15/02/1919 - 2013.
Access notes by Ferber on her work with the Jugoslav and Czechoslovak Federations of IFUW in 1945 below:
Helen Ferber was born in Adelaide on 15th February 1919. She was the eldest
daughter of Richard Francis Hockey and Kathleen Butler. Her grandfather Sir
Richard Butler was premier of South Australia, as was her uncle of the same name.
Ferber completed a BA at Melbourne University in 1939, majoring in French and
German. During her university years she completed a teaching diploma at Munich
University, a course in Italian at Perugia University, and summer schools at Dijon and
Poitiers Universities in France. She described her time in Munich in a memoir
published in Meanjin in 2006.
During World War II she worked as an interpreter for the Department of the Army,
censoring foreign language mail, and later as a monitor for the Australian
Department of Information Shortwave Listening Post, monitoring enemy broadcasts
in German, French and Italian.
After the war she worked with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation
Administration, firstly in the UNRRA Yugoslav Mission, later with refugees in the
UNRRA Displaced Persons Headquarters in Paris and Berlin. She wrote the official
history of the Yugoslav Mission. She also worked with the Preparatory Commission
of the International Refugee Organisation in Geneva.
In 1948 Ferber married an American diplomat, David Ferber. In the same year her
husband was appointed American Vice-Consul to Melbourne, and Ferber undertook
a series of lectures across Victoria seeking support for a United Nations appeal to
help displaced children in Europe. Further postings took David and Helen Ferber to
America and the Phillipines. The Ferber family returned to Melbourne in 1953, and
Helen Ferber spent the next decade raising two daughters, Jenny and Sarah, and a
son Michael. Michael suffered from severe disabilities and died aged 19.
Helen Ferber became actively involved with a number of women’s organisations in
Melbourne. She joined the Australian Federation of University Women-Victoria,
becoming national Convenor of International Relations for AFUW in the late 1950s,
and President of AFUW-Vic in 1962. Her experience of international affairs made
her particularly suited to be the international representative in an organisation
devoted to the education of women and the furtherance of peaceful international
relations. She was also an active member of the Catalysts Club and the Lyceum
Club, becoming vice-president of the latter organisation. She also served on the
ABC’s Victorian Talks Committee, and later its State Advisory Committee.
In 1965 Ferber took up a part-time position with the Institute of Applied Economic
and Social Research at the University of Melbourne. She worked there until 1981,
variously filling the positions of research fellow, business manager and editor of the
Institute’s publications, including its journal, the Australian Economic Review.
Working with Ronald Henderson she made a major contribution to his groundbreaking
study of Australian poverty, the Henderson Report. For the Victorian Council of Social Services she wrote another seminal engagement with public policy, Citizens Advice and Aid Bureaux in Victoria.
Helen Ferber also undertook autobiography and family history, writing a record of her
experiences in America and Europe from letters she had written to family and friends,
and publishing Stagecoach to Birdsville, an account of her grandparents’ journey to
Birdsville in 1894. The breadth of her engagement with public life can probably be
best gauged from the lengthy biographical interview recorded with her by the
National Library in 2006.
In 2010 Helen Ferber was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM). The
award was “for service to the community, particularly as a social policy researcher
and historian, and through contributions to the advancement of women”.
Helen Ferber contributed generously to the Graduate Women Victoria scholarship
program, and a scholarship was named for her in 2008. She died in 2013, after a
busy life well-spent. She was remembered in her obituary as “a woman of action who
was ‘clear-eyed’ but with a commitment to social justice”.
Felicity Lorains of Monash University won the Helen Ferber Bursary in 2008.
Publications of Helen Ferber
Citizens Advice and Aid Bureaux in Victoria I.A.E.S.R. Melb.Uni, 1975.
R.B.Scotton & Helen Ferber (eds) Public Expenditures and Social Policy in Australia,
Vols 1 and 2, Longman Cheshire, 1978 and 1980.
Stagecoach to Birdsville, Kangaroo Press, 1995.
‘Missives from Munich’, Meanjin, Vol. 65, No. 2, 2006: 16-24.
Other periodicals: Journal of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria, Australian
Outlook, University of Melbourne Gazette, Journal of the Huguenot Society of
Australia.
Other Sources
Alison McClelland and Glenys Romanes ‘Helen Ferber: Writer, historian, volunteer:
Woman of action who inspired others’, The Age March 24 2014.