EPILOGUE

Epilogue

 

by Michael Chesterman, with assistance from friends

 

The enigmatic title that Colleen bestowed on the memoir or ‘reverie’ constituting the bulk of her doctoral thesis began with the single word ‘should’. In accompanying commentary within the thesis, she explained that in what she had written, there were 

 

a number of references to constraints, to rules, to the binding of ringlets, the starching of clothes, which echoed in my mind with the rules, imposed particularly on young women, and which led to my decision to entitle the manuscript Should.

 

But if any single word or short phrase like ‘should’ were to be chosen to describe her life after she left Australia in early 1967, it would have to be a very different one. Something like shall or can and will would be much more suitable. She acted as if she no longer felt bound by the constraints and restrictions identified in Should. Instead, she was able and indeed determined to take on and surmount a wide range of challenges. This was very obvious particularly in her different forms of employment, but also in a number of other contexts. She became an initiator and a leader.

 

In each of these contexts, she displayed a characteristic that is also mentioned in Should. The unusually perceptive principal of her primary school, a woman called Lucy Woodcock, identified it when suggesting that she have a career as a diplomat. This was her capacity and willingness to listen to different groups of people, negotiate between them and bring them together. She led through getting people to agree with her and with each other, not through simply stating what should be done.

 

Her development along these lines, notably after our return to Sydney in early 1979, is the main topic of this epilogue or afterword. The epilogue focuses on five themes or motifs that feature prominently in Should. These are: her engagement with creative writing; her enthusiasm for the performing arts; her commitment to feminism; her awareness of the significance of social class; and her determination to explore foreign countries and cultures. 

 

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Emancipation such as I describe in the epilogue was of course achieved by many women with a background like Colleen’s. But as I see it, each example of this type of achievement has its own individual and interesting characteristics. 

 

In compiling the epilogue, I have been much helped by friends, three of whom have kindly contributed short descriptions of Colleen’s activities in different fields of employment. I am particularly grateful to them for doing this. 

 

Creative writing

 

Colleen continued to be significantly engaged in creative writing after submitting her thesis in 1995. I’ve already mentioned her short story ‘The Family Game’. But she also wrote unpublished drafts of a short novel, based on her travels around Sicily in the late 1960s, and of a number of short stories. Some of these were only three or four pages long and most were based on aspects of her life back in Australia. I recently came across printed versions of these in a box of her old papers.

 

In the same box I found a letter that she wrote from London in July 1996 to a member of the History Department of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. It contains this paragraph:-

 

Three weeks ago I gave a paper at the Australian Identities conference in Dublin. The paper, Absent Fathers, Vicious Mothers and Troubles with my Periods, identified a number of archetypal narratives on the clashes within families in the post-war period. For your conference, I would propose a paper called Clever Young Girls Suffer in which I consider how women writers, in their retrospective narratives on the 1950s, present the restrictions imposed by education, class, religion and gender and identify education as their way out. Education and their writing ambitions provide the means whereby they can avoid the restrictions of Australian society and escape overseas. If you are interested in the paper I could provide a copy within a week of notification.

 

This strikes me as an interesting comment, made in hindsight, on the nature of her achievement in Should,

 

I have read the second of these papers that she mentioned. It’s a thoroughly scholarly analysis of the questions described in her letter.

 

I also came across course outlines that she and a friend prepared for tutorials that they gave in creative writing at UTS, and a certificate stating that in 1997 she completed a course called ‘Writing TV Series’ at the Australian Film Television & Radio School. 

 

The performing arts

 

Although, as outlined in Should, Colleen participated actively in theatrical events from schooldays until her departure for overseas, she didn’t make any sustained attempt to act or direct professionally from then on. After she and I got together in London (this was in late 1968), she mentioned once or twice that she had tried to make herself known at a couple of London theatres, but she didn’t elaborate on this. I suspect she might have found the prospect too daunting.

 

Once back in Sydney, she lost no time in linking up with friends from university with whom she had performed. On our first Saturday night here, when the last performance of a production of Tom Stoppard’s Travesties at what is now Belvoir St Theatre (then Nimrod) had a full house, Ken Horler (‘Rex’ in Should), who was one of the company’s directors, firmly insisted that we sit illegally on the stairs to see it.  

 

This was the start of a long involvement with Belvoir. In fact, between 1989 and 1992, after the current companies that own and manage Belvoir had taken over the theatre, she was an enthusiastic member of the board of directors that was responsible for choosing and mounting its plays. 

 

During her time as Deputy Director of the Women’s Coordination Unit (as to which, there is more below), she was one of the initiators of the Women and Arts Festival, a substantial, ground-breaking state–supported festival held in October 1982. 

