Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to record my experience of and appreciation for an Australia Day ceremony that I attended earlier this year. I have been attending this ceremony for a number of years. It is organised by the National Council of Women and it is held at the Pioneer Women’s Garden in Adelaide. I want to speak briefly on some of the history associated with the ceremony and the memorial garden in which it is held. It is a quite remarkable story about the involvement of women in the celebration of the centenary of South Australia, and subsequently it is about women’s contribution and women’s celebration of that contribution, something which is probably told less than it ought to be in our discussions of our nation’s history.

The Pioneer Women’s Garden contains a memorial which was unveiled on 19 April 1941. It also contains a time capsule, to be opened in 2036, which contains messages from the women of 1936 to the women of 2036. There were a number of women associated with ensuring that the memorial was established, including the president of the women’s centenary council, Adelaide Miethke, who was the first chair of the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Trust and also a pioneer unionist for the teachers association, which succeeded in establishing better conditions for female teachers.

The memorial grew out of discussions in relation to the centenary of South Australia celebrations. Obviously, pioneer themes dominated at that time, and the government sponsored a South Australian women’s centenary council in 1935. That council, of which Ms Miethke was president, discussed an appropriate memorial. Interestingly, because of the emphasis on practical and functional memorials, there was a decision to fund a Flying Doctor Service base at Alice Springs. It was quite an unusual decision to place outside South Australia a memorial for South Australia, although the Flying Doctor Service obviously services northern South Australia from Alice Springs.

In addition, the committee decided to erect a symbolic memorial in Adelaide. It requested the use of city parklands, set beside the Torrens Parade Ground, near the Torrens River in Adelaide, to establish a garden of remembrance. A memorial statue was commissioned in 1938. The person chosen was a Melbourne sculptor, Ola Cohn. She chose to use a three-tonne piece of Waikerie limestone. It was too large for her studio, so she worked on it in her courtyard in all sorts of weather. The opening ceremony of the garden coincided with the opening ceremony at the Flying Doctor Service base in Alice Springs, and a radio link was made between the two ceremonies. The garden has today grown into a picturesque haven which is sheltered by towering poplars planted in honour of the five trustees. Ms Miethke was further honoured, in her death, with the addition of a stone seat. Faithful to its purpose, the garden has become the site of the memorial ceremony, which I described earlier, which is organised by the National Council of Women and held on Australia Day each year.

When I requested from some of the current trustees some information about the history of the garden, they sent me a range of very interesting information, including an address given by Ms Miethke in 1961which describes the centenary celebrations and the discussion among women about how to record the contribution of pioneer women and the memorial. I was also sent a copy of a speech given by Mrs CE Dolling, the then chairperson—or, as they said then, chairman—of the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Trust to the Country Women’s Association. In that speech, she talked about the fact that it was almost 30 years since the centenary of South Australia. She said: ‘Thirty years is a generation, and we of the trust—there are five members of us—are most apprehensive that some of our early history of our pioneer women in this state, and the manner in which that early history was celebrated at our centenary in 1936, will be lost.’

When I read that, it seemed to me that it is very important for women, certainly of my generation and younger, to be aware of some of this history, because these women really made an enormous contribution. In 2036 we will receive the messages to the women of 2036 that were placed in the capsule by these women of 1936, which will no doubt be a great occasion. We do not know everything that is in there, but we do know from the archives which are described in this letter that there is a first copy of Ms Miethke’s message. Her draft message reads in part:

To you who celebrate the second centenary of South Australia, greetings from the women who saw the close of the first hundred years. We who have played our part and passed beyond, leave for you these records …

I want to acknowledge the ongoing work of the five trustees and the National Council of Women, who each year organise the Australia Day ceremony. It is a pity that more people, particularly the younger generation, do not attend. It is well attended by women who understand the history of the garden and the memorial. We probably need to do a bit more work to encourage some younger women to attend, although a number of Girl Guides groups and other organisations attend—and that is a good thing—to get some sense of the ongoing contribution that women make to South Australia.

