Remembering June Factor (1936–2024)
Dr June Factor AM was a distinguished social historian who pioneered the study of children’s folklore in Australia and played an active role in public life, including as president of the Victorian Council for Civil Liberties (now Liberty Victoria), Friends of the ABC and the Australian Jewish Democratic Society. June’s work was an important influence and inspiration to many staff and students in SHAPS, and she was a much respected and loved member of the School and University community. In the tribute below, originally published in the Age, Dr Gwenda Beed Davey and Judy McKinty explore June’s life and legacy. Professor Kate Darian-Smith also shares her recollections of June from their time working together at the University of Melbourne’s Australian Centre in the 1990s.
June Factor was known to her many friends and colleagues for her powerful intellect, meticulous scholarship, warmth, humour and compassion.
A woman of energy and vision, June was respected internationally as an expert on children’s folklore, an eloquent speaker and author, a clear-eyed social historian, fearless advocate and dedicated humanitarian.
Born in Lodz, Poland, June came to Australia, aged two, “as an infant in my mother’s arms”, in January 1939, one of the first cohorts of Jewish refugees from German fascism. Although never a believer, June’s Jewish heritage was a defining part of her identity. A member of the Australian Jewish Democratic Society from its inception, she was respected as a wise voice.
Her family language was Yiddish and June had a great love of Yiddish literature and music. This love grew into a generalised appreciation of folk music of all nations. She regularly attended the National Folk Festival in Canberra, enjoying live music and seeing friends at the Folklore Conference.
Her dedication to folklore, particularly that of children, became a critical part of her identity. She considered the joint founding of the Australian Children’s Folklore Collection in 1979 as one of her greatest achievements. June and Gwenda Beed Davey established the Collection to document children’s traditional playground lore. Started in a filing cabinet at the Institute of Early Childhood Development (IECD) in Kew, the Collection grew to encompass a significant body of research and a remarkable collection of children’s playthings. Donated to Museums Victoria in 1999, the Collection was placed on the UNESCO Australia Memory of the World Register in 2004, as part of the nation’s most significant documentary heritage.
June’s relationship with the museum began in the 1980s. She was a foundation board member of the Children’s Museum, and a specialist adviser in the planning of ground-breaking exhibitions of children’s play, including the Children’s Museum’s You’re IT! and Tops, Tales and Granny’s False Teeth at the Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne. In 2002, she was appointed an honorary associate at Museum Victoria.
June took part in the Inquiry into Folklife in Australia in the mid-1980s. She was a member of the Australian and Victorian Folklife Associations and on the organising committee for the first international folklore conference in Australia, in Melbourne, 2001.
June received international recognition for her work on children’s folklore, winning the American Folklore Society’s prestigious Opie Prize in 1989 for her book Captain Cook Chased a Chook: Children’s Folklore in Australia, still the authoritative text on the subject. In 1992, she was appointed a member of the International Folklore Fellows, based in Finland. June was also a founding co-editor of the International Journal of Play, and an engaging speaker at conferences, seminars and in school classrooms.
Schooling, Activism and Advocacy
As a child, June lived in the inner-Melbourne suburbs of Carlton and Brunswick. In April 1940, she was the first refugee child accepted into Lady Gowrie Kindergarten. June attended Princes Hill School during her primary and early secondary years, then transferred to University High. She was an excellent student with “a keen eager mind”.
While at University High, June told the school magazine that she saw her future as an “activist”. As a university student, she joined the Labor Club and anti-fascist organisations. She was deeply affected by the horrors of fascism and the Holocaust and once remarked that the only things she hated were “injustice and cruelty”.
June’s adult life became a succession of voluntary activities involving different kinds of service to the community. She championed many humanitarian causes and had an innate sense of the most important issues of life and the need for change. An incurable optimist, she managed to find funding sources for her projects through persistence and persuasion, often quoting the Yiddish saying, A bissel un a bissel macht a fulle schissel (A little and a little makes a full bowl).
One of June’s enduring concerns was the plight of asylum seekers, especially the welfare of child refugees held in detention. She invited a group of friends to discuss the situation around her kitchen table. From this meeting came Befriend a Child in Detention, a community project founded to actively support the welfare of children held in detention and lobby for change.
Broad networks within the group produced donations of new books and toys, which were delivered to children detained on Nauru. A schools-based letter-writing campaign supplied colourful, handwritten letters of friendship, which were tucked inside the cover of each book. One of the group observed: “We fundraised, we worked hard and June was at the helm.”
A firm believer in free speech, June was a founding member of the Victorian Free Speech Committee and past president of both Australian and Victorian Council of Civil Liberties (now Liberty Victoria). In 2016, she became an honorary life member of Liberty Victoria.
A lifelong supporter of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, June wrote several children’s programs for the ABC early in her career. Recognising the lack of radio programs for children after the Argonauts’ Club ceased in 1972, June continued to advocate for new children’s programs.
She became president of the Victorian Friends of the ABC at a time when substantial funding cuts were being threatened. ABC Friends engaged in extensive lobbying with federal parliament to safeguard funding for the national broadcaster. A fellow member commented: “June’s work in leading the opposition to the proposed 1996 cuts was extraordinary.” In 2022, June received honorary life membership of ABC Friends.