 

Also, after completing a number of welfare-oriented projects in collaboration with our friend Jane Schwager (they called themselves Chesterman Schwager Associates – I remember asking frivolously whether our dog Lancelot and our two cats were the Associates), Colleen worked on a major arts-oriented project commissioned by the NSW Government. Here is Jane’s description of it:-

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In 1989/90 we… undertook a major review of the planning and support provided to the Arts in ‘growth areas’ particularly in Western Sydney.  Our report: “Arts Development in Western Sydney” (March 1990) was significant in that it highlighted that whilst 50% of Sydney’s population lived in Western Sydney and it was estimated that 90% of Sydney’s development would take place in the region over the next 20 years, the funding support provided to the region was woeful. At the time only 10% of the total applications for funding received by the Australia Council from Sydney as a whole came from Western Sydney, despite it's vital and diverse cultural life. The report identified a comprehensive range of recommendations that were supported and mostly implemented over time.  They specifically addressed many of the identified inequities.  Following our recommendations, changes were made to better support the Arts in ethnic communities, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island communities, targeted support was provided to small community and local cultural projects, the peer review approach to funding was changed to better support such projects. A range of youth arts initiatives and the establishment of a small number of community arts resource centres also occurred in response to our recommendations.

 

We also undertook a number of smaller community, arts and welfare projects over the two-year period following the SAAP and Western Sydney Arts review.

 

I remember that Colleen was particularly pleased about this report.

 

A few years after Pinchgut Opera put on its first performance (this was in 2002), she was designated a ‘Pinchgut heroine’ on account of the support she had given to it. This mainly took the form of rustling up friends to attend the opening night of each production. She organised a restaurant dinner beforehand for as many as could make it. A couple of times, the number of friends who came at her instigation was around 40.

 

Between 2009 and 2018, she worked as a volunteer with 2MBS Fine Music Sydney, preparing programs and helping to compile the program guide for the station’s monthly magazine. 

 

Also, for nine years commencing in 2011, she held various positions on the executive committee of the Wagner Society in NSW, culminating in taking on the role of President between 2017 and 2020. While the Society’s principal activity is organising seminars and recitals for its members, it also raises funds to support young opera singers to develop their careers by studying abroad.  When in 2018 the Western Australia Symphony Orchestra put on a concert performance of Tristan and Isolde in the course of celebrating its 90th anniversary, Colleen persuaded a group of about a dozen                                        Society members to join us in crossing the continent and attending the performance. The orchestra was very grateful for this support. It was very gratifying to learn some time later that this event was designated ‘best orchestral concert of the year’ in some Australia-wide awards program (I can’t remember which). But for her leadership, none of us would have been there.

 

I said earlier that after our return to Sydney in 1979 Colleen did not try to establish a professional career in any aspect of performance. But that didn’t stop her performing for her friends every now and again. 

 

I recall a bit of tap dancing early in the 1980s, usually to the tune of a song called Oceania Roll from the 1950s Hollywood film Two Weeks with Love. Memorably, in 1990, at a venue no less distinguished than Glebe Town Hall, she performed a song from her repertoire in Sydney University productions of Victoriana during the 1960s. The name of the song was Daddy Wouldn’t Buy Me A Bow-Wow. The occasion was called ‘Not Quite The Bicentennial’ because it was the combined birthday party of Colleen (turning 49), along with two friends and myself (turning 50). Then in 2011, with an audience of myself and about ten friends, she leaped onto the elegant long dining table of a very elegant and beautiful Palladian villa in northern Italy and delivered an unforgettable rendition of the Sydney Girls High School song. There’s a photo to prove it (but sadly no video).

 

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The feminist and socialist

In Should, Colleen gave particular prominence to the disadvantages and difficulties experienced on account of their gender by girls growing up in the same circumstances as had confronted her in Sydney from the time of her birth in August 1941. 

 

Several passages describe how, while at school and at Sydney University, she became aware of, and in due course motivated to challenge, male dominance in specific situations. Examples are when she was strongly encouraged by her uncle to abandon all thoughts of a career in law and while she was working on the university’s student magazine Honi Soit. 

 

A second important theme in Should is her growing awareness of the significance of social class. The fact that her parents were not well off became increasingly clear to her when at high school and particularly at university she mixed with fellow-students whose lifestyle was a good deal more comfortable than hers.

