Country Generosity towards Queensland's nurses - 1948
The Wide Bay Region alone had seven active committees. Gympie nominated Sister Marjorie Spiller. Her committee was chaired by Dr Leslie Macdonald Outridge, a local general practitioner and one of 64 survivors from the sinking of the 2/3 Australian Hospital Ship Centaur in 1943. Bundaberg’s nurses selected Sister Emily Broadhurst from a well-known family at Mt Perry and an operating theatre nurse at the Base Hospital. Among Broadhurst’s supporters was Mr Percy Wyllie, Manager of Millaquin Sugar, whose daughter Joyce Wyllie was one of the 11 Australian Army Nursing Service nurses killed in 1943 in the Centaur’s sinking.
Nurse training schools were based at some country hospitals allowing students to be candidates too. Nellie Jensen, a first-year trainee at Wienholt District Hospital was sponsored by the district of Wondai. Miss Beryl Crow, another trainee in her first year, was Nurse Maryborough. Biggenden, aided by the town of Childers, sponsored Sister Josephine Murphy. Cracow and Eidsvold Hospitals put their weight behind Nurse Mundubbera, Miss Iris Cliffe, a trained nurse. Nanango and District sponsored Sister Edna Stark.
‘the well known firm of graziers Messrs Clark & Tait of “Mantuan Downs” Springsure have donated to my Association a well-bred Gelding to be disposed of by Art Union (Horse valued at 100 guineas). We have had 3000 tickets printed, and are posting to various centres. Tickets are priced at 2/- each. Date of drawing is 1 Jan 1949. Owing to dry weather condition, we had a lot of delay in having the horse selected by the Manager of Mantuan Downs. We now have the horse in our possession ... PS Proof of Tickets enclosed.’
Springsure’s ‘blood horse raffle’ raised £126.0.11, the lucky winner being Mr Gordon Young of “Yandaburra Station” Springsure. To the north west