Australian Dictionary of Biography

Lyn Berlowitz [detail], 1961

Northern Territory Library & Archives, PH0120/0088

Linda Marion Berlowitz (1903–1998), performer, politician, and pastoralist, was born on 30 April 1903 at Boulder, Western Australia, sixth of seven children of South Australian-born Charles John Gould Cave, butcher and miner, and his American-born wife Jessie Ethel Olive, née Hilson. After Charles died in October 1914 Jessie moved with her younger children to Fremantle and worked as a nurse. As children, Linda and her sisters had performed at local Boulder events, and in their teenage years they became known in Perth as ‘society entertainers’ (Northam Advertiser 28 February 1920, 2); she was named ‘Little Madam Tickle Toe’ (Northam Advertiser 6 March 1920, 3) in honour of her graceful dancing. At a Northam carnival in March 1920 her impressions of the classical dancing of Maud Allan were ‘applauded with great enthusiasm’ (Northam Advertiser 6 March 1920, 3), the audience calling for an encore. Her nascent dancing career ended abruptly shortly afterwards, when a cable arrived bringing news of her mother’s death while travelling in South Africa.

During the 1920s and 1930s Cave was employed as a typist and clerk, for at least part of this time at a stock and station agency. Following the outbreak of World War II she moved to Melbourne, where in January 1943 she passed her first examination as a nurse at Epworth Hospital. On 20 March that year, at All Souls Church of England, Kallista, she married Harold Charles ‘Happy’ Berlowitz, on leave from the 2/28th Battalion, Australian Imperial Force, with which he had served at Tobruk, Libya (1941), and El Alamein, Egypt (1942). Her marriage certificate understated her age by eleven years, and her husband and son did not learn her true age until after her death. While Happy served with engineer units in New Guinea (1943–44 and 1945), Linda continued her nursing training, passing her final examinations in April 1945. After the war’s end the couple moved to Darwin, where Happy had found work as an engine driver. Their only son, Don, was born in 1948.

By 1949 the Berlowitzes had joined forces with Geoff Barkla to form Barkla and Berlowitz Pest Controllers (later Barkla & Berlowitz Pty Ltd). Lyn, as she was now generally known, was a director and managed the office; the company expanded during the 1950s until it served almost the whole of the Northern Territory and beyond. The couple threw themselves into local philanthropy and community life. Lyn was heavily involved in women’s organisations in Darwin, including the Business and Professional Women’s Club, but on the 1958 electoral roll still gave her occupation as ‘housewife.’ Having revived her love of performing, she received favourable reviews for her acting in local Darwin productions.

Friends persuaded Berlowitz to run as an Independent for the Legislative Council seat of Fannie Bay in 1960. After an effective door-knocking campaign she defeated her more seasoned opponent on preferences, becoming the first woman to win election to the council. Just five feet (152 cm) tall, she had a chair specially made so her feet could touch the floor when in the chamber. A sympathetic colleague later said that though small ‘she packed a punch’—and needed to, in the face of prevailing assumptions that the chamber should be ‘an all-male domain’ (NT Parliamentary Debates 1998, 1683).

In parliament Berlowitz supported private enterprise in Darwin, advocating freehold land, private housing, and parity in conditions for government and private sector employees. She also expressed concern over Aboriginal infant mortality. Most controversial was her support for female jury service. Offended by a proposal to extend qualification for jury service to Chinese and Aboriginal men, she declared the bill an ‘insult to the women of the Territory’ (Willey 1962, 7). Women were not too emotional for jury service, she insisted: rather, they ‘go right around the question and have a good look at it’ (Willey 1962, 7), while men were hasty and more inclined to be lenient with women before the court. The bill was altered to include women, but Berlowitz was disappointed when a last-minute amendment required women to apply for inclusion rather than being placed on the jury roll automatically. True to her principles, she did apply. In 1964, after she and another woman on a jury panel were stood aside by the Crown counsel, she protested that the Crown Law Department was ‘rejecting women jurors as a matter of policy’ (Canberra Times 1964, 3).

Berlowitz served only one term, losing her seat at the election of December 1962. In 1964 she and Happy sold their interest in the company and bought Bullita station in the Victoria River District, later part of the Judbarra National Park. They lived there till March 1977, when floods all but destroyed their home. Lyn herself, alone at the homestead while Happy was out mustering, was swept away and had to cling for hours to a fallen gum tree before the waters receded and she could wade home. The Berlowitzes sold the station and moved to Melbourne, but their marriage ended in divorce soon afterwards, and Happy returned to the Northern Territory and then moved to North Queensland. Lyn later moved to South Australia, and then to Sydney. Survived by her son, she died in a nursing home there on 1 July 1998.