 

Predictably, these two themes – feminism and socialism – became intertwined in a number of contexts. The earliest of these was, I think, was during the final five years (1973-78) of her time living abroad. After I had got a job teaching law at the University of Warwick, we had moved from London to Leamington Spa, a nearby town. She referred to this period in Leamington as follows in a passage in the Introduction to Should:-

 

After my sons [Ben and Dan] were born, I went to the local university in the provincial town where my academic husband worked, and I retrained as a sociologist through a postgraduate degree.  I became involved in the Women's Liberation movement, marched, picketed, joined political organisations.  As a couple we formed close friends with whom we lived, ate, played, shared childcare and holidays.

 

Something she didn’t mention in this passage was the left-wing character of the political organisations that she joined. Also, the postgraduate degree to which she referred was an MA at Warwick University, awarded with Distinction on the basis of a thesis on the problems experienced by women in Coventry who had part-time jobs. Before writing the thesis (for which she received a grant from the UK’s Social Sciences Research Council) she had completed a bridging course in Sociology, having commenced this course just four days after giving birth to Dan in September 1974. 

 

A document that I found on Colleen’s computer is a self-styled ‘work in progress’ document called Subverting The Domestic. I don’t know the extent, if any, to which she contributed to it. It covers the period from 1968 to 1989. The extract below relates to the period when we lived in Leamington. 

 

Subverting The Domestic

Women’s Activism in the Leamington Area in the Seventies and Eighties
Starting a Time Line 

 

This is an attempt to chart the development of women’s activism in the Leamington area from 1968 to the end of the eighties. Actions in Leamington and Coventry take different forms and Warwick University and Lanchester Polytechnic provide locations and inputs. The energy is extraordinary and carries a woman’s presence and view point into a huge variety of situations. Political networks become social and vice versa and the belief that change is possible underlies everything. 

 

1973 Women’s Liberation group formed at Lanchester Poly in the face of ridicule from male students. Started campaign against posters showing topless women. Dressed up as cleaners with mops and dusters at student events. 

A new group of mothers convened a child-care group in Leamington, meeting at first at 6 York Road [our house] for a couple of days a week, to enable mothers to work or to attend classes at Warwick University. Group members together with Other Branch volunteers campaigned for the disused school at Bath Place to be used for community activities including child-care. 

1974 Women’s Studies. Feminist academics in Sociology at Warwick University held meetings with women from groups in Leamington and Coventry, to design a Women’s Studies Course, which was offered in September that year, one of the first in the UK.

1974 April Bath Place Community Venture established, organised as a collective. The aim was to develop activities for kids, a café, crèche, advice centre etc. Women were active as volunteers and workers. For many years BP provided a focal point for alternative activity, feminist and otherwise. 

1974 Coventry Workshop set up to bring together campaigning on social and economic issues. Women academics and activists were involved in raising women’s issues.. 

1975 Action in support of the National Abortion Campaign (NAC), formed to combat restrictive amendments to the 1967 Abortion Act. Leamington important here as it was the headquarters of the anti-abortion LIFE organisation whose president Jack Scarisbrick (also known as Scabby Prick) was head of the History dept at Warwick U. There was also a clinic of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) in Leamington, performing abortions. LIFE organised an annual march from Leamington to the clinic led by a piper playing the Last Post. Local women’s groups and others held counter demonstrations. People remember a big demonstration in 1976 outside the Spa Centre where LIFE was holding an assembly leading to angry confrontations. Main chant was:

Not the Church, not the state
Women must decide their fate 

1975 National Working Women’s Charter campaign started. The Charter was produced by the London Trades Council and set out ten basic demands ‘for working women and housewives’. These included: rate for the job regardless of sex, free local authority nurseries, 18 weeks maternity leave on full pay, family planning clinics in every locality and increased family allowances. Local groups set up in Cov and Leam in support. The Coventry groups included working women, trades unionists, academics and students, and was seen as one of the most active and broadly based in the UK.
For International Women’s Day, the Coventry WWC group held an exhibition in Coventry and produced a booklet on Women at Work in Coventry, tracing women workers from farming and silk factories to industrialisation. 

1976 April National Women’s Charter Conference held at the Lanchester Poly in Coventry.  

1976 Hostel for Battered Wives established in Leamington by the Council

1975/76 Capital Reading Groups.  Two groups set up to read Marx’s Capital.
Group A met at the University and was run by heavyweight intellectuals - Simon Clarke and Sol Picciotto. Terry Lovell attended this one. It read all three Vols. at rapid speed.
Group B was an informal group for women (including one man). It was leisurely and non-confrontational. This group had great discussions but never got beyond Vol. 1. 

