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“Annie Oakleys win their case”

In 1963, two members of this club became the first women in New South Wales licensed to shoot target pistol — by taking the refusal to court and arguing it themselves.

Fenning mentions, almost in passing, that until January 1964 a pistol licence was knocked back by police as a matter of course, and had to be won on appeal before a magistrate. Two members of the club went through exactly that — and came out of it as the first women in New South Wales licensed to shoot target pistol.

Two Liverpool housewives have become the first women in New South Wales to gain pistol licenses for target shooting.

— Liverpool News, 1963

They were Mrs Grace Cadden, of McGirr Crescent, and Mrs Val Banyer, of William Street, whose husband Geoff was the club’s secretary. The police refused both applications. The two women appealed, appeared at Liverpool Court, and — in the paper’s own words — “conducted their own cases”. Mr A. S. Hall, S.M., upheld the appeal.

At the time, the paper reported, only one other woman in the State held a pistol licence at all, and hers was a business licence held in partnership with her husband in a firearms importing business.

Newspaper clipping headed “Annie Oakleys win their case”, reporting that two Liverpool women had become the first in New South Wales to gain pistol licences for target shooting
The Liverpool News, 1963. The date is a handwritten note on the scrapbook page it was kept in.

Geoff Banyer, interviewed for the same article, put the result in an international context and then said what he thought of the law:

The International Shooting Union has recognised the need for a separate match for women shooters, and as from the 1962 World Championships held in Cairo the Women’s Match shall form part of every National and International Championship.
The action of these two local women should set the ball rolling in this State.

Melbourne, Easter 1964

That article closed on a hope — that Mrs Banyer and Mrs Cadden would make the New South Wales team travelling to Melbourne for the 1964 National Championships.

They did. The Australian Women’s Weekly of 27 May 1964 devoted a full page to the Australian women’s championships at Albion, Melbourne, where eighteen women competed — “from the youngest, a schoolgirl of 15, to the oldest, a mother of a 30-year-old son”. Three of the eighteen came from this club.

Five women examining pistols around a table at the 1964 Australian Pistol Shooting Championships
“TALKING pistols between shots at the Australian Pistol Shooting Championships (from left): Mrs. Grace Cadden, Mrs. Val Banyer, and Mrs. Betty Irving, all of Liverpool, N.S.W., Mrs. Edith Sarks, of Sydney, and Mrs Rita Tilley, of Launceston, Tasmania.”
The first women to apply for a target-shooting licence in New South Wales were Mrs. Val Banyer, mother of two, and Mrs. Grace Cadden, mother of three, both from Liverpool.

— The Australian Women’s Weekly, 27 May 1964

Val Banyer told the magazine why she kept at it.

It’s such a different sport — and it’s such a thrill to get a good score.
Full page of The Australian Women’s Weekly, 27 May 1964, headed “These pistol-packin’ dolls”
The page as it ran, 27 May 1964. The club’s three competitors are in the photograph at the foot.

On the line at the State Championship

Val Banyer went on competing against women from clubs all over New South Wales. This press photograph has her comparing pistols with Lionel Cogan of the Northern Districts club at a State Championship — her shooting jacket already carrying patches from Mudgee, Melbourne and beyond.

A man and a woman in patch-covered shooting jackets comparing revolvers over an open gun case at an outdoor range
Val Banyer of Liverpool Pistol Club and Lionel Cogan of Northern Districts, at a N.S.W. Pistol Association State Championship.

How times have changed

The language of the clippings is worth reading twice. The Women’s Weekly ran its page under “THESE PISTOL-PACKIN’ DOLLS…”, over a standfirst offering one competitor’s explanation: “If you can’t beat the men, join them.” The Liverpool News called Grace Cadden and Val Banyer “Annie Oakleys” and “housewives”. A third paper wondered whether girls preferred giggles to guns.

Newspaper clipping headed “Girls prefer giggles to guns”, with a photograph of Val Banyer and Lionel Cogan
“Once they get over either nervousness or the giggles, women make excellent target pistol shots.”

The officials were rather more direct. “The girls take this sport very seriously,” said Phil Garrett, honorary secretary of the Amateur Pistol Shooting Union of Australia. And the women were the most direct of all: told they could not have a licence, they took the State to court and won.

Sixty years on, the ritual Fenning described — the refusal as a matter of course, then the appeal before a magistrate — is long gone, and so is the idea that a woman on a firing line is a novelty worth a headline. Twenty years after Grace Cadden and Val Banyer won their appeal, another member of this club, Pattie Dench, took an Olympic bronze in Los Angeles at the age of 52 — the first Olympic shooting medal Australia had ever won.

Today women shoot here every week, sit on the committee, run the line, and turn out for the club in teams matches. The only thing that has really changed is that nobody thinks it remarkable any more.

Clippings from a club member’s scrapbook.

The Badcoe still runs every February

More than fifty years on, the centrefire teams match instituted when the Kentlyn range opened is still on the calendar.

See the calendar
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