HERSTORY on RTRFM

Kankawa Nagarra is a Gooniyandi, Walmajarri Bunaba woman, a Respected Elder, teacher and international blues and gospel singer-songwriter who performs in Walmajarri, Kimberley Kriol, English, and the known languages of her area. Her music carries an underlying message: that of protecting the environment and connecting families to their traditional land. “The land is crying for its people and the p...

Dorinda Cox is a Yamatji-Noongar woman with a strong record of working for social justice in her community; locally, globally and nationally. Dorinda is the mother of two daughters and small business owner. Cox has more than 20 years’ experience working in government and non-government sectors and has made significant contributions to policy and advocacy in the areas of domestic violence, child pr...

Right Rev. Kay Goldsworthy was one of the first women in Australia to be ordained priest and became the first woman in the country to be consecrated as a bishop in 2008. Born and raised in Melbourne, Goldsworthy left a career in hospitality to undertake her theological training at Melbourne’s Trinity College Theological School. She arrived in Perth in 1988 and spent three decades serving as chapla...

One of WA’s leading environmental campaigners, Jess Beckerling has been instrumental in the development of State Government policies and initiatives around preservation of native forests. In the role of Convenor of the WA Forest Alliance , Beckerling helped secure the end of Native Forest logging across the state, for which the Alliance was awarded the United Nation’s Association of WA’s Environme...

Born in Perth in the late 1920s, Laura Tolliday helped pave the way for women in sport across Western Australia. A state champion in netball, Tolliday also excelled at table tennis and cricket, competing nationally across the three disciplines. Tolliday’s influence in Western Australian sport has continued even after her retirement, with Tolliday focussing on the establishment of multiple communit...

A celebrated Wajarri, Badimaya and Wilunyu storyteller, Charmaine Papertalk Green’s work has commanded attention and accolades across an array of areas, from literary awards to school curriculums. Writing and publishing since she was a teenager, Charmaine is a multi-hyphenate, with titles such as visual artist, author, poet, photographer, and academic under her belt. Frank and fervid, her work bri...

M’Liss Henry grew up on a rural station in Condoblin, New South Wales, but her love for horses and horseriding has taken her all over the world. At age 21, Henry was selected as a reserve to go to the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, and subsequently rode racehorses for trainers in India and France. She finally settled down in Perth and founded the Claremont Therapeutic Riding Centre (CTRC) in 1972, which bec...

Dr Parwinder Kaur is an award-winning Indian-born biotechnologist, responsible for pioneering genomic research through DNA Zoo Australia , of which she is currently Director. Genomic resources developed by Dr Kaur’s team at DNA Zoo are currently being used across global conservation efforts for threatened and endangered species. Dr Kaur’s work has also led to her founding of ExPlanta, which focuse...

Dr Paola Magni, also known as Australia’s “bug whisperer”, is a world-renowned forensic scientist, researcher, tech entrepreneur, and Murdoch University senior lecturer who specialises in using nature to solve crimes. Growing up in her hometown of Turin, Italy, she developed a deep interest in nature while exploring mountains, seas, and zoos with her mother. Magni is a pioneer in the use of entomo...

Bangalore born Asha Bhat moved to Australia in 2004 and to the The City of Albany with her family in 2008. Bhat started work at the Southern Aboriginal Corporation as a finance officer and has advanced to serve as their CEO, supporting the organisation in their vital community work in the areas of housing, family and domestic violence, suicide prevention and health. Asha Bhat was inducted in the W...

Christina Matthews is the CEO of WA Cricket, and she is one of only three women in the world to hold the position of CEO of a first-class cricket association. As a former Australian cricketer from 1984 to 1995, Matthews is Australia’s most-capped female Test player and holds the record for the most dismissals by an Australian wicketkeeper. She served as wicketkeeper for the Australian Women’s Cric...

Cheryl Praeger was born and raised in Toowoomba, Queensland before moving to Brisbane to begin schooling. While attending Brisbane Girls Grammar School, Praeger developed an interest in teaching mathematics when she spent time helping other students with their work. From then on, she was determined to find out how she could further advance her skills in mathematics. Praeger was the first Western A...