1977 A women’s reading and discussion group was established in Leamington.  It campaigned on issues such as abortion and equal pay, and held information stalls at the weekly markets in South Leamington. Women academics from Cov and Leam were also involved in monthly meetings to discuss research on women’s issues with women in Birmingham. .

1977 The Wedge Cooperative formed in Coventry providing an alternative bookshop and café. Women centrally involved and feminist literature a speciality.

1977 Two day conferences organised by socialist feminist groups in the Midlands
9 July Birmingham ‘Crisis – Women in the Home and in Employment’
15 October Coventry (Lanchester Poly) ‘Feminism, Sexuality and Abortion’
Aim was to generate discussion among SF women in order to formulate appropriate strategies

1978 campaigning on the Relf case on housing discrimination and against growing National Front activity in Leam. Leamington Anti-Racist and Anti-Fascist Committee (LARAF) established around this time. Leamington Women’s group contributed article on Women and Fascism to their newsletter in December 1978

1978 Birmingham. Last attempt to hold a national women’s liberation conference. Leam and Cov women involved in the organisation. Ended in disaster with furious confrontations between radical and socialist women’s groups and with the primary school in which it was held being defaced with graffiti and abusive slogans…. 

 

The women’s group to which Colleen belonged included some distinctly hard-core feminists. Through her work at some hospital or clinic, one of them was able to get the results of pregnancy tests quickly and easily. Having asked her during 1974 to do this for us, Colleen arrived at the next group meeting to find a very doleful group. She was told in mournful tones that she was indeed pregnant. There was clearly concern that, as a committed feminist, she would be unhappy about the oppression and hard work that this would create for her. She told me afterwards that she found it very difficult to appear suitably disappointed when actually she was completely delighted (as was I).

    

Our family became well acquainted with feminist perspectives. I particularly remember Dan (the baby in question), having reached the age of three-and-a-half, making the following important announcement (completely out of the blue) to a friend of similar age while they were sitting side by side in the back of our car: ‘Actually, I have always been a free abortion man.’

 

Following our return to Sydney early in 1979, Colleen lost little time in finding employment with feminist and/or welfare orientations. 

 

During 1979 and 1980, she was a part-time tutor in sociology at both the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and Macquarie University. Then late in 1980, having heard from friends that the NSW Government, led by Neville Wran, had relatively progressive policies regarding the position of women in society, she successfully applied for a position in a small section of the Premier’s Department bearing the innocuous-sounding name ‘Women’s Coordination Unit’. During her time there she was appointed Deputy Director of the Unit.

 

Donelle Wheeler, who was also in the Unit, has kindly provided this account what she got up to:- 

 

Colleen arrived at the Women’s Coordination Unit in late 1980 and the atmosphere changed.  Colleen’s feminism was unassailable, her bureaucratic experience slight and her capacity to go where others had not, invigorating.  She brought ideas and the courage to implement them to the Unit, and she brought fun and laughter to the six or seven other women who worked there at the time.  All of them regarded Colleen as a friend as well a work colleague.  

 

With Colleen came a vast network of friends and contacts, more and more of them drawn into the work of the Unit directly or indirectly, many of them already working on women's issues in their own bureaucracies, many to go on to continue the work Colleen began.

 

Colleen’s work area in the WCU was Women’s Employment and Training.  She was aiming for serious change. In 1976, there were no initiatives by government aimed at encouraging women to enter areas of training which were not traditional but which would improve their access to better-paying jobs with a career path.  A survey of TAFE students in 1975 showed that women in training were excluded from most vocational courses other than hairdressing and secretarial studies.  But the NSW Anti-Discrimination Act was passed in 1977 and it was in that context that Colleen began her major project, which was to train and encourage women into non-traditional work areas.  

 

The massive outreach program to get TAFE and employers to change was launched with leaflets and brochures and a bumper sticker with the slogan "Give a Girl a Spanner”. We were all delighted when, in under a day some wit had added “… and she’ll tighten your nuts”! We were pretty sure that part of the success of this effort was because of that memorably enhanced slogan. It is hard to overstate how unusual this program was, so colourful, so public, so unbureaucratic, so catching – and so lively.  It was focused on areas where the work-force was male dominated, like mining in the Hunter Region and it was underpinned by serious data and analysis.  Colleen worked closely on this aspect of the project with Barbara Pocock, the first Women’s Officer in the S.A. Department of Industrial Relations, now a Greens Senator for S.A. in the Federal Parliament.  And she also worked closely with the NSW Women’s Advisory Council, particularly with Moira Brophy, now a member of the Administrative Review Tribunal. Though she came to the unit untutored in bureaucratic ways, she could write a policy position better than anyone and she was unafraid of hierarchy and minded little about stultifying process.

