From Australia’s Jewish Past
Naomi Wolinski – lawn bowls champion and administrator
Naomi Wolinski
Naomi was born on 26 March 1881 in Bendigo, Victoria.
She was the eighth of twelve children of Solomon Herman, an accountant, and his London-born wife, Elizabeth. Solomon had migrated to Victoria in 1864 from Konin, Poland. In 1894 the family moved to Perth.
There is no information on her life between 1894 and her marriage on 1 July 1903 when she married Ury Wolinski, a Polish-born civil servant and son of Reverend Abraham Wolinski who was well known to the Sydney Jewish community, taking up the position in 1883 as second minister at the Great Synagogue. Their first child a son was born in 1904. In 1910, the family moved to Sydney, where Ury took up a position with New South Wales Railways in the accounts department as a pay clerk. Unfortunately, their second child, a daughter, passed away in 1911 and Naomi was confined to bed with sandbag weights to correct spine damage. She returned to Perth for eighteen months to be nursed by her family and once back in Sydney, the family settled in Neutral Bay.
Ury a keen lawn bowler joined North Sydney Bowling Club and won his first club championship in 1917. In the 1920s, Naomi took up the game and played at Wollstonecraft Bowling Club, where she was a founding member. She became the inaugural vice-president, followed by honorary secretary from 1931 to 1932, and president from 1933 to 1958. In 1938, she was made a life member of the New South Wales Ladies’ (Women’s) Bowling Association (NSWWBA). Under her leadership, the association rapidly expanded and by 1957 it had affiliated 261 women’s clubs with some 12,000 members. She travelled widely to attend the openings of many new clubs and to organise a zone structure for inter-club play and district championships. She established the association’s journal – (Women’s) Bowls News – and chaired its editorial committee from 1949 to 1958.
Naomi was an ardent patriot and an even more ardent organiser. In 1940, she served on a panel to further the sale of war savings certificates, became a warden with first-aid qualifications under the National Emergency Services, and went on to become an executive member of the Lord Mayor’s Patriotic and War Fund of New South Wales which was part of the Australian Comforts Fund, which provided free ‘comfort’ items that were not supplied by the services to all Australian servicemen. These items included singlets, socks, pyjamas, cigarettes and tobacco, razor blades, soap, toothbrush, toothpaste, and reading material (newspapers and magazines). The organisation was set up by volunteers following the outbreak of World War I, disbanded after the war, and re-established in 1942. Naomi organised a band of women bowlers, to produce clothing items for the armed services overseas. Her group made over 65,000 garments and raised thousands of pounds to provide comforts for servicemen and women. Naomi became a justice of the peace in 1941.
In 1946, the NSWWBA established the Wolinski Shield, to be competed for annually by affiliated clubs, with the entrance fees being donated to charity. In 1947 Naomi was elected foundation president of the Australian Women’s Bowling Council and remained a NSW delegate until she retired in 1958. She again took on leadership roles with the Association as vice-president from 1938 to 1950 and became president from 1950 to 1964 of the National Council of Amateur Sports Women of NSW. In 1950, Naomi, together with Dr Marie Hamilton, a pathologist and hockey administrator, and journalist Ruth Preddy, persuaded the secretary for lands to provide grounds dedicated to women’s sport. Twenty acres were gazetted at Matraville and thirty acres at Terrey Hills ‘as a memorial to women of the services and women war workers.’
Naomi, known as ‘Wol’, was an enthusiastic and talented lawn bowler who had won twelve club championships and four interstate ‘Test Matches’ in 1947, 1954, 1955, and 1958. For many years she taught bowls to women patients at Parramatta Mental Hospital. She was awarded a Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation medal in 1953 and, in 1960, was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for services to women’s sport. Naomi was posthumously inducted into the Bowls’ Australia Hall of Fame in 2011. She died on 14 September 1969 at Mosman and was survived by her son.
The AJHS acknowledges the following references in the preparation of this story:
Australian Dictionary of Biography – Louella McCarthy; Wikipedia; Trove; NSW Ladies’ (Women’s) Bowls Association Media Department; Australian Women’s Bowling Council.
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