After reading Mrs Dolling’s speech, I thought it would be a good thing to incorporate these two speeches into Hansard because they give an insight into what occurred at the first centenary celebrations in 1936 and the work that women did, not only to establish this memorial but also to fund and establish the Flying Doctor Service base in Alice Springs.

It is interesting to note that—as I understand it from the letter sent to me—Mrs Dolling’s daughter is a current trustee of the Pioneer Women’s Trust. It is wonderful to see a mother handing down to her daughter the responsibility for being the legal guardian of the Pioneer Women’s Garden. I seek leave to incorporate into Hansard two speeches, one given by Ms Miethke in 1961 and the other given by Mrs CE Dolling on 18 October 1965.

Leave granted.

The speeches read as follows—

COUNTRY WOMEN’S ASSOCIATION MONTHLY CLUB LUNCHEON AT C.W.A. HEADQUARTERS

30 Dequetteville Terrace, Kent Town : 18 th October 1965.

You are now to hear a talk by Mrs. C.E. Dolling the Chairman of the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Trust.

Mrs. E.G. Darling and fellow members of the Country Women’s Association.

This Pioneer Women’s Memorial Trust was established in the year 1936, that is the year of the Centenary of the State, and as you can reckon quickly it is almost thirty years old.

Well, thirty years is a generation and we of the Trust, there are five members of us, are most apprehensive that some of our early history of our Pioneer Women in this State and the manner in which that early history was celebrated at our Centenary in 1936 will be lost.

I take the opportunity then of speaking to you today as I would like to speak to many, many other groups of women to try to instil, the, what shall I say, the systems of keeping the memory of our Pioneer Women green.

Now this Trust was appointed by the Women’s Centenary Council and the Women’s Centenary Council was established in the year before our Centenary, in March 1935 with 72 women’s organisations represented on it, one of them of course was The Country Women’s Association and I see by looking at the list here that Mrs. Alan Colvin was the first representative but then she left Adelaide and Miss I. Ritchie was then our representative until the end of the Centenary Celebrations.

During the rest of that year and 1936 the Women’s Centenary Council was very busy raising money to establish some kind of a memorial to the Pioneer Women of the State, and indeed the women of the State’s first 100 years. And some of you are old enough to remember what was done that year, some of you aren’t.

The main ways of raising money were the publication of this Book. Now some of you may have this Book. It is called “A Book of South Australia: Women in the First 100 years” and it is an extremely precious book. It’s been out of print for many, many years and I have asked the secondhand dealers to save me or let me know when any copies come in and I don’t hear from them once a year. In fact I haven’t heard from them now for about three or four years. So this is the Book in which there are articles written by our women of 1936 on many, many aspects of life within that hundred years, for instance, the first University women, the first schools in the State, the Governor’s wives right through, the history of Queen Adelaide and the Queen Adelaide Room, extracts from letters that were written way back in the 1830’s by the first Pioneers. Those are just some of the annals that are in this Book. Also paintings by our painters of 1936, scriptures, even music that was written by our women. So it is a worthy record of our first hundred years and as I say take care of your copy if you have a copy. Incidentally the names of the 72 Associations which were assembled in the Centenary Council are here in the back of the Book.

Another means that we had of raising money that year, was the establishment of the Book of Remembrance, the Leaves of Remembrance they were called, and any woman in South Australia was asked to put as many names of women as she wished in the Book at the cost of 1/- per name, and the names that were put in were all the names of the women’s ancestors; she might have 50 or 60; it might cost her £2.10.0 or £3.0.0 to put the names in. She put her own name in too because she was of the first hundred years. Well that Book had tens of thousands of names in it, every one bringing in a shilling, and that Book as I will be telling you later is now buried under the Statue in the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden.

Another way of making money we had was a Pageant. The Pageant of the First Hundred Years, Women’s part in it, written by Ellinor Walker. We booked Her Majesty’s Theatre for a week and in the end, I am not absolutely certain how long it did run but it was more than a fortnight. We had to get the extension of booking of the theatre because it was brimful every night, and amongst our archives we have the complete script of that Pageant and we have the Programme of the Pageant and we have many Press reviews and other matters dealing with that Pageant.