 

Colleen left the WCU in 1982 to take up her job as Director of the New South Wales Council of Social Services (NCOSS), but her influence by then had spawned work across the NSW bureaucracy:  The Hunter Equal Opportunity Program, a government sponsored program was launched in 1981; The Women’s Directorate in the Department of Industrial Relations and Employment was established in 1984; in 1985 the Premier of NSW established an interdepartmental committee to develop a 5-year Women’s Employment and Training Strategy … and so it went on.  Colleen’s own networks begat more and larger ones, glass ceilings were smashed and women’s careers grew and developed and changed, sparked by a movement of which Colleen was a small but energetic part.

 

As Donelle mentions, Colleen left the Unit to become Director of the NSW Council of Social Service. This is the ‘peak body’ representing non-government welfare organisations to governmental and other relevant agencies in NSW. On her computer, I found her own description (I don’t know why or when she wrote it) of her four years there:-

 

The NCOSS Years

 

I became NCOSS Director at the beginning of 1983.  I had arrived back in Australia with husband and small sons after living overseas for 13 years in early 1979. Later that year Eva Cox asked me to write up the results of a women’s employment project, but within a week I found myself writing the NCOSS submission to the Prices Commission on medical fees, a subject on which I knew nothing, and appearing before the Commission to argue the case. Soon after, Eva asked my husband Michael to stand for President, a post he held until we returned to the UK for 6 months in 1981.  This limited connection persuaded NCOSS people to suggest I apply for the Director’s position; and the liveliness of the organization and the opportunity to work across a range of areas convinced me to leave my position as Deputy Director of the Women’s Coordination Unit in the NSW Premier’s Department.

 

After the first day I was not so sure.  The Treasurer John Baird told me that the budget was running into deficit. NCOSS had been told that it had to leave the decrepit but rent-free Government building at the bottom of Liverpool Street, together with the collection of small community and arts groups that filled all five floors. And Joan McClintock, the Director of ACOSS, rang to say that Bob Hawke, the recently elected Prime Minister, had announced an Economic Summit, and that ACOSS had been asked to represent the community sector; all state COSSs were asked to help drafting policies for the presentation.  

 

The building was the most urgent.  After all, the Government wanted to develop Darling Harbour! We had to find a building that the government was prepared to lease for a peppercorn… and the group of organisations that were also based there wanted to remain with us.  Fortunately Barbara Lepani the previous Director had already started discussions with the YACS Minister Frank Walker, and the Old Children’s Court in Albion Street was potentially available, if we were prepared to lodge next to a proclaimed place for alcoholic men.  Negotiations over the premises took huge amounts of time.  The Minister’s staff found to their surprise that we didn’t provide direct services (for example that Community Child Care was not running a crèche) and time had to be spent persuading them of the importance of representative and lobbying groups. We argued the importance of having a central place for the non-government sector to meet and consult and also of the importance of using a building with such a dark past for community organisations and meetings.  And then we had to start negotiating with the other tenants about how to divide the available accommodation!  Somehow everything worked out, most of the groups came with us, newcomers such as WEL joined us, and pot-plants were bought for the beautiful courtyard.  The importance for NCOSS of having secure accommodation, the value of the joint work between NCOSS, and the other representative groups and the availability of central meeting rooms has made Albion St an important centre.

 

The budget was next hurdle.  NCOSS then had about 12 staff, including some still employed on short-term project work, such as the computerised database.  Rather than getting rid of staff, I decided that it was most important to start building up our funds. We set ourselves the task of increasing our membership, which had slid in recent years, and Anna Logan played an important part in this. I believed that we needed to be as fully representative as possible and set out to bring back members, including some major charities, who had left.  We had to show the non-government and community sector that we provided them with services and with a strong representative voice. Diversifying beyond the grant provided for running costs by YACS was also vital and we set out to get projects from other sources.  The emergency passed, as they often do, and we kept the committed and experienced staff.

 

And somehow in the midst of all this organisational work, we got on with our real work.  We were in the era of summits, at both Federal and State level, and the COSS movement gained immeasurably from being seen as the legitimate voice for the community sector, and an equal voice with business and unions.  Again this meant a considerable amount of time was spent explaining to these bodies what we represented; I became used to being described as ‘our little welfare comrade.’ We argued for our priorities and stressed how childcare and other community services provided economic growth and jobs as much as building houses or making widgets.  Ah yes, jobs… Job creation was another theme of those years.  My last work in the Women’s Unit had been to respond to the federal Wage Pause Program, as the Minister, Ian McPhee had insisted that 50% of all jobs had to go to women.  This did not fit with the usual division of job creation funds at state level between roads, rail and local government.  But it provided an important entry point for NCOSS, and we encouraged the concept of job creation in the community sector.  1983-6 saw enormous creativity in ideas for work, presented in publications and conferences and I was a representative on the tri-partite Advisory Council to the state’s first Ministry for Employment. NCOSS itself benefited, gaining numbers of workers, including a hundred working on the computerised database – which NCOSS still supported.  

