Remembering Ailsa Gillies
Ailsa Gillies joined Zonta in 1978, becoming the club’s sixth President in 1983 and serving as archivist both for the club and for District 22 in preparation for Zonta International’s centenary year in 2019. She died on 5 April, 2019 at the age of 90 after a year in aged care, following a fall at home in May 2018.
In addition to her commitment to Zonta, Ailsa was a pioneering professional woman in Queensland.
She came from a family of independent and high-achieving women and graduated from The University of Queensland in the early 1950s as a bacteriologist. She joined the then Department of Agriculture and went on to became Director of Dairy Research in the Department of Primary Industries in 1981—the first woman divisional director within a Queensland Government Department. Cheeses were her major interest.
Ailsa also supported a range of community activities other than Zonta.
On Australia Day 2005, Kevin Rudd (then the member for Griffith) presented Griffith Australia Day awards for outstanding service to 47 Southside residents, including Ailsa. His acknowledgement of her extensive community work was recorded in Hansard in the following terms: For the past 50 years, Ailsa Gillies has donated her time and energy to the local community through volunteer work with the Queensland Naturalist Club, promoting the preservation of native flora and fauna. Ailsa also volunteers for the Queensland Library Foundation, the University of Queensland Alumni Association, the Lyceum Club and the Zonta Club of Brisbane. She also worked as Treasurer for Epilepsy Queensland for 18 years.
She was an adventurer, a bushwalker, and a traveller. After retirement she visited all six continents—some of them several times. She also bred and showed basset hounds in the 1960s and her first basset, Mandy, became the face of Hush Puppy Shoes.
Ailsa lived in the heritage listed family home, Nassagaweya, from 1980 until May 2018. The two-storeyed timber house was listed in 1992 because of its significance as a 1880s residence of the type built at Hill End during the boom of the 1880s, and also because of its close association with colonial architect, Arthur Morry, who built it as his own residence in 1885. Morry was to become mayor of the City of South Brisbane and a Member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly. When he left the house in 1895, it was rented until 1915 when it was purchased by a Scottish-Canadian, John Gillies, who named the house Nassagaweya after his birthplace in Ontario. The name is a Delaware Indian word meaning ‘home by the maple forests’. After Gillies died in 1946, the house remained in his family.
