debilitating stroke robbed her
permanently of the power of speech. The outpourings of grief
and sympathy stunned and overwhelmed our family. We knew
she was popular but.... From heads of state, to prime ministers,
to celebrities, to her beloved Novocastrians young and old and
from all walks of the politic divide they came. The late and
former conservative Lord Mayor, Frank Purdue, himself old and
frail, caught the 104 bus every day for two weeks to sit quietly
with dad at the Royal. The florists ran out of flowers and the
newsagents ran out of sympathy cards.

It was one thing to be elected, another thing to succeed. And to SUCCEED AS A WOMAN.
BUT SUCCEED SHE DID! Yet if she is ever to be more than a footnote in history, I hope it
will be about more than her many FIRSTS and AWARDS.
I would like to tell you about her character, and how it expressed itself on the political stage.
Only her family could share some of the following anecdotes.
1. SHE HAD A DEVILISH SENSE OF HUMOUR
She once exchanged gifts with Dame Edna. She received a gladiola and Edna was delighted
by a drip spoon holder for jam making.
She was invited by jazz singer and comedienne, Su Cruikshank to "open" her new fence.
Mum came, made a speech, cut the ribbon and stayed for cucumber sandwiches.
She and Anne Von Bertouch would collect leftover food from council functions and sneak
across to the Hunter Valley Theatre Company to feed hungry thespians. She never lost that
streak of naughtiness, even after her stroke. She was once visited by some pious, bigoted
church people. Speechless herself, once they had delivered their bigotry, she showed them
the door, via her hallway, where she gleefully pointed out her Charles Blackman print,
"Black Sabbath".

2. SHE HAD WARMTH AND FRIENDLINESS

She was a "Call me Joy" type of person. Even the Queen called her Joy. She had respect for
the office of LM but an informality that put people at ease.
When the university awarded this self-taught woman an honorary Masters, Professor
Godfrey Tanner proclaimed, She walks with kings but has "the common touch". (Kipling)
Ruth Cracknell proclaimed her, "The best bloody Lord Mayor in Australia".
3. SHE HAD HONESTY, SINCERITY AND DETERMINATION
She fought like a lioness for years to keep the state dockyard open. When it finally got the
thumbs down she asked the government if she could tell the workers. She addressed them
on the site and instead of hisses and boos she received a standing ovation. They knew she
had done her best for them and they applauded her courage in facing them. She often said
that was her best moment in politics.

4. SHE SOUGHT CONSENSUS AND COMMON GROUND

She gained the support of captains of industry and trade unions for her straightforward and
trustworthy statements and opinions. Consensus was also her aim on council.

5. SHE WAS AN EXCELLENT NEGOTIATOR

We take the Foreshore Park for granted. Many organisations and individuals lent their
voices and their efforts to securing that park, but it was prime real estate and we know
governments don't give it up easily. As well as being appointed as Chair of the first NSW
Women's Advisory Council, Premier Wran also made her Chair of the NSW Bi-Centennial
Committee. It was no accident that the park became Newcastle's Bi-Centennial gift. Some
years ago I met Michael Egan, a former NSW treasurer and "holder of the purse strings". He
told me that most politicians were envious of Mum. He said her charm and powers of
persuasion was something worth bottling.

Parks were Mum's passion. Pacific Park, Islington Park, Civic Park, Blackbutt Reserve,
Richley Reserve, Shortland Wetlands, all were created, expanded or preserved under her
watch. Only Birdwood Park was lost and that was in her early years as an alderman. (Photo)
Someone once remarked to me that they always slept soundly when mum was in the chair.
She would protect what they valued.
6. SHE HAD AMAZING STAMINA
Seven day weeks, eighteen hour days were common. She tried to do the job of Lord Mayor
and Lady Mayoress. It was a punishing schedule but no-one was left out. She took as much
pleasure in taking a turn at the crease at a primary school cricket match as she did
addressing or chairing a meeting. Even after her stroke she outlived the prognosis by nearly
twenty years. After dad's death, she got on with life, cheerfully alone in her own home.
That's stamina and determination.

7. SHE WAS WITHOUT VANITY, PRETENSIONS OR MATERIALISM

Mum was a naturally beautiful woman, inside and out. Her smile could light up a room but
she had no consciousness of it. She bought clothes without trying them on, then wore them
to death. She put her makeup on in the car. She was known to spray her hair with Mortein
and on one occasion, Santa Snow. She was awarded an AM and promptly lost it. Mortified,
we helped DAD request a replacement.
She never got around to filling in the form Who's Who sent her every year. Consequently
she never appeared in it. She never had to burn her bra because she hardly ever wore one.

