Merle Thornton

The public's reaction to the protest was mixed. Thornton received hate-mail letters accusing her of being a communist, questioned her mothering capabilities, and cast doubts on her morality. In 2014, the Regatta Hotel celebrated the protest with the naming of Merle's Bar. In 2009 as part of the Q150 celebrations, the 1965 Regatta Hotel protest was announced as a “Q150 Icon” under the category of a "Defining Moment" for Queensland.

Thornton published her first novel, After Moonlight, in 2004.

Thornton has also achieved accomplishments as a screenwriter, playwright and author. Thornton's screenwriting appears on several episodes of the popular Australian television series Prisoner. Thornton's stage play, Playing Mothers and Fathers, had a successful season at the Carlton Courthouse in 1990.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Thornton served as Chair of Women in Film and Television and Victorian Chair of the Australian Writers’ Guild.

Women's rights and social justice are threads linking Thornton's diverse range of pursuits and projects, including the 1965 founding of the Equal Opportunities Association for Women, helping establish the first Women's Studies course at the University of Queensland in 1973, and contributing to feminist and social theory literature.

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 exclusion of serving women in pubs. The women were refused service as serving them liquor would have resulted in a fine for the pub. However, “sympathetic male patrons” brought them beer.

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 public bars in Queensland. In 1970 the law was changed to allow women to drink in public bars in Queensland. In April of the same year, Thornton founded the Equal Opportunities for Women Association in Brisbane. As President of the association, Thornton led a successful campaign for the removal of the marriage bar in the Commonwealth and State Public Services. The end of the marriage bar was legislated in 1966.

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). During her time there, Thornton helped to establish the first Women's Studies course in Queensland in the UQ's Sociology Department in 1973.

Thornton graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) from the University of Sydney in 1952 and studied Philosophy as a post-graduate at the University of Queensland.

Merle Thornton (born 1930) is an Australian feminist activist, author and academic. She is best known for her 1965 action at the Regatta Hotel where she and Rosalie Bogner chained themselves to a bar rail to protest the exclusion of serving women in public bars in Queensland, Australia.