Dr Betsy Buchanan BA LLB has worked voluntarily for 40 years to improve the lives of Aboriginal people. In 1971, she worked as a graduate lawyer in the Crown Solicitors office. Unusually, she then chose to volunteer as a legal and social welfare advocate for Aboriginal people. Dr Buchanan established the State’s first Community Law Centre in 1976; she worked on cases involving housing evictions, t...

Born in Pinjarra, The Hon. Cheryl Davenport AM was the driving force to ensure women and their medical practitioners in Western Australia were free of fear and prosecution if they chose to terminate their pregnancy. Davenport introduced a private members bill in the WA Parliament negotiating for women of Western Australia to be allowed safe and healthy reproductive choices. Davenport  joined the L...

Jenny Davis OAM is well known to anyone involved in Australian theatre. An innovator in every sense, Davis emigrated from England in 1976 with her husband and two children. For many years, Davis was the director of the West Australian Youth Theatre and a writer for ABC schools radio. Through the medium of theatre , she has combined the performing arts, education and community health. Her practice...

For as long as she can remember Lee Musumeci had a calling to become a teacher with a focus on children with disabilities. Through her dedication to the improvement of students’ learning and wellbeing, the Principal of Challis Community Primary School has achieved amazing feats in the education sector. With the implementation of music programs at her school in Seville Grove, Lee has changed the sc...

Not a lot of people just stumble into owning a piggery, but Annette Howard did. Around 25 years ago, Annette entered the pork industry with her husband and describes it as a  “seven days a week, 365 days a year” job – she’d just moved from the city and that was the end of it. The couple now have more than 20 000 pigs on their 1763 hectare property and she is on the Pork Industry Training Committee...

Losing her eyesight at age 3 then one of her legs at age 9 to cancer hasn’t stopped Kylie Forth from pursuing her dreams to be a competitive sailor. Forth has achieved amazing successes in her field including receiving many gold medals from global sailing competitions and representing her own blind sailing team in WA, Lost at See.  Despite not having a national blind sailing team in Australia, For...

Lesley Akora came to Australia in 1991 as a Ugandan refugee.  Despite being widowed with three children, she completed a double major in politics and sociology at Curtin University. Since her arrival in Australia, Akora has been a passionate mover and shaker in her community, pushing for culturally appropriate services and serving as the first female president of the African Community of WA. She h...

Proud Badimia-Yamatji nyarlu (woman) and Ballardong Nyoongar yorga (woman), Janinne Gliddon has given more than 30 years of service  to the improvement of Aboriginal women’s health. Gliddon’s dedication to her work stems from her passion towards addressing gaps in the healthcare sector which are culturally relevant for First Nations peoples’ in both urban and remote areas. In 2018, Gliddon was ack...

Born in Pakistan, Professor of Political Sciences and commentator on Muslim identities, Samina Yasmeen has achieved many accolades in her work representing Muslim voices in Western cultures. Growing up with a family who offered her the same academic opportunities as her brothers, Yasmeen says she felt her upbringing was progressive for the time. She moved to Australia at age 22 to study at Austral...

All before age 25, Theadosia Kurniawan has been acknowledged in Forbes Under 30, Asialink Business and the Young Community Citizen awards, twice. Growing up in both Jakarta and Perth, she believes in the importance of connecting people, cultures, and countries, and supporting the next generation of leaders. Thea is the founder of TEDxUWA , WA’s only entirely youth-run TEDx organisation. TEDxUWA re...

A lot can be said about Giz Watson , it’s hard to know where to start. Her career boasts environmental activism, carpentry (at one point, she was one of only three women to be registered as a builder in Western Australia) and perhaps what most people know her for, which is her time as the first openly lesbian parliamentarian in Australia with the Greens. Watson was born in 1957 in Eastleigh, a tow...

In this episode of HERSTORY on RTRFM, Maggie Wilde West chats with Taylah Strano about story telling and a life in the arts. Maggie Wilde West is a tireless advocate for the inclusion of people with disabilities in the performing arts, and she produced and directed the first original theatre production for an all-disabled cast in Australia. This is the first episode of the second season of HERSTOR...

Happy International Women’s Day! If you didn’t know, we made a podcast last year, profiling women who’ve been inducted to the Western Australian Women’s Hall of Fame. Maybe you didn’t know we had a hall of fame for women, well we do and HERSTORY was 13 episodes packed full of laughter, adversity and tales of greatness. RTRFMs Danielle Raffaele went back to revisit some of those stories and shares...