 

Taxation reform produced another summit; Jude Ellen, an economist working at NCOSS, worked with others on an excellent ACOSS pamphlet on tax reform for community benefit, and Julian Disney, the NCOSS Chair, became a powerful voice in this area.  We argued against the ALP’s introduction of a GST and produced proposals for other mechanisms for diversifying the tax base.

 

We continued to build coalitions of common interest.  We brought together the Forum of Non-Government Agencies to link all other major representative bodies; we organised interest groups, such as the major charities around issues such as emergency relief; we brought groups together around new programs such as HACC, SAAP and accident compensation, trying to negotiate the shared interests between consumers and service providers; we got Law Foundation funding and employed lawyers to work on youth advocacy, older people’s rights and the new Community Organisations Bill.  

 

The Pre-Budget Submission continued to be an important tool in bringing organisations together, and we took delegations for formal meetings with the Premier and Cabinet Ministers.  We learnt to suggest priorities for funding rather than presenting an undifferentiated wish-list and we also indicated areas where funds could be found.  Volunteers from academia and idealists from government departments who helped us with these tasks were invaluable. The community organisations were seen as articulate and responsible and we made some significant gains, even if Ministers preferred to fund education campaigns, for example about child abuse, without recognising that adequate services then had to be provided. The night of the State Budget when groups met at NCOSS and prepared our analysis and press releases was always charged with energy.

 

But running NCOSS could be a roller-coaster ride.  I did not appreciate the early morning calls from the media, wanting immediate comments on some change in Government policy.  Money was always tight and I looked with envy at our Victorian colleagues, with solid funding from charitable trusts based in Victoria.  At times the sheer breadth of the areas we covered was too much. We said that we ran a Shadow Cabinet on a shoestring. It was depressing when the same issues emerged time and again, and the same arguments would need to be mounted once more.  But in those four years, we managed to achieve a great deal, largely due to the ongoing commitment of excellent staff and Board… And not to be forgotten, we had a lot of laughs, a lot of wit and some very stylish parties! 

 

I remember seeing Colleen discussing welfare matters live on television with Bob Hawke, then Prime Minister. She was amused by her introduction as ‘Australia’s leading social worker’ (social work was definitely not what NCOSS engaged in), but not so amused by Hawke’s somewhat patronising manner.

 

On account of her high profile in this role her next major activity was in the federal sphere.  She was asked by the then Federal Minister for Housing to conduct a large-scale review of ‘supported accommodation’ throughout the Commonwealth: i.e., of institutions such as hostels for homeless and shelters for women escaping from domestic violence. 

 

Jane Schwager was a collaborator on this project. As I mentioned earlier, she subsequently joined with Colleen to form Chesterman Schwager Associates. Jane has kindly provided this account of the work that they did:- 

 

Colleen led a team for the year-long review of the Sheltered Accommodation Assistance Program in 1988. I worked with her for the full period and we jointly held most of the consultations all over Australia.  It was a fun year and I got to know Colleen during this year.  We usually shared a motel room to save costs so we had lots of chats about our lives.  I have many memories, one was that when Colleen unpacked she always placed at least 3-4 books on the bedside table, the rest could wait!  I recall asking her why she always bought 3-4 when sometimes we were only away for a night or 2.  She would answer “But I don’t know what I am going to feel like reading”. She was a terrific meeting facilitator. Some meetings were heated, highly political and demanding.  I recall one meeting with a large group from the Women’s Refuge lobby in Melbourne.  We were mid stream asking our standard set of questions when a woman stood up and demanded that they run their own meeting. I looked aghast but Colleen read the room and beamed around at me and said:  “That would be wonderful wouldn’t it Jane.” They certainly went off script and even took their own minutes and gave them to us, which we adapted to our format without further agitation.  She had a prodigious memory. She could remember what so many individuals said and in what meeting.  eg. she could identify that it was "the woman in the red hat at the back of a meeting" weeks before who said something important.  She was a perfectionist with her writing and did many many rewrites of the main report titled “Homes Away from Home.”  I recall eventually being quite firm and saying “Enough” to her. The end result was a highly respected report with many recommendations that ensured the ongoing - and increased - funding of youth refuges, women’s refuges and the full range of emergency accommodation programs across Australia.  Recommendations too many to recall, but extending the time allowed for stays in emergency accommodation, especially youth and women’s refuges, was a significant change as it allowed meaningful supports to be put in place avoiding the revolving doors.