The greatest amount of money of all came from a drive, right throughout the State, among the women of the State, a drive to get money for a Memorial to the women of the first hundred years. I can’t tell you the exact money it brought, I’ll tell you how much money we had altogether in a minute, but I do know that there was a prize for the suburban area which raised the most money and there was a prize for the country area which raised the most money and those two prizes went to Burnside and Mount Gambier. I have one photograph here which I will be passing round later and it was taken at the Ball that we had to culminate all this money-raising in 1937 and the Premier’s there all right, Mrs. Sidney Ayers is there but there are other women there and I have an idea, there is nothing written on the back of this photograph, and I have an idea that they’re the representatives of Mount Gambier and Burnside and so I am going to pass it around and if anyone can identify those two I will be quite glad. I’ll give it time to get right around the whole room. There’s the Premier there and I think that is Mrs. Sidney Ayers and two other women and one man. So round it goes and if anyone can solve the mystery I’d like to write it on the back.

Another angle that was very interesting that year, though it didn’t bring us in money, was a Women’s Congress that we had and for this Women’s Congress the Government paid for either two or three women prominent overseas visitors to come, and it was an extraordinarily good Congress; women came from all parts of Australia to it, as well as the overseas speakers. That was to mark our Centenary.

Well eventually the money raised by the Women’s Centenary Council was somewhere round about £6,250. Now that may not sound much to you now, but believe me £5,250 took a great deal of raising in 1936, and it was for the Women’s Centenary Council to decide what was to be done with it.

I can remember we went to the meetings, and the meetings were a little bit hectic. One big section of the women wanted to have a large hall in Adelaide for women’s organisations to hold their meetings. But the consensus of opinion of the whole delegation from the various organisations was that because it was a Memorial for the Pioneer Women of the State, it should be a Memorial for the Pioneer Women of 1936, and those were the people pioneering in the Outback. And so eventually it was decided that there would be established at Port Augusta a Flying Sister Base and that in the City of Adelaide there be some small tangible Memorial of the fact that this Flying Sister Base was the Memorial to the women of the First Century.

And since the Women’s Centenary Council couldn’t go on forever the members appointed five of its number as Trustees. Indeed they formed the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Trust. These five were the noble three that did so much work together during the war years (that was local of course) and had worked together before this time so extremely efficiently, Miss Adelaide Miethke as the Chairman, Miss Phebe Watson as the Secretary and Miss Gisela Siebert as the Treasurer. They had been in those same positions for the Women’s Centenary Council (we didn’t actually have Secretary and Treasurer on the Trust, but the three of them were appointed to the Trust) and the other two who were appointed to the Trust were Mrs. Paul McGuire and myself.

I’ll never know why I was appointed. As a matter of fact I wasn’t in at the beginning of this. I’d been in England and I arrived back in August 1935 and I’d only been back a couple of days when Miss Miethke rang me on the telephone and she said “I’m glad you are home again, I’ve been waiting for you to come home. You’re on the Women’s Centenary Executive”. “Oh, I said what is the Women’s Centenary”. That was all I knew about it. However it wasn’t long before I was well in it and of course very enthusiastic about it. And eventually as I say I was chosen as one of the Trustees.

Well, we couldn’t exactly do what we had been asked to do, because when we went into this matter about this Flying Sister at Port Augusta, we discovered that the cost and the responsibility was beyond us. That was the cost of running it. But the whole idea behind the Flying Sister had been to bring companionship to the women of the Outback. It was not necessarily the medical angle so much although she would be able to attend to the medical needs as well as the nursing angle, but it was to bring some contact to the women of the Outback, the lonely women of the Outback.

And when we realised that we couldn’t actually establish this Flying Sister at Port Augusta, Mrs. Warnes our own State President, our own Pioneer, had just been to Darwin for a trip with her son Jimmy.

