abilities.
For many years I taught part-time at the Mackay College of TAFE, in particular at the Sugar School where shift engineers and shift chemists are trained for the sugar industry. Although girls were accepted for the shift chemist’s course, the school’s prospectus stated that they would find employment only as laboratory assistants, not as shift chemists. To my surprise, the battle I fought to change the prospectus was long and bitter, even though the wording in it was illegal. Eventually the discriminatory language was removed, but to my knowledge the industry still shies away from female chemists and engineers in positions of authority.
Again it was quite acceptable for me to be in the team setting up the engineers’ course for the Sugar School and for me to teach the future male shift engineers, but girls were not permitted to enter the engineering course.
I rarely become involved in women’s issues and I am wary of some of the excesses of the feminist movement. For myself, I have managed to do anything I pleased simply by going ahead and doing it and take no notice of anyone who said I couldn’t. If I have any influence, it will be from example, not from oratory or from joining movements.
However I will fight tooth and nail to keep all doors open for both men and women, especially educational door. Once there is no bar on women entering a course or profession, I feel no further need for artificial encouragement, for affirmative action or for redressing the balance. From personal experience I know that thumbing your nose at the prevailing attitudes of the society in which you live is very likely to lead to loneliness and unhappiness. How silly and potentially dangerous to push young girls into engineering courses as many universities do, simply because the government wants to improve the statistics (and provides funds to do so), without some accompanying discussion on the realities of engineering working environments.
Simply open the doors. If girls want to walk in, they will. If they don’t want to walk in, they must not be pushed.
In early 1985 I sought an appointment with the Dean of Engineering at the Queensland Institute of Technology because I wanted to tackle him about his newspaper advertisements trying to attract women into engineering courses. Advertisements for male students always show male engineers in white shirts and ties in clean offices, but the new advertisements showed a girl in a hard hat. Why? We argued for some time and then I ended up with a job as tutor which later extended to lecturing in electrical engineering. Towards the end of the following years left to found Mosaic Electronics. Since then I’ve lectured part-time at QUT in 1990 and at Griffith University in 1991.
Now I have an appointment as fractional senior lecturer in the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Queensland and expect to stay with this department for some time.
Although small towns are wonderful for bringing up young children, the lack of facilities can be very frustrating. No public library, no book shops, very little music or theatre. But there were many like us not prepared to sit and wait for the town to grow before the good things happen. If you wait until they or the Government do something about it, you miss out. Our family became very involved with the local branch of the Arts Council and I took my turn as Treasurer, Secretary, and President as necessary. I could never describe adequately the amount of pleasure my family derived over the years from the concerts, school performances, opera, ballet, and art shows brought to town by the Arts Council. The number of shows we could pack into a year was limited solely by the energy of our local branch committee.
More than anything else I love music and have played the piano and sung in choirs all my life. It worried me that our children had no music at school and no opportunities to enjoy the pleasures of singing in a choir. The battle was already on to get instrumental teaching in schools, and to stimulate the growth of music in the town, our Arts Council branch was putting pressure on the councils to employ a music coordinator. Eventually Mary Lyons, now Manager of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, was appointed and slowly exciting things started to happen.
In the meanwhile, I started a choir at my children’s school so that they could sing, but as so often happens in these cases, my daughter wasn’t interested and my son marginally so. But I struggled on with the North Mackay High School choir at the same time forming a second choir for primary school children, both of which are still going. Mary Lyons started a youth orchestra and together we worked on establishing a music school. My husband bought the old butter factory and partially did it up so that we could let most of it, keeping separate areas for a drama school and music school. We begged for Australia Council funds, imported teachers and with a shoestring budget and much community good will and assistance, tarted the Mackay Community Music Centre.
Meanwhile being worried that I was conducting choirs with no knowledge of what I was doing, we invited an American choral conductor to come and run some workshops in North Queensland. The following year he returned with the Michigan Master Singers, a sixteen-voice choir of music teacher, who spent several weeks in North Queensland sharing their expertise. Since then some members of that choir have returned many times to teach throughout Australia. We also invited Dr Roy Wales from the Queensland Conservatorium of Music to come and give us workshops on conducting. Over the years his involvement with Mackay grew, and now there is a branch or the Conservatorium well established in Mackay.
When I go back and see all the musical activities now taken so much for granted in Mackay, I feel good that I made the effort to change things so that my own children wouldn’t miss out. (My son is now a professional musician.)
In 1984, when my family and I moved to Brisbane, I took a year off engineering to study conducting full time at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music. I received a Graduate Diploma in Music and was awarded the Director’s Prize. The opportunities for professional choral conducting are just about non-existent and my strength lies more in getting the best out of amateur groups. As a hobby, music is a wonderful contrast from engineering.
Several years ago there was little training available for choral conductors and no-one knew the extent of choral music in Australia. I applied for a grant from the Australian Council to go and see what was happening in the United States and attend a national convention of the American Choral Directors association. There was enough money left over when I came back for postage and telephone calls, so that a small group of us could start the Australian Choral Conductors Association. That was in early 1985. Now the Association has grown to about 800 members and choral music is alive and well in Australia. In July 1993, I convened a national conference on the Gold Coast.
I like to make things happen. All my life I’ve had a strong interest in technology and technology education balanced by a passion for the arts, especially music. I like to throw my energies full time into making changes for the better, in improving the world about me. It’s not for the sake of power or for possible rewards. In fact I often find it most effective to be an influential associate rather than the leader, yet I know I can contribute useful ideas and driving enthusiasm for any project in which I’m interested. The rewards always come from achieving a more enriching environment for myself, my family and my associates.
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