Academic Career and Mentoring
At the age of 20, while still a student, June married Dr Percy Rogers. They had three children, Naomi, Ian and Sylvie, but divorced in 1970. Her children and friends were June’s touchstones in life. A wonderful host, her New Year’s Day parties in her large back garden were legendary, with hundreds attending from mid-afternoon onwards. A friend recalls: “I remember those parties so fondly – connecting with diverse interesting people who had strong opinions about everything.” Special celebrations also meant yum cha in Little Bourke Street.
June graduated from Melbourne University with first-class honours in history and English and began her career as a freelance writer, producing short stories, radio and television scripts and books for children, while caring for her young family.
In 1965, June became a part-time teacher of English and history at Princes Hill and Macleod High schools, before becoming senior lecturer in English at the Melbourne Kindergarten Training College (later IECD). She taught for 18 years before leaving to become a senior research fellow at the Australian Centre, University of Melbourne, and an associate in the University’s School of Early Childhood Studies.
June’s reputation as an innovative teacher began at the Kindergarten Training College. A former colleague recalls: “Among other things, I was impressed that June, as well as teaching more ‘usual’ units, had introduced a unit on Black American Writers; and that later, when a fourth year was added to the course, she built up a unit on Australian Aboriginal literature.”
While at IECD, June undertook her master’s degree in children’s literature at the University of London, and then gained her doctorate from her alma mater, Melbourne University. June’s doctoral thesis grew from her seminal work Captain Cook Chased a Chook.
June was both teacher and mentor to her students, and later to the young scholars she encouraged throughout her life. Welcoming and generous with her time and knowledge, she showed deep empathy and remarkable generosity towards others. A former student’s tribute recalls how June provided her with jobs around her home to help pay her cost of living while studying.
As a supervisor, June set high standards of inquiry, and even higher standards of writing. She was a fearless editor and honest critic, but her responses were always caring, thoughtful, substantial and encouraging. June continued to mentor young scholars in her final years. She was an academic who lived a full life of her own choosing.
June’s publications list is long and encompasses the many facets of her life. She is best known for her compilations of children’s rhymes, riddles and jokes, starting with Far Out Brussel Sprout!, first published in 1983 and reprinted 39 times. Her final book, Soldiers and Aliens: Men in the Australian Army’s Employment Companies during World War II, published in 2022, won the inaugural Anzac Memorial Trustees military history prize at the 2023 NSW Premier’s History Awards.
June was inducted to the first Victorian Honour Roll of Women in 2001 and appeared in the inaugural edition of Who’s Who in Victoria in 2008. Her final recognition came in January 2024, when she was made a Member of the Order of Australia “for significant service to literature, to history and to the community”.
June Factor was a small woman who has left behind a huge footprint. She will not be quickly forgotten.
Gwenda Beed Davey
Judy McKinty
I sit on an odd outside ledge: a mixture of folklorist and historian. And, occasionally, I publish other sorts of writing, too. If I was a dog, I would definitely not be a pure breed!
(June Factor, 18 March 2022)
It is with great admiration and deep fondness that I remember June Factor, and our collaborations and friendship that spanned over two decades. I first met June when we were both based at the Australian Centre in the late 1990s, and was struck by her sharp and inquiring mind, her kindness and her humour — a combination of character traits that endeared her to all at the Centre’s morning weekly morning tea gatherings. June could talk to anyone about, it seemed, any topic but her real passions lay with her interest in children and their worlds, and in her belief that childhood was a special and empowering place.
Over her academic career, June had collected an array of children’s toys, objects, rhymes and games, and some of these were displayed in a glass cabinet in the Australian Centre. I was involved in her donation of this very substantial archive, the Australian Children’s Folklore Collection (ACFC), to Museums Victoria and served on its Advisory Committee for many years. The ACFC was recognised in 2004 as the leading children’s research archive in Australia, and possibly the world, by the UNESCO Memory of the World Program.
June and I shared interests in Australian children’s folklore, and worked together on research projects, publications and presentations in Australia and overseas. These include the path-breaking ‘Childhood, Tradition and Change’ national survey of children’s games in school playgrounds from the 1950s to today, which was funded by the Australian Research Council, and developed materials now held in the National Library of Australia.
June was Australia’s preeminent scholar of children’s history and culture, and internationally known for her expertise. From the 1970s, she produced a remarkable range of publications for both adults and children: as co-author of the classic collection Cinderella Dressed in Yella; multiple anthologies of children’s rhymes and lore, such as Far Out, Brussell Sprout!; the first (and only) dictionary of Australian children’s words; and scholarly studies of children’s play and history.
She was a founding editor of the International Journal of Play, and in Australia worked tirelessly to ensure that children’s voices are heard, both in the past and now. A nuanced historian, June’s final and award winning book, Soldiers and Aliens (2022), narrates the story of her father and make a major contrbition to Australia’s home front history in World War II.
June was a public intellectual, and her commitment to social justice, civil liberties and a free press led her to contribute to a range of national and community groups and causes for half a century. She was a do-er of formidable perserverance, public spirited and compassionate, and mentored generations of young people, freely giving of her time and energy to ensure that Australia could be a fair society for all. A Celebration of Life was held for June earlier this year and brought together a remarkable group of people and causes that she had supported since she was a young woman, and her much-loved family and friends. We will all miss her insights, generosity and laughter.