Now Darwin in those days, this would be perhaps in 1937 or 1938 by now, Darwin in those days was up the track and up the track it was. It was up the track where you had sugar bags and a bit of netting and boughs to get you over the sand and something else to pull you over the gutters.

Well at any rate they had been to Darwin and back and Mrs. Warnes was extremely conscious of the fact that those women were so lonely and more than being lonely, that they were so insecure. And she said something must be done for the women of the Territory and just at that time John Flynn had been to Alice Springs and he came back to Adelaide and we chatted with him and he said that the great need was for a sixth Flying Doctor Base throughout Australia and the need was at Alice Springs.

Mrs. Warnes met John Flynn and the five of us, the Trustees, and we discussed this and then we had to write back to all these Council representatives to ask them if they were agreeable that the money should go to the establishment of the Royal Flying Doctor Base at Alice Springs instead of the Flying Sister Base at Port Augusta and explained the reason and there wasn’t a dissenticat vote and that is the way the present Royal Flying Doctor Base at Alice Springs was established.

It was established as a Memorial to the Women of the first hundred years of South Australia and it cost us £5,000. Nowadays £5,000 doesn’t turn over up there, but it cost £5,000 to establish that Base. That was to build the house and to put in the necessary transcievers and all the equipment for its operation as a Base.

I think now sometimes when I realise what the activities are through our Flying Doctor Bases two of which we ourselves in South Australia have begun, one of course our own C.W.A. of the Air and two the School of the Air of which Miss Miethke was the founder and then when you think that there are now Flying Dentists and in some Bases Flying Sisters, you realise (and of course all this had happened before Miss Miethke died, so she knew) that the whole idea of the Women’s Centenary Council in bringing friendship to the lonely women was covered by the Flying Doctor Bases with these various organisations.

So that it is very, very satisfactory that our gift as a Memorial should be now used for the very purpose that we wanted it to be used.

Now that was a number one job we had to do. We had to establish that Base at Alice Springs.

Number two job was that we had to put somewhere in Adelaide a tangible sign that the Base at Alice Springs was the real Memorial. As far as that was concerned we had to approach the City Council and the City Council gave us a plot of land as you probably all know on the flat behind Government House.

That Pioneer Women’s Garden of Remembrance as we call it stands there today.

It’s entirety I think, I would say, is due mainly to three people.

One was Miss Cornish, Miss Elsie Cornish.

Now it’s Miss Elsie Cornish who was a landscape gardener who designed that garden and I can remember the meetings (we had our certain amount of space allotted to us) we used to have down there with Miss Cornish. She could walk around without a hat from North Adelaide with an apron and a trowel and perhaps a fork in the other hand and just walk down Pennington Terrace and across the Bridge to our garden. You would see her there day after day digging about in this garden getting ready, planting the little plants, planting the bigger plants.

I remember going there one day and she said to us “Do you think you could afford it if we paid thirty five shillings for a very special type of pine that I can get from Mount Lofty”. “Ooh no!!! Thirty five shillings, OOOH NO!!! We’d never have enough to pay thirty five shillings for a pine”. “Well” she said “it is a very special one, and I would never get anything else like it and she said I don’t think there is another available in South Australia.” And we said, “Well, would you like it very much Miss Cornish?” and she said “Well I would. It would just make that corner of the garden” and so we said “Alright spend the thirty five shillings.” So she spent the thirty five shillings and she bought this particular pine. And I can remember going down there on the day of the opening of that garden with Mr. Bone the City Gardener and this was about a couple of years later or perhaps 18 months later and he walked along, and he said “Goodness me where did you get that Conifer Pine?” We said “It cost us thirty five shillings”. He said “I’ll give you three pounds ten for it”. So we didn’t sell the pine but every time I go there now I always think of that as being Miss Cornish’s Pine Tree.