 

It was after deciding to work only part-time as a welfare consultant that Colleen, as she explained in her Introduction, wrote Should and the surrounding material that constituted her thesis.

 

During that period, she was also an unpaid member of the board of an organisation called Playworks.  Its purposes were to nurture new women writers, encourage new forms of writing for performance and develop the work of more experienced women writers. In 1995, it published Playing with Time, a book mainly devoted to reporting the results of Australia-wide surveys that Playworks had conducted of the experiences of women writing for performance. It showed that not enough plays by female writers were selected for production. 

 

Playing with Time is described on the title page as having been ‘compiled and edited’ by Colleen.  A number of individual chapters are ascribed to other authors and the heading to another indicates that it was co-written. It would appear that Colleen was responsible for the rest (about one quarter) of the book.

 

Looking through Playing with Time recently, I discovered the following anecdote. There is no indication as to its provenance, so it can be assumed that Colleen wrote it, or at least discovered it.

 

 

 

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A further activity of Colleen’s during this period was to be a member of the collective of Refractory Girl, a feminist journal.

 

Her last period of paid work was as Director of the Australian Technology Universities’ Women’s Executive Development Program between 1997 and 2006. Susan Tiffin, then Head of Human Resources at University of Technology Sydney (UTS), has kindly sent me an outline of her activities in this role.

 

Based at the University of Technology, Sydney from 1997 to 2006, Colleen was Director of the Australian Technology Universities’ Women’s Executive Development Program (fondly known as ATN WEXDEV). It was a dynamic, collaborative initiative, aimed not only at improving the representation of senior women in universities but building a much more inclusive and supportive culture. Working with Colleen in the early years I knew it was an absolutely perfect job fit. Colleen was a networker extraordinaire and a fabulous communicator, bringing boundless energy, creative flair and great organizational nous.

 

In the mid-nineties, the university sector geared up in terms of equity and support for senior women, with the national Vice-Chancellors’ Committee endorsing the first of a number of action plans from 1999. In the same year, the Australian Technology Network was created, signing a collaborative agreement across five universities (University of Technology Sydney, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, University of South Australia, Queensland University of Technology and Curtin University). They had a number of active women executives and arguably more support for equity initiatives. So was born WEXDEV, courtesy of a federal government grant and then supported by the universities themselves until 2013. It was the only cross-institutional program of its type.

 

The program needed a Director. Enter Colleen with a depth of experience working on women’s issues, an affinity with academic life and universities, great policy and program background and an incomparable flair for relationship building. The Program was flexible and multi-faceted, with strong networks and localized programs at each university together with national initiatives, forums and conferences. It built conscious links across academic and administrative staff, encouraged women to go outside their institutions through placements, and took a leadership role in working with overseas universities, most memorably in South Africa.

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Colleen understood how to embed and build support for a program. She used research, evaluated and fed back lessons, publicized the results through papers and forums in Australia and beyond, and after stepping down from the role, still contributed to research in the area of gender equality in higher education. It’s a testament to this initiative that the ATN still acknowledges the Program as an important part of its equity history.

 

In a box of Colleen’s old papers, I recently found a letter containing another testament to the impact of her work at WEXDEV. Some time after my departure in 2001 from the Law School at the University of New South Wales, a long-term friend and highly regarded colleague, Jill McKeough, left the School to become Dean of the Faculty of Law at UTS. While pleased for Jill’s sake, I remember feeling a bit sad that the School had lost the benefit of her greatly valued contribution to it. Later, when Colleen retired from WEXDEV in 2006, Jill wrote a letter to her congratulating her on her work there. It included this sentence: ‘You will recall that it was your article on the WEXDEV website which finally persuaded me to apply for the job at UTS!’ So over all these years I never realised that it was Colleen that I should blame for Jill’s departure from my old Law School!  

 

Colleen’s activities in South Africa were funded by a large grant from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. During a number of visits to that country she gave presentations and supplied programs for improving the prospects for women in several ‘technikons’ (a South African term for tertiary institutions providing technical and vocational education). 

 

She also paid visits, organised through the London-based Association of Commonwealth Universities, to Nigeria, Uganda and Pakistan. And she became the principal researcher on a substantial research project, funded by the Australian Research Council. It focused on the impact on organisational culture of having a critical mass of women on the boards (or their equivalents) of large companies and public sector bodies, including universities.

