Leonie was born on 29 June 1928 to Herbert Van Joolen and Alice née Browne; the Dutch surname came from her paternal grandfather who had migrated from Rotterdam. Leonie attended Murrumbeena State School and then MLC from 1939‒45. She completed Year 12 in business studies, which her parents advised would be more useful than matriculation. While working in the Flinders Street clothes trade, Leonie met Colin Craigie and they married in 1951. The couple had two children, Rowen and Vanessa, but divorced in 1974. Leonie later married Frank Foster and lived in Toorak.

While working part-time in an accountant’s office when her children were young, Leonie yearned for a more fulfilling career, which she single-mindedly pursued. She studied HSC in the same year as her son, then majored in History for BA Hons at Monash University; her honours thesis in 1979 was on ‘The Imperial Federation League in Victoria after Australian Federation: an analysis of its structures, personnel, aims and decline’. Leonie extended her study of efforts to secure some form of British Empire federation with her PhD thesis at La Trobe University. This was published by Melbourne University Press and the Australian Institute of International Affairs in 1986 as High Hopes: the Men and Motives of the Australian Round Table.

Leonie then changed direction to become a pre-eminent scholar in maritime history. Fascinated by the shadowy world of shipwrecks, she delved into the various aspects of history they encapsulated. She worked for the Maritime Archaeology Unit of the Victoria Archaeological Survey which published her magnum opus, four volumes on Port Phillip Shipwrecks: An Historical Survey, 1987‒90.

When the maritime unit was absorbed into Heritage Victoria in 1994, Leonie became a key member of the Historic Shipwrecks Advisory Committee. She served on the Heritage Council from 2005 to 2008 as ‘alternate member’ to Peter Hiscock, who was appointed Deputy Chair. Her book The Wild Coast Wrecks, about shipwrecks on the western coast in a social context, was published by Heritage Victoria in 1996. Leonie served on the International Commission for Maritime History and in 2009 received the Jack Loney Award for ‘groundbreaking research, long-standing committee membership and mentoring of maritime heritage professionals in Australia’.

Leonie wrote various articles including the significant ‘Shipwrecks and the White Australia Policy’ in The Great Circle, 2014. The RHSV holds manuscripts of much of her work including her essay on the Schah, a former African slave trader that was wrecked off the coast of Mallacoota in 1837. Leonie contributed entries to the Australian Dictionary of Biography on Sir Arthur Robinson, lawyer and federal politician, and Henry d’Esterre Taylor, banker and Imperial Federationist.

On joining the Royal Historical Society of Victoria in 1978, Leonie encountered new perspectives on her home state. She was appointed Director in December 1990 and stayed until December 1993 when she resigned largely owing to prolonged ill health. The RHSV was then located in the elegant Old Royal Mint. Leonie tackled many challenges, particularly financial stress and lack of security of tenure in the building. Deploring the nomadic past of the society, she exclaimed ‘We still have no permanent home!’ She saw the RHSV as ‘a catalyst for the preservation and, just as importantly, the better understanding of our history in contemporary society’. Leonie was assisted by only two other paid staff, Joan Murphy, secretary, and Lorenzo Iozzi, curator, and a team of volunteers. Lorenzo remembered Leonie as ‘a kind, loving and loved person’.

With her customary warmth and courtesy, Leonie welcomed visitors to lectures in the gracious Bullion room of the Royal Mint, which doubled as the venue for civil marriages. She edited the newsletter, handled the accounts with precision, spoke to numerous local historical societies and continued heritage advocacy with the Historic Buildings Council. Leonie oversaw the start of the transition from analogue processes to digitisation and developed a Preservation Strategy Plan; in consequence, the society received accreditation for the first time under the state’s Museums Accreditation Program (MAP). In 1991 Leonie commenced a long period of service on the committee of the Prahran Mechanics Institute. Emeritus Professor Weston Bate, then RHSV president, praised Leonie’s promotion of the RHSV across Victoria.

Following the death of her second husband in 1991, Leonie moved to Hawthorn in 1993. She continued her work in maritime history and, always versatile, lectured on Jazz at the University of the Third Age. She participated in stimulating discussion and card circles at the Lyceum Club, travelled in Australia and overseas on garden tours and enjoyed family life with her adult children and three grandchildren. Declining health forced her to move in her final years to Kew Gardens Aged Care. A fervent supporter of the Melbourne Football Club, she celebrated the Demons’ premiership in 2021 after a drought of 57 years. Leonie passed away on 5 January 2022.

The RHSV’s farewell to Leonie is best expressed in words by her former colleague Warren Perry, distinguished military historian. Warren told Leonie on her retirement in 1993 that she had adorned the RHSV office with scholarship and dignity combined with ‘a deft touch of diplomacy’. He wrote ‘You have added lustre to the office of Director … Thereafter, the sun will shine less brightly through the windows of the Old Royal Mint’.

Carole Woods (January 2022)