Edie Kieft

Members of the Tweed Heads & Coolangatta Ladies Life Saving Club from left - back row - Jean Anderson (Captain) standing, Gwen Kieft, Edie Kieft, Ella Martin. Kneeling left Gladys Cook, kneeling right Lena Kempnich, seated left Edna Martin, seated right Ettie Martin. 1923.

It’s not ladylike to be a lifesaver

Local woman Edie Kieft was the first Australian female to win a Surf Bronze Medallion in 1923, however she was refused the medallion owing to the fact that she was a woman.

Fit, fierce, and full of bravado, Edie passed the test for the medallion as a 16 year old with the Tweed Heads and Coolangatta Surf Lifesaving Club. She had taken the spot from a man who didn’t turn up for the test. To hide her identity, Edie registered using only her first initial. She passed the gruelling physical test, which two men failed, but once it was discovered she was a woman the medallion was refused to her.

Royal Surf Lifesaving Australia claimed that it wasn’t discriminatory of her gender; they feared that the heavy surf belts might lead to later complications during childbirth. Edie herself remembers I was never told why they refused the award except that it was not lady-like for a woman to be a surf lifesaver. Edie went on to have children later in life.

The refusal of the medal was not a TH&CSLSC decision, but a decision from the Australian head office. In fact the Club had been keen to include women in surf lifesaving since its formation. A ladies’ swimming race was held as early as 1911, to celebrate the opening of the clubhouse at Greenmount. The Club saw the virtues of having young women involved as the community was filled with women who would sacrifice their time, and provide volunteer service.

By 1914 the building at Greenmount housed a ‘Ladies Members’ Room’. In 1919 the Club advertised in the local newspaper for “girls serious of forming and joining a girls’ lifesaving brigade”, resulting in Queensland’s first female lifesaving club being formed at Greenmount in 1922.

The TH&CSLSC campaigned for decades to have Edie’s medallion awarded. Finally, in 1991, the centenary of Surf Lifesaving in Australia, Edie was presented with her medallion; she was 84.

Edie’s Bronze Medallion

In 1991, when Edie was presented with her medallion, an official from Surf Lifesaving New South Wales in Sydney flew up for the day. He presented Edie with a specially minted bronze medallion cut in two so that it could be mounted on a plaque; he also allocated a number on the medallion, 2190, the number Edie would have received in 1923.

Edie passed away in 1998 in a nursing home in Murwillumbah aged 91. Her medallions were loaned to Tweed Regional Museum from the Tweed Heads & Coolangatta Surf Life Saving Club for this exhibition.