Remembering Mary Magee
Mary Magee joined the Zonta Club of Brisbane in December 1973 at the invitation of Leneen Forde. Five years later she was elected as club president and then went on to serve as Area Director, chairman of various district committees, Lieutenant Governor, and Governor.
She elected to the Zonta International Board in 1994 and, for the next eight years, served in successive positions in the hierarchy until she was elected as International President in 2000, the third Australian to be elected to that position – and the second from the Zonta Club of Brisbane.
Throughout those first 30 years in Zonta, Mary drove the establishment of new clubs with her trademark passion and exuberance. She was directly involved in establishing 20 clubs in Australia and a further 20 elsewhere in the Zonta world.
Mary was born in 1936, the eldest of three girls. Her parents, unusually for that time, valued the education of girls. Mary’s father had wanted her to be a doctor, but both her grandfather and her aunt were pharmacists and, inspired by her aunt’s independence and autonomy, Mary decided, at the age of 12, that she, too, would be a pharmacist.
At St Margaret’s Anglican school, Mary excelled both academically and in sport and, at 17, she took up a scholarship to study pharmacy at the Central Technical College, one of QUT’s predecessor institutions.
As was the practice at the time, as a student she was apprenticed. Assigned to the Lutwyche Pharmacy, she learned the basics of her chosen profession – including boiling cochineal insects to make tinctures.
In the first year of her pharmacy studies, she also studied piano at the Queensland Conservatorium and later took night classes in political science and economics at The University of Queensland.
Mary graduated as a pharmacist in 1955 at the age of 19, but was unable to register until the age of 21. As soon as she was registered, she set her sights on owning her own pharmacy.
She achieved this goal in 1959 at the age of just 23 when she opened the Alexandra Pharmacy, becoming the first woman to own a pharmacy in the Brisbane CBD.
At this time in Australia, this was no mean feat. As a woman, she first needed a male to act as guarantor for a loan. That goal achieved, she then focussed on paying off the loan within a year. That involved a lot of hard work but it was one particular ploy which enabled her to achieve her goal. This became one of Mary’s favourite stories: she applied for and was awarded a pharmaceutical contract with a private hospital by signing her name just “M. Magee”, with no indication that she was a woman. The hospital board apparently thought she was the secretary when she first appeared on the scene.
Within a decade, the Alexandra Pharmacy site became Queensland’s first strata-title medical centre and Mary then went on to own and manage a string of other pharmacies.
Even marriage to Peter and the arrival of their children, Caroline and Cameron, did not dampen her entrepreneurial spirit. In 1973, she established the Alexandra Manufacturing and Distributing Company to design and make children’s toys and clothes. It operated successfully for six years, employing 50 people.
Back in the workforce, Mary was elected to the State Council of the Pharmaceutical Society of Queensland in 1976 – the only woman among eleven men. While on the Council, she served on the continuing education committee for graduate pharmacists. A decade later, in 1986, Mary opened the Transit Centre Pharmacy.
The next 20 years saw Mary publicly acknowledged for her achievements and her contribution to her profession and to women:
In 1988, she became the first women appointed to the Pharmacy Board of Queensland,
She chaired the Ministerial Advisory Committee for Queensland Women from 1997 to 1999,
In 1998, she was named the Telstra Business Woman of the Year,
In the same year, she received the Westpac Business Owner Award,
In 1999, she was appointed to the Queensland Premier’s Council for Women, advising on women’s health and violence against women and children,
In 2000, she received QUT’s Outstanding Alumni Award for Science and Special Excellence,
In 2007, she was awarded an Order of Australia Medal (OAM) for services to pharmacy and to the community, particularly through roles supporting the advancement of women, and
In 2008, she was awarded an honorary doctorate by QUT, the alma mater where she had first studied more than 50 years earlier.
In addition to her profession and Zonta, Mary was committed to the work of the Red Cross, the Brain Foundation, the Breast Cancer Foundation, the State workplace health and safety committee, the State Confederation of Commerce and Industry, UNIFEM, the Western Suburbs Wildlife Preservation Society and the Johnsonian Literary Club.