8. She had a GENUINE REGARD FOR THE PEOPLE SHE SERVED

She enjoyed her association with so many
community groups, from churches, towns,
schools and gown, ethnic communities, sporting
communities, the returned service men and
women, the environmental groups, artists,
musicians and theatre groups.
She would gain as much pleasure from putting
on the kettle and making tea at an AA meeting,
from joining in a sing-along at an elderly citizens
centre as she would from dining at government
house or welcoming prime ministers.

9. SHE HAD A STRONG SENSE OF SOCIAL

JUSTICE, EQUITY and INCLUSION
This came from her progressive politics. Our
city, in conjunction with the cathedral, was the first to fly the Aboriginal flag on a public
building. She was a true friend to the Aboriginal community and addressed many a meeting
from the back of a truck. She held a full Civic reception for the Awabakal and Worimi
communities. Minnie Heath recalled this on the night she received The Awabakal Prize. He
marvelled at the kids scooting around city hall and being served drinks and cake as if they
owned the place. Because as far as mum was concerned, they did. The late Mick Davison
performed on the didj at her funeral, a source of great comfort and joy to her family.
She loved conducting naturalisation ceremonies, creating new citizens. Years before it
became official she had the words of the anthem changed to "Australians all" from
"Australia's sons" to not only include women but to include our new citizens as well. As a
member of the National Bi-Centennial Committee she raised it at national level. The rest is
history.

10. SHE HAD A VISION AND AN ABILITY TO THINK OUTSIDE THE SQUARE
She envisioned a thriving working harbour and an industrial heartland and a prosperous,
beautiful, artistic, egalitarian and green city.
She lost the abattoirs but gained the suburb of Warabrook, our city's first public/private
partnership.
Another thinking outside the square moment occurred when she was approached by the
daughter of an elderly Wickham lady. She was continually distressed by the noise
emanating from a small factory next door and the rubbish that accumulated on the path
outside. The daughter had written letters to council and followed it up with phone calls. She
was assured that action was taken but nothing changed. Mum went to visit the lady at her
home, and was able to see the problem first hand. Instead of filing yet another report or
request, she popped in next door as asked the workers if she could talk to them for a
moment. They gathered around, recognising mum. They were mostly young and she
appealed to their better natures. It worked. They did make the effort.
My final "outside the box" moment was actually recalled to my sister and I on the day of
mum's death. Very weary and distressed, we had just left the hospital and heard on the car
radios that a whale had calved or brought he calf into the shelter of Glenrock lagoon.
Crowds of people, children, parents and grandparents had gathered on vantage points along
the cliff tops to watch this wonderful spectacle. It reminded my sister and I of a moment
thirty years before, when a young female alderman rose in council and moved a motion that
the council add its voice to the bans on whaling. She was scoffed at and ridiculed by some
who declared it not to be council business. Her reply was simple. "Generations of people in
coastal areas have anticipated and enjoyed the whale migrations for centuries. It is very
much Council business". Mum understood that what gladdens the heart, enriches our lives.
The arrival of this mother and baby whale was a fitting salutation to her life and work.

Joy Cummings died aged 79 in July 2003

In 2004 the Newcastle City Council named the path along the foreshore from the Crowne
Plaza to Nobbys the Joy Cummings promenade as a tribute to the outstanding contribution
she made to the city saving the foreshore.

You can try and track down this plaque on the

promenade one day.

If you have the opportunity to go into the Joy

Cummings Centre there is a beautiful stained glass
window next to the Pacific Street entrance
Joy found the window on one of her inspections of
council assets in the since demolished Frederick Ash
warehouse in Burwood Street near Civic Park. The
window, titled Two Red Roses Across the Moon and
created in the art noveau-pre-Raphaelite style, depicts a
poem of the same name by William Morris. Joy had it
restored and her family donated and installed the
window in the centre in 2015.

Images from Margaret Badger, University of Newcastle

Cultural Collections and the Castanet Club Facebook
8. International Women’s Day, May Day and many other
marches gathered and started or finished at Pacific Park or

1948 5th March –at lunchtime a number of women carrying placards marched along the
footpath from Union Street to Pacific Park where several speakers addressed a large
gathering protesting against the rise in the cost of living. Rain fell steadily throughout the
meeting ‘but did not seem to dampen their ardour’

1965 International Co-operation Year (aimed at the elimination of international tension)

Monday 8th March the Newcastle Union of Australian Women organised an international
Cooperation and Disarmament Walk from Pacific Park at 12.30 to the Trades Hall

There were no more International Women’s Day (IWD) marches in Newcastle until 1979

