New additions to Australian Dictionary of Biography

Prominent Australians who made their mark after World War II, including actors, writers, artists, sports stars and aviators, have been immortalised in the latest additions to Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB), based at the Australian National University (ANU). The 76 new additions, who all died in 1994, include activist and author of Power Without Glory, Frank Hardy, tennis great, Lew Hoad, actors Frank Thring and Leonard Teale, writers Mary Durack and Nene Gare, and the aviatrix Maude (Lores) Bonney. ADB General Editor Professor Melanie Nolan said colourful figures such as the Soviet-born Charles Zakharoff, who rose from his migrant beginnings as a taxi driver to become friends with the likes of NSW Premier Sir Robert Askin, and the High Court judge Sir Frank Kitto reflected a new social movement. "The post-war period was a time of enormous social change in Australia," Professor Nolan said. "Making a huge impact were married women for the first time returning to the workforce after starting a family. "Many of them had worked during the war and people like Eva Bacon, who fled the Jewish persecution of Europe and became a dress maker in Brisbane, began agitating for equal pay and affordable childcare which changed the nature of the workforce, arguably for the better." Professor Nolan said this year there were fewer Indigenous entries because many are being reserved for a special Indigenous volume of the ABD, with 20 biographies of Indigenous women planned to celebrate NAIDOC week in July.