Kondelea 'Della' Elliott (1917–2011), union official and women's rights lobbyist, left school at fourteen to train as a typist. She became involved in Young Communist League activities, speaking on the Communist Party stump in Sydney’s Domain and engaging in left-wing theatre. In 1940 she was elected to the central council of the NSW branch of the Federated Clerks' Union; she became its assistant secretary in 1943, remaining in the post for five years. During the 1940s, as a delegate to the NSW Labor Council and the ACTU, she campaigned for equal pay for women, and in the 1950s worked for the Waterside Workers' Federation. In this way she met Eliot V Elliott, leader of the Seamen's Union of Australia; they married, and she worked in their federal office from 1955 to 1988. In retirement, she researched union history and helped establish the Jessie Street Women's Library. She received a NSW Premier's Award for Community Service in 2000. Her name is perpetuated in her gift of an annual scholarship for an Aboriginal student to the Women's College at the University of Sydney.
To create her striking portrait of Elliott, Ivy Shore painted quickly with broad strokes directly onto the board. After the painting won the Portia Geach prize in 1979, Shore gave the portrait to Elliott, who hung it in her home for many years.
Gift of Jeannie Highet and Kim Buchan 2012
© Estate of Ivy Shore
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves.
Well behaved women seldom make history, as the saying goes, and the National Portrait Gallery, consequently, is full of awesome Australian women who refused to conform to narrow ideas about their place and their worth.
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