Michele Moloney

Description

Agent TypePerson Last edited by: mbarrie@unimelb.edu.au

IdentifierUMA-AG-000000046 Last edited by: mbarrie@unimelb.edu.au

Place of BirthNaarm / Melbourne (Vic SJ55-05)Place of DeathNaarm / Melbourne (Vic SJ55-05)Activities & OccupationsWomen's rights activists Last edited by: mbarrie@unimelb.edu.au

Health - Education and promotionGenderFemale Last edited by: mbarrie@unimelb.edu.au

HistoryBiography written by Jean Taylor

Michele Anne Moloney was a [Wiradjuri woman] born in Naarm during the post WW2 years on 8 February 1948, the oldest of three children and the only girl. Her childhood was difficult but she was particularly close to her grandmother who lived in a bungalow at the back of the family home. The same bungalow that years later, after her grandmother had died, became Michele’s home for several years. After her father died, Michele was able to buy a small place of her own in a Retirement Village and was quite settled and at home there for several years till after several on-going bouts of ill health she died peacefully in her sleep on 8 July 2022.

During the 1980s, Michele worked at the Matilda Women’s Refuge in Melbourne which was set up by a community-based group with government funding in 1978 to provide accommodation and support for womyn and children fleeing domestic violence.

Michele was an acknowledged member of the Aboriginal community and worked with several Aboriginal organisations in Canberra and Alice Springs as well as SNAICC, the national voice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, in Naarm.

After she’d retired from paid work and over the last few years of her life, Michele relied on several Aboriginal community organisations: the Kookaburra Club, a health and well-being support group for Aboriginal women, ACES, the Aboriginal Community Elders Services, the Aboriginal Advancement League and the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service in Fitzroy, to give her the kind of support and friendship she needed, especially during the lockdowns in Naarm during 2020 - 2021.

All of these essential services are run by and for the Aboriginal communities here in Victoria and were a necessary and affirming network for Michele for many years. When Michele’s health began to fail as she got older and she needed ongoing health care, the doctors and medical staff at VAHS were particularly supportive.

When Michele finally decided she wanted to be buried in the lesbian section of the Fryerstown Cemetery when the time came, she promptly bought a plot for herself in 2014 and wrote this fact in her Will.

Michele is also remembered by the lesbian community as someone who attended several of the residential lesbian gatherings in country Victoria. Since 1990, the lesbian community has added a 10% Pay The Rent levy to the registration fee for lesbian gatherings in order to pass that money on either to an Aboriginal community group, for example over $5,000 was passed on to ACES after the Lesbian Conference in 1990, or to individual lesbians so that they could attended lesbian gatherings free of charge. Michele and other Aboriginal lesbians have benefited from this Pay The Rent policy over the years and the money raised at the lesbian residential gatherings will continue to benefit Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lesbians who want to attend.

It was noted at Michele’s funeral at the Aborigine’s Advancement League in Northcote that the Aboriginal flag on Michele’s coffin, which was covered in Aboriginal designs and messages from friends, was one that was raised at lesbian gatherings, along with the Torres Strait Islander flag, to Acknowledge Country and pay respects to the Traditional Custodians on whose lands the gathering was being held.

After the funeral, Michele’s coffin was driven in convoy to the Fryerstown Cemetery by the Aboriginal Funeral Service and Michele was buried under a gum tree as she’d wanted in the lesbian section where Anah Holland-Moore, Heather Chapple, Helen Robertson, Betty Overall and Lyndel Robinson had already been buried.

Written by Jean Taylor.

Dates

Date8 February 1948-8 July 2022

Names

Given NameMicheleMiddle NameAnneFamily NameMoloney

Description Control

Source of DescriptionLet’s CHAT Indigenous Reference GroupSNAICC NEWS Secretariat of National Aboriginal & Islander Child Care Newsletter April–May 2005

Professional Relationships

Member of OrganisationVictorian Women's Liberation and Lesbian Feminist Archives Inc (VWLLFA) Last edited by: mbarrie@unimelb.edu.au

Let’s CHAT Indigenous Reference GroupAustralian National University

University of Melbourne Archives

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Michele Moloney