Well Miss Cornish was one and she had her plants that she planted, they were sweet smelling, or they were some particular natives of Australia. She had some reason for every one and she had reasons for five poplars. We all took part in this, she planted five poplars at the back of the garden, those two in here are a bit awkward to see because they’re Candle Pines but those are the five poplars behind the Statue and when she planted them she had Miss Miethke dig in the first one (that was Miss Miethke) and then on Miss Miethke’s right she had Miss Watson the Secretary dig in that one and then Miss Siebert did this one and then Margaret McGuire did that one and I did this one. So that pine, that’s my poplar, that one, and mine grew so slowly, year after year, it never got up anywhere near the others and look at this photograph, look. See that little bit there. It’s got them all.

While I am talking about this I’ll just hand those three round because, those are three pictures of the garden, (some of you may know it well) that’s taken from behind the Statue and this one is taken at the side. There are the poplars, one, two, three, four, one’s behind this and there is the Statue there, so those pictures can go round too now.

Now I said that there were three people who were responsible for the garden and the second one was Mr Dodwell.

Now Mr. Dodwell was an old man, even then, (at least I thought he was, although he came twenty two years later when we put a seat in the garden in memory of Miss Miethke and he died very, very soon after that, that was a year ago last April, but he was very thrilled to be there on that day.

Well Mr. Dodwell was the Government Astronomer and he lived down in West Terrace by the old Observatory. Miss Miethke knew him and she asked him if he could design a sun-dial for us.

He was so excited, because all his life he’d wanted to design a sun-dial which would tell the exact time of the day at every day of the year. Now a normal sundial doesn’t do that at all. A normal sundial has the shadow in a certain place, say in the middle of summer it has it at the extreme and around the middle of winter and in between it varies, because of course the sun moves much longer space in the summer than it does in the winter. And Mr. Dodwell wanted to do this sun-dial that would read the exact time on every day of the year. He covered sheets and sheets and sheets, we saw them, of figures, to try to get this sun-dial right, and eventually after working on it for about six months he perfected that sundial. And that sun-dial (I am using a very strong word here) is unique. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if it isn’t unique in the whole world. At the time Mr. Dodwell said it was.

I have here a photograph of the sun-dial and I will now pass that round to you, and I would like you, if you are down at the Garden to (it looks funny) down at the Garden to have a look at this sun-dial. You see it looks strange. It’s a funny looking sundial, isn’t it? But the months are all written along here at the top and the place where the shadow falls (no the months are there I beg your pardon) it shows the exact place along that side. One for the morning sun and one for the afternoon sun. So, so much for Mr. Dodwell.

And the third person was another woman and that was Miss Ola Cohn.

Now we asked Miss Ola Cohn, the Melbourne sculptress, to sculpt a statue of the Pioneer Woman.

We had some fun over that statue.

First of all we had to get the stone there. We wanted South Australian stone and we had a piece of Waikerie limestone. You probably don’t know this anyway this Waikerie limestone, but we sent it over to Melbourne for Miss Cohn to sculpt this statue, and then over the period of time when the statue was being created from this one solid block of stone, the five of us, the five trustees went over to Melbourne perhaps three or four times at the weekend to examine the statue and to see what was happening to it, and we had most memorable weekends.

In the winter time because we wanted to get to Melbourne at night we had to leave home at five o’clock in the morning and I remember one Saturday morning it would be, one Saturday morning leaving town at five o’clock and it was extremely foggy in the hills and we went up – and I was driving this car and Miss Watson was outside standing at the edge of the road holding a white flag and a torch and we did that for two or three miles up that hill. I don’t remember what time it was when we go on further.

But then on another occasion we started off early in the morning and when we were going through Hahndorf it was just coming light and I said. “Whatever is that!” and I stopped the car and I said “It looks like an elephant looking in that window”, and they said “Ooh well where have you been”. “Well,” I said, “it looks like one”. So I drove the car up and it was an elephant!!!!! So there aren’t many people who can say that they’ve seen an elephant looking in a window at Hahndorf, can they?” But previously that morning it had escaped from a circus nearby and it chose to look in the window jut as we were going past about six o’clock in the morning in the half light.

Another occasion I remember we had something wrong with the car coming back from Kaniva. So we went into a hotel there and we hadn’t had anything to eat, and they had a big sports day, that day, so they brought in saveloys which we cooked in a kerosine tin on the open fire in the hotel and that was our meal. We did get going later on in the evening.

