Merle Thornton

In 2015, Thornton was awarded the Member of the Order of Australia for "her significant service to the community as an advocate for women, and Indigenous rights, and to the arts as a writer and director", as part of the 2015 Queen's Birthday Honours.

[2] Thornton was involved in feminist activism beginning in the mid-1960s, including the notable Regatta Hotel protest in March 1965 that challenged women's exclusion from being served drinks in public bars in Queensland.

[4] As President of the association, Thornton led a successful campaign for the removal of the marriage bar in the Commonwealth Public Service of Australia.

[2] From 1960 to 1980, Thornton worked as an academic in a variety of positions within Philosophy, Government, Sociology and Gender Studies at the University of Queensland (UQ).

[2] In March 1965, Thornton and Rosalie Bogner chained themselves to the bar rail of the Regatta Hotel in Toowong, Brisbane as a protest to the ban on serving women drinks in pubs in Queensland.

[1] In Archiving the feminist self: reflections on the personal papers of Merle Thornton, Margaret Henderson notes that the protest “occurred four years before the first women’s liberation group met in Australia.”[4] The protest marked the beginning of second wave feminist action in Brisbane and gained significant media coverage.

Thornton received hate-mail letters accusing her of being a communist, questioning her mothering capabilities, and casting doubts on her morality.