 

During her involvement in this research she told me about a particular article that she or a fellow-researcher had come across in an academic journal of management studies. Its title was something that the writer heard being said by one male director to another as the sole female member of the board was approaching them before the start of a board meeting. The article was called ‘Watch Out – Here Comes Emotion!’

 

In consequence of her work in this context, Colleen became an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Business at UTS. This was an unpaid position that committed her to delivering a seminar or a graduation address from time to time. She had travelled some distance from her first academic positions in Australia, as a tutor in left-wing sociology at Macquarie University and UNSW.

 

During her time as Director of WEXDEV she attended a leadership course organised by the Benevolent Society of NSW. I can’t resist adding a couple of stories arising from her participation in it.

 

First, at the conclusion of the course the co-ordinator passed around sheets of paper for each of the participants to record comments on their fellow-participants. Within the same box of Colleen’s old papers, I found the sheet containing comments on her.  They were all complimentary, but two are particularly quotable:-

 

Boy, can this lady belt out a show tune!!

 

A woman who has done for voice lessons and careful diction what Gina Lollobrigida did for the cleavage!!

 

Secondly, there was a graduation ceremony at Sydney Town Hall at which the then Prime Minister, John Howard, presented certificates to the participants. (We had been told by the CEO of the Benevolent Society, who happened to be Jane Schwager, that because the presenter at the last ceremony had been a prominent Labor figure – I think, the NSW Premier – they were obliged this time to invite someone from the Coalition.) Because Colleen’s surname began with C she was relatively high on the list. Every female participant going up to the platform before her received not only a certificate from the Prime Minister, but also a kiss on the cheek. But when it was Colleen’s turn, she succeeded, with impeccable stage timing, in stepping back just at the moment when he lunged forward for his kiss. There were audible signs of approval by some members of the audience. His lunge having failed in this instance, Howard did not attempt the same manoeuvre again. Arguably, that was true leadership on Colleen’s part… 

 

Overseas travel

 

Many of our generation growing up in Sydney after World War II shared Colleen’s strong fascination with foreign countries and cultures and her determination to continue exploring them. But she especially wanted to explore them in the company of good friends. So she took onto herself the task of devising itineraries and engaging a travel company to make arrangements. Her filing cabinet became stuffed with cuttings and photocopies from the brochures of reputable travel companies. In this way, she became the initiator and tour guide for group journeys in which the group comprised just the two of us and some friends. The numbers in these groups ranged between 6 and 12.

 

In this manner, we paid memorable visits to Iran and Uzbekistan (2005); the Silk Road in China followed by Kyrgyzstan (2007); Syria and Lebanon (2009); and the Caucasus (Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia) followed by Eastern Turkey (2014). 

 

Finally, in 2011, she celebrated a special occasion – her own 70th birthday – by arranging for about 10 friends to join us in renting for a week the Palladian villa that I have already mentioned. It was a very special holiday for all of us.

 

It could be said that she prepared for this role of tour leader by making it clear that during Ben and Dan’s early childhood no journey being contemplated by us should be inhibited in scope by the fact that they were still young. In consequence, by the time they had both reached the age of 10, they had lived in two countries (England and Australia) and visited a further 12, including Egypt, Nepal and Burma (as it then was).   

  

 

Conclusion

 

I could of course write a great deal more about what Colleen did in a variety of other roles – for instance, as a loving and much-loved partner of mine, as an utterly devoted mother and grandmother, as a good friend to many people (including the friends of our two sons – many of them sent messages about their affection for her after she died), as an enthusiastic and skilful cook and as a hostess possessed of an especially warm and welcoming smile. I could also mention that she maintained a determination to take up new forms of creative activity – she enrolled, for instance, in short courses in pottery and in upholstery during our early years in Leamington and produced some nice pieces of work – and that she managed to become something of a collector, by amassing a large collection of striking and unusual items of clothing (some of which could well belong in a museum). This she did by buying assiduously in any part of the world where she happened to be.

 

But I hope that, with the help of the friends who provided contributions, I have managed to put together an epilogue that sufficiently illustrates the nature and extent of the emancipation that Colleen achieved from what she called the 

 

constraints… rules… binding of ringlets… starching of clothes, which echoed in my mind with the rules, imposed particularly on young women, and which led to my decision to entitle the manuscript Should. 

 

I also hope particularly that readers who knew Colleen, even those who knew her very well, will find material on this website that will enlighten them further about the nature and extent of her many capacities, achievements and admirable qualities.