We had some really good fun, but best of all was when we arrived at Miss Cohn’s studio. Now Ola Cohn had a most delightful studio in East Melbourne. She called it “Ola’s Home”. She converted it from an old stable. I’d been to it often, I went to it the last time when we were over there for a C.W.W. Conference. In the courtyard of this, she was sculpting this enormous statue.

Well of course the first time we went over and saw it, we thought, we weren’t quite sure how we were going to like this statue, and each time we went over it’s getting a little bit more like a statue, but Miss Miethke in her quiet little way would go along and she’d rub down the statue and she’d say “Ola don’t you think there should be a little more off here”, or she’d look at the neck and she’d say “Don’t you think she could have just a little bit off there Ola” and Ola would say “Who’s sculpting this statue”, and Miss Miethke would say “Well you are, but I think perhaps the women of South Australia would like it to be a little more off there”. And then she’d get to the hands and she’d say “You know I wouldn’t like a thumb as big as that”. And in the end there’s what the statue was eventually and there are two closeups of the face. It is a very beautiful face.

Oh I might also say about the statue, I’ve just remembered one other point, it was that we had to get it back, of course, in time for the opening.

The Opening by the way of that garden and the Base at Alice Springs took place in 1941 on April the 19 th .

We had to get the Statue back for the Opening, and we couldn’t come back by train, because it would have been decapitated under the bridges and in those days there was very little road transport and if we brought it back by ship it wouldn’t be here in time for the Opening. Eventually we were fortunate enough to get road transport which brought it over, we took it straight to a Mason’s Works in Mile End as he had to put it on a pedestal and it was put in the Garden late in the afternoon of the Friday when the Garden was opened on the Saturday and it was an absolute rush work to get it there.

I might tell you that Ola Cohn was very very hard to tie down as far as a date was concerned as to when the Statue would be finished and when we eventually made the date for the Opening of the Garden, we thought we’d left her plenty of time.

Now I have here amongst my archives, various cuttings from the Advertiser taken at the time of the Opening of the Garden.

There are some leading up to it, there is one January ’41 there’s one February ’41, then April the 15 th ’41 (that’s the week before it’s opened) and then there is this one which is written the week after it’s opened. I wrote all of these myself and in this one here that I evidently wrote for the 22 nd April 1941 I’m two people, I am a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde, because I’m myself and I’m the other woman as well, you see? This is one of the secrets of journalism. So I’d like to read you this because it really is most amusing. Evidently I’d been to the Garden on the Sunday to see how the Statue was looking you see, it had opened on the Saturday and I’d been there on the Sunday.

“Sunday saw a steady stream of interested visitors at the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden of Remembrance which was handed over to the City of Adelaide on Saturday afternoon and their interest centred mainly in the statue sculptured by Miss Ola Cohn (whose name by the way is Carola, after a Danish ancestor) and the novel sun-dial planned by the Government Astronomer, Mr. G.F. Dodwell. Photographs of the statue published from time to time and criticism of it, both favourable and adverse, had created more than normal desire for personal inspection and concensus of public opinion was “a beautiful piece of sculpture and a memorial worthy of our pioneer women”. I heard one very frank opinion from a man as I stood by. He looked up at the statue and then said “that is not my idea of a pioneer woman, I see her bending over a cooking stove trying to make the fire light, while water drops in from the roof of her wattle and daub hut, with a couple of children hanging onto her skirts; but perhaps that would have cost more?” A member of the Memorial Trust happened to be standing near-by and she tried to explain the symbolism in the statue. The courage, the determination the resourcefulness, and that Miss Cohn had produced this woman as a symbol of the pioneer women of all time, and the man said “yes I see what you mean even though I do not understand, but isn’t it a lovely bit of stone? I did not know we had such stone in S.A.” The stone came from Waikerie which surprised more than this one spectator, and I heard many more remarks about the fineness of its texture for limestone. A well known Adelaide architect, who had been consulted about the size of steps, had ex