People gather for the

1991 IWD march.

Photo taken by
Josephine Conway
9. Matron Irene Hall
At the southern, top end of Pacific Park
find this plaque

Image from
A Golden Age of Nursing: Royal Newcastle Hospital 1891-1991

Irene Hall was born at Ryde in 1888 and was trained to be a nurse at Sydney hospital. She
was became the matron of Royal Newcastle Hospital, situated across Ocean street from
Pacific Park, from 1915 to 1958, 43 years! [The hospital is now luxury units and the main
hospital for the city is John Hunter hospital in Rankin Park.]
During those forty-three years matron Irene Hall’s name was synonymous with the hospital
as it grew from a small district facility to a large modern one.
Under her watch dedication and discipline were characteristics of a well-trained nurse. In
Matron Hall’s induction address to new trainee nurses she would say ‘you will find my
school can be likened to the British army. There is one difference – they have slackened
discipline, I have not’.
Hall provided substantially more training than
the NSW nursing registration board’s minimum
requirements. At a 1933 conference of Hunter
Valley matrons she spoke about the difficulty of
examining trainees when they were all taught
differently. As a result she edited the collected
notes of all the matrons and it was published in
1935 as the Matron’s Handbook of lectures to
trainees.

Josephine Conway (nee Coleman) wrote these notes

in 1939, her first year of nurse training under Matron
Hall.

Reminiscences of Matron Irene Hall by Joy Todd who trained under Matron Hall as Joy
Beveridge (graduated 1951)
Matron was a tall graceful lady. She moved very quickly with her head held high. She had
flashing brown eyes which never missed a thing. I am sure we all stood in awe of her and
respected her. Any nurse who dared to go to her office without putting on a clean apron and
belt, with her hair tucked well under her cap, would have been sent away immediately.
Seniority was very important. Matron did not believe that senior nurses should be familiar
with junior staff nurses. She said you could not get obedience from someone [if] you were
on the same level.
We were not encouraged to stand and talk to the maids in the Nurses Home [now the Youth
Hostel across Pacific Street] or the wards maid, except to say good morning.
She was fiercely defendant of the reputation of her school and of the nurses home. Nurses
going to the beach had to leave from the side entrance. She would sit on her balcony above
the main entrance and could view the appearance and dress of those entering her domain.
She could also view Pacific Park and comments had been made to relevant people about
what she thought was undesirable dress or behaviour.
Beryl Moore said during the 2nd World War food parcels were sent to England. [Gatherings
were organised to get contributions]. One guest donated 2 boxes of matches to the collection.
Miss Hall thought this was insulting so the evenings were cancelled.
Once a year a dance in the main recreation room was allowed. This was led by Sister
Condon and her husband. We were expected to wear full uniform, this included a pair of
scissors tucked into our belt. It would often dislodge and fly out during twirling efforts. We
were allowed one male guest. Not every nurse had a male guest, so often partners were
drummed up. On one occasion 5 boys turned up from a sporting club wearing Club blazers.
There were no more dances allowed.
We were allowed the breakage of three thermometers, further breakages the nurses replaced
by buying from the local pharmacist for 1 shilling.
Miss Hall took every opportunity to attract favourable attention to her training school, she
had pictures and articles about the hospital published in the local paper. When the Duke of
Gloucester visited Newcastle [21 May 1946] his schedule had to be altered because of the
weather. An impromptu visit to the hospital was arranged. Miss Hall arranged a guard of
honour of newly uniformed nurses to meet the prince.

There is a picture of her walking with the Duke through the guard.

Image from University of Newcastle Cultural collections

When the present Queen visited Newcastle in 1954 the entourage was not scheduled to stop
or visit the hospital. Miss Hall fixed this problem. She purchased a large bouquet of flowers,
and when the Royal car was about to pass the Nickson wing, she sent Barbara Howarth out
to confront the car. The car stopped, the flowers were accepted and we all had a good view
of the Royal couple. Does anyone remember the phone call from another ward telling you
Miss Hall is doing the rounds.
I’m sure the nurses who trained under her hoped she lived long enough to sign their
certificates.
On retirement Miss Hall lived in Wirraway units [in Watt St – now demolished]. I think that
was [because] she still wanted to keep an eye on the hospital.

Final comments from Jude Conway

In the history of the nursing at Royal Newcastle Hospital, one nurse agreed that Matron
Hall’s discipline was very hard but it was what made the training so good, and because of
that nurses who trained at Newcastle or Prince Alfred were given preference for
appointments anywhere in Australia or England.
Irene Hall died in the hospital in 1961. In commemoration the newly constructed nurses’
home was named the Irene Hall building. Archaic rules were crumbling and nurses were
given the new option of living out. Most did and after a few years the building was no
longer required. It was sold for private development and renamed Essington which is a sad
loss to local female history. However the plaque is a reminder about the ‘distinguished
matron’

10. Margaret Henry, historian, all-round activist

Her 1988 NSW state election campaign launch was in Pacific Park

Born in 1934, Margaret attended Newcastle

Girls High School. Her father a fitter and turner
was being constantly asked by his workmates
at the Cardiff railway workshops “why are you
educating your girls? They’ll only get
married.” Marg topped English in her leaving
certificate year.

In 1954 when the queen first came to Newcastle

she and a friend slept overnight in Hunter
Street to ensure a good view.

She graduated from New England University

and taught English and History at Home
Science High School when Staff used to wear
hats, gloves and stockings, remembered for
how straight her seams were. Margaret was
advised “don’t ever buck the system” after a
run-in with the headmistress.

Poster from Margaret Henry papers

Marg was politicised in the 60s by a job teaching current affairs with the Department of
Adult Education when she read everything she could find about the war in Vietnam, civil
rights, Aboriginal issues and the decolonisation of Asia and Africa. One of her first letters to
the editor was to criticise an Anglican bishop over Vietnam. Margaret Henry had started
bucking the system. The next time the queen came to Newcastle she was demonstrating
about something or other
From 1968 Margaret Henry worked in History Department at Newcastle University as a
tutor. All the lecturers were males who would socialise together in the afternoon and not
invite the women tutors. Marg stuck it out and eventually was promoted to lecturer.
When feminist novelist Fay Weldon, was in the country in 1982 Marg arranged for her to
give the 1982 Eddy Memorial Lecture on ‘Feminism in Literature’ at the University of
Newcastle. Marg gave Weldon a bed and Driving Weldon to the airport the next day told
her that her gynaecologist had, without permission, performed a total hysterectomy because
of her age even though there was ‘nothing wrong’. Weldon went red with rage. Much later,
after asking permission, Weldon wrote a fictional account called ‘And Then Turn Out the
Light’ which begins with “In Newcastle, NSW, they have the highest hysterectomy rate in
the entire world”. [In Polaris and Other Stories, 1985]

In 1986 Marg made the radical move of swapping from history to the Department of
Community Programmes – it gave her free rein organising seminars and the opportunity to
teach Aboriginal and Women’s History in the fairly the new Open Foundation Course.

In 1988 Margaret Henry resigned from the ALP after twenty years because of NSW right-
wing machinations, e.g. abolishing the NSW Labor women’s conferences. The trigger was
when planning & heritage minister Bob Carr lifted an interim conservation order) on the gas
company building on King St, so that McDonalds could demolish it. After changing their
mind about recycling it In March 1988 she campaigned as an Independent for the state seat
of Newcastle.

WS750219.WMA

Recording of a small section on Margaret Henry’s campaign launch

Margaret Henry at the Working Women’s centre in Mayfield 1988

A newspaper journalist noted: Ms Henry has become one of the best known get out and do
it people in Newcastle’s public life. She is extremely intelligent and her job allows her to
pinpoint problems affecting the community, publicise the problems and organize ways of
overcoming them. She can relate to all kinds of people but especially those from minorities.
Many Newcastle feminists helped with Marg’s campaign but many other friends of
Margaret’s were still members of the ALP. Newcastle Herald Topics commented ‘ A women in
Queens St Cooks Hill has a Margaret Henry poster stuck up in the front window. On her
desk sits a pile of ‘vote Margaret’ pamphlets waiting to be delivered. In the kitchen the male
half has a similar stack of the ALP candidate Denis Nichols leaflets destined for letterboxes.
Friendship will resume on March 20.

Marg was unsuccessful but won an impressive 11% of the votes. The ALP lost the seat and
an independent was elected. Marg was not contrite. She said that Newcastle should not be
relied on to always vote Labor. The independent only lasted one term and Labor regained
the seat next election

After the earthquake in 1989 Margaret Henry helped form Citizens Earthquake Action
Group to try to prevent demolition of the heritage fabric of the city. They got tipped off that
the North wing of Royal Newcastle Hospital was going to be demolished even though it was
barely damaged, so she quickly arranged for 7.30 Report to film a segment about this which
resulted in stopping the demolition and retaining a key piece of our heritage, as luxury units
across from Pacific Park.

Margaret Henry later became a Newcastle City Councillor from 1995-2004. She died of
pancreatic cancer in 2015. She is still missed as an active voice in the community and friend
of many.

Compiled by Jude Conway 20/6/2017