Remarkable Women
of Whitehorse and Manningham
Libraries are filled with hidden gems, fascinating stories from our past that
deserve celebrating.
Whitehorse Manningham Libraries, in collaboration with talented local artist
Edwina Marion, created Remarkable Women to highlight some of these
hidden treasures.
Remarkable Women is an exhibition and series of art cards featuring
illustrations and stories of trailblazing woman who lived locally during the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
They were survivors, tough women living in tough times when life was
precarious, childbirth dangerous and disease rampant. Married women
were rarely able to work and access to education was restricted.
These women forged their own remarkable lives despite these challenges.
Just as the struggles and triumphs of our mothers and grandmothers
have paved the way for us, so too have these local trailblazers.
Local historian Irvine Green wrote, “A history of a district is not complete
without the story of the women who lived in it but in history books women are
rarely mentioned.”
The stories were researched by library staff using our extensive local
heritage collections and highlight just how remarkable these women were.
We are proud to have brought their stories to life with this project.
Learn more online at:
wml.vic.gov.au/Remarkable_Women_of_Whitehorse_and_Manningham
Keeping community stories alive
This series is part Our Community Stories, a Whitehorse and Manningham Libraries initiative which aims to keep local stories alive by
helping people connect with their history and heritage. We thank our local historical societies for their support in bringing the stories to life.
Constance Alexa ‘Lexie’ Goyder
Architect, free spirit
When Lexie Goyder first settled in Warrandyte, she lived in a miner’s cottage that
had been built by moonlight, nestled in a gully near the banks of the Yarra River.
She was a former journalist and, along with husband Guy, quickly became
part of an emerging artists’ community in the old mining town. She was close
friends with painter Clara Southern.
Lexie defied convention and scandalously wore trousers. She said nothing was
beyond a woman. And, to prove it, she designed and built her first house — a
two-storied, flat roof design, hand-built from local stones.
She planted a garden and kept chickens. Then disaster struck. On January 13,
1939 a devastating bushfire swept through Warrandyte. In less than an hour,
Lexie’s house — along with more than 100 others — was destroyed.
Lexie was not deterred. She rebuilt her home from its ruined shell. With many men
away at war, she joined forces with friend Myrtle Houston and local
stonemason Kevin Sloan to build many new homes in the area.
She left a rich legacy. Several of her houses stand today. Her use of random rubble
and recycled materials exemplified what architect Robin Boyd called the
“Warrandyte Style.”
Lexie lived a deeply creative life. She was a poet, potter, writer and painter. She was
famous for her wild parties, her home-brewed punch and was very fond of cats.
Lexie lived well into her eighties, a well-known and much-loved local identity.
1892 – 1976
Illustrated by Edwina Marion
Keeping stories alive. Explore your own and other local
stories at Whitehorse Manningham Libraries.
Visit www.wml.vic.gov.au or drop into any branch.
Anne Boorat
Wurundjeri woman, survivor
Annie Boorat was born in 1836, a time of grief and loss for her people, the Wurundjeri
of the Kulin nation. European arrival had represented a period of mass genocide, new
diseases and loss of land; just 10 percent of their population remained.
Annie was the child of Tooterie and Bebejan, the Ngurungaeta (headman). Her brother
William Barak and cousin Simon Wonga were also to become Wurundjeri leaders.
When Annie was 14, her people were relocated to Pound Bend at Warrandyte. It was
a traditional living and gathering place, a site for ceremony, trading, fishing and
hunting.
The land provided some hope for the survival of the Wurundjeri and their way of life
and was the result of nearly 10 years negotiation.
Within a year gold was discovered and, by 1852, Annie’s people were formally
removed from their traditional land.
A last Gayip (special gathering) was held. It was to be the last time the five clans of
the Kulin nation gathered in traditional ceremony.
It took another decade before Coranderrk Aboriginal Station was established in
Healesville. The remaining Wurundjeri — including Annie and her brother William
Barak — moved there and established a viable farming enterprise.
Barak was a visionary Ngurungaeta, talented artist and vigorous campaigner for
Aboriginal rights. Annie‘s son Robert Wandoon survived to adulthood and followed
his Uncle as leader. Robert had 10 children.
All Wurundjeri people today are direct descendants of Annie, through her son
Robert.
We thank the Wurundjeri Elders for allowing us to share Annie’s story. Our information is
from the Wurundjeri Stories project and interpretative trail at Pound Bend.
Illustrated by Edwina Marion
Keeping stories alive. Explore your own and other local
stories at Whitehorse Manningham Libraries.
Visit www.wml.vic.gov.au or drop into any branch.
Elizabeth Burchill
Intrepid nurse, writer
Sister Elizabeth Burchill often said being a nurse was the best passport a woman
could have. Elizabeth was the youngest nurse posted to Innamincka, in outback
South Australia.
In 1930, it was a place with no radio and no doctors. In the absence of wood, beer
crates were used for coffins. “The hot breath of the country rose and fell like a living
thing,” she wrote.
Elizabeth went on to work in the UK and Ethiopia and risked her life nursing
refugee children during the Spanish Civil War. In Canada’s Arctic Circle she
treated fisherman too shy to speak, and watched icebergs drifting by.
Elizabeth was quick to volunteer when World War II broke out. She served in
Palestine and Egypt, right in the thick of it, but was transferred back to Australia.
“I was not gifted with the consistent ability to conform,” she explained.
Following the war, and feeling restless after returning to civilian life, she became a
radio broadcaster — appointed not for her voice, but her stories.
Her travel itch soon returned, and Elizabeth renewed her nursing “passport”. She
worked in Darwin, Thursday Island and Papua New Guinea.
She spent the 1960s travelling — from Africa to the Soviet Union — and was proud
to return to Australia with more money than when she left.
Elizabeth settled in Blackburn and was a formidable local identity. At 73 she
returned to study, graduating from high school and university. Elizabeth said
instead of having children she wrote books so her experiences would not be lost.
“Don’t count the years, make the years count,” Elizabeth frequently advised.
1904–2003
Illustrated by Edwina Marion
Keeping stories alive. Explore your own and other local
stories at Whitehorse Manningham Libraries.
Visit www.wml.vic.gov.au or drop into any branch.
Ivy Weber
Politician, trailblazer
When Ivy Weber was 15, women were not allowed to vote in Victorian state
elections. By 31, she could vote but women’s candidacy was still forbidden.
When she was 45, Ivy Weber became a Member of the Parliament of Victoria, the
first woman to do so in a general election.
Her accomplishment was more remarkable because she was twice widowed and
had raised 11 children. She had known financial insecurity and believed politics had
failed women.
“I love to work and feel that every hour of the day is filled with something
worthwhile,” she said on her first day in Parliament. She joked about her name,
“Just like Ivy, I’ll cling to you.”
Ivy needed tenacity. She lost her first husband in World War I and was left with a
baby boy to raise.
In 1919 she married Clarence, an athlete and widower, with his own health school
and seven children. Together they had three more children.
When Clarence died of a heart-attack in 1930, Ivy went to work. She advised
women about “figure control” through diet and exercise for Berlei Corset Company,
then worked as a political organiser. She gave radio talks and served on a number
of boards before standing for Parliament.
In 1937 she was elected as Member for Nunawading on a platform of universal
health care, free education and reducing poverty. Her opponents said she was, “the
little ferret who was always nosing around and doing everything.”
Ivy was to hold her seat for three terms before resigning to run, unsuccessfully, for
Federal Parliament in 1945. She continued to work in public life.
Ivy was a life-long proponent for physical fitness and health. She is remembered
as a woman of “immense vitality”.
1892 – 1976
Illustrated by Edwina Marion
Keeping stories alive. Explore your own and other local
stories at Whitehorse Manningham Libraries.
Visit www.wml.vic.gov.au or drop into any branch.
Jane Serpell
Pioneer fruit grower
Jane Serpell was one tough lady. A diminutive woman with an enormous work ethic,
she established one of the first orchards in Doncaster. She did it while living in a
rough bush tent and caring for five children.
Jane was raised in a tiny village in Cornwall. She married at 21, gave birth to her
children and then followed her beloved sister, Selina, to Australia.
Her family arrived in 1851, bought land in Glenferrie and spent a winter clearing the
bush and building a hut. They marvelled when the wattle bloomed.
Then her husband abandoned the family and set sail back to England, never to return.
Her two oldest sons, Thomas and Alfred, were old enough to work and together the
family decided to start again. They bought enough land to support themselves,
further east in present day Doncaster.
Again they camped in the bush and cleared the land. Within three years, they built a
house. Selina — now a widow — moved in, and brought along her daughter.
Jane’s family were amongst the first to grow fruit in the district. The farm flourished
and the boys established their own thriving businesses.
Life was still filled with tragedy. Women died in childbirth and grandchildren died
in accidents. At the age of 71 Jane built a new house to get away from her painful
memories.
There she lived a life of “elegant retirement”. She entertained the church ladies,
campaigned for a woman’s right to vote and always had a brimming bowl of cream
on the dinner table.
Jane died in her sleep, aged 90. Two black horses adorned with ostrich feathers led
her funeral procession.
1812 – 1901
Illustrated by Edwina Marion
Keeping stories alive. Explore your own and other local
stories at Whitehorse Manningham Libraries.
Visit www.wml.vic.gov.au or drop into any branch.
Jane Sutherland
Radical artist, teacher
Jane Sutherland was a professional artist at a time when art was seen as an
accomplishment for a woman, rather than a career.
She studied at the National Gallery School and later painted at the Box Hill Artists’
Camp with the royalty of Australian Impressionism: Roberts, Streeton,
McCubbin and Conder.
As a respectable woman, Jane could only ever stay for the day, and had to finish
her art in the studio.
Their work became known as the Heidelberg School, an art movement famous
for painting outside en plein air and capturing the unique beauty and colour of the
Australian bush.
Jane’s paintings are both lyrical and luminous. Her mauve and lavender colour
palettes broke new ground. She won prizes, exhibited her work and set up a studio
with painter Clara Southern.
Jane was a champion for change. She lobbied hard for equal access to life drawing
classes, believed in a woman’s right to vote and was active in Melbourne’s artistic
community.
Jane worked tirelessly as a painter and teacher. Yet despite her talent she never
achieved the same recognition as the men she painted with. Art, in the late 1800s,
was a man’s world.
In 2007, the National Gallery of Victoria remedied this, and placed her work firmly
alongside her contemporaries.
Jane worked until 1904, when she suffered a minor stroke. Her brother helped her
get around and she continued to create small works. When he died in 1911, Jane
stopped painting. She lived for another 17 years.
Sutherland Place, in Box Hill South, was named in Jane’s honour.
1853 – 1928
Illustrated by Edwina Marion
Keeping stories alive. Explore your own and other local
stories at Whitehorse Manningham Libraries.
Visit www.wml.vic.gov.au or drop into any branch.
Janet Muir Gaff
Nurse, adventurer
With the help of two little white lies, Janet Muir Gaff volunteered as a nurse with
the Australian Army at the height of the Gallipoli campaign.
She shaved six years from her age and declared herself a widow — at 56 she was
considered too old and volunteers were not supposed to be married.
Born in Victorian-era Scotland in 1860, Janet was a woman of spirit and
independence. When her husband sailed to America — and left her with a young
son to raise — she rebuilt her life and became a nurse.
She eventually moved to Australia, along with her supportive family, and settled in
Blackburn.
Janet spent World War I as a volunteer transport nurse “dodging the submarines”.
She cared for sick and injured soldiers in hospital ships and sailed between
England and Australia three times.
She worked in auxiliary hospitals between stints on the ocean — one specialising in
amputations and artificial limbs, and another in shellshock.
As a result of her service, Janet attended a reception at Windsor Castle — part of a
small group of women in a sea of wounded men. She met Princess Mary and her
mother, Queen Mary.
“[The princess] thought it so brave, but I said, ‘Our boys are doing it, so it’s up to us
to do it also’,” Janet wrote to her sister.
World War I was just one part of her remarkable story. Janet continued to travel
throughout her life. She visited Victoria Falls in Africa, went to the Middle East and
sailed up the Amazon in Brazil.
Janet Muir Gaff is the only woman recognised on local World War I honour
boards and is buried in Box Hill cemetery.
1860 – 1940
Illustrated by Edwina Marion
Keeping stories alive. Explore your own and other local
stories at Whitehorse Manningham Libraries.
Visit www.wml.vic.gov.au or drop into any branch.
Wilhelmina Schwerkolt
German orchardist, widow
The story of Wilhelmina Schwerkolt would make a tragic opera, set in a precarious
time. Born in Prussia in 1844, she married Franz, a sailor, and gave birth to two
daughters, though one baby died.
It was a time of upheaval and war and the family sailed for Australia in 1872. They
settled in Australia and Wilhelmina fell pregnant with twins. Franz died just after
their second birthday.
Wilhelmina became a bottle-washer at her brother’s factory. She remarried in 1880.
Sadly, her second husband died from typhoid six weeks later.
Wilhelmina’s third husband was August Schwerkolt, a hard-working German
widower with adult sons. He built Wilhelmina a cottage in his orchard in Mitcham
using stone he quarried by hand.
Another set of twins followed, but the baby girl died. Within a year Wilhelmina was
again expecting but August died before their daughter Mary was born. It was 1887,
Wilhelmina was 42.
August had left her enough to support their children. She had land, a weekly
stipend and sold fruit, butter and wildflowers at the market. Wilhelmina added a
kitchen to the house.
The family grew. Her older twins married August’s adult sons, and children were
born less than nine months later.
In 1899 Wilhelmina’s mother died. Grieving and nearly blind, she sailed to the US to
be with her brother. She took her two youngest children, John and Mary, but left the
older girls and several grandchildren in Australia.
John died in 1903 of meningitis when he was 17. Wilhelmina died five months
later. Mary was 16.
Wilhelmina’s descendants still live locally. The house August built has survived.
1844 – 1903
Illustrated by Edwina Marion
Keeping stories alive. Explore your own and other local
stories at Whitehorse Manningham Libraries.
Visit www.wml.vic.gov.au or drop into any branch.