1922
A Country Women’s Association cup and saucer
Tea and sympathy
The Country Women’s Association (CWA) – the largest organisation representing Australian women – was built on tea, sympathy, scones and helping. The Toowoomba Queensland Country Women’s Association served 13 350 cups of tea in 1951 in cups just like this. The decoration on the cup was to celebrate the QCWA’s silver jubilee.
Grace Emily Munro loved the country property she had with her husband, Hugh, at Keera in western New South Wales, but in 1911, tragedy struck her idyllic life. While she was in Sydney accompanying one of her sons to hospital for an emergency appendectomy, her youngest son died suddenly of croup. This tragedy led to Grace establishing the Country Women’s Association of New South Wales in 1922. She was determined to see that isolation not kill more children.
The CWA is a non-political network of women dedicated to assisting rural women, improving their standard of living, health services and childcare resources. Where appropriate, the CWA advocates for country women with government. The CWA’s original aim was: ‘The drawing together of all women, children and girls in the country and making life better, brighter and more attractive, thus helping stop the drift from the country to the city.’
Within a year of the formation of the CWA in New South Wales, there were 68 branches across New South Wales and Queensland. South Australia followed in 1926 under the leadership of Mary Warnews of Burra, and by 1936 the CWA had become a national movement. The state associations federated on 7 June 1945 to create a national body. Its aim was to ‘enable Country Women’s Associations throughout Australia to speak with one voice on all national matters, more especially concerning the welfare of country women and children’.
The CWA was for many years one of the few avenues that allowed women to participate in public life. Some of the issues they dealt with were the right of married women to retain their own nationality, and the introduction of domestic science into the university curriculum. Cooking has always been central to the CWA, and during the Depression the organisation assisted those in need with food and clothing parcels. In World War II the CWA provided meals for troops in Quorn, South Australia, and Tennant Creek, Northern Territory.
But perhaps the CWA is at its pragmatic best when raising funds – often through sales of its cookbooks – to establish child health centres, women’s rest rooms and maternity wards at local hospitals, and to support bush nurses. The establishment of child health centres and CWA rest rooms provided places where women could not only get practical health services and advice on childcare, but also meet and share their experiences.
The CWA in modern times has remained a strong organisation, even though Australia has become increasingly urban. And cooking is still at the heart of the CWA, a strong presence at agricultural shows around the country. Its members understand that old Australian tradition: when things appear at their most bleak, sometimes the best thing is a cup of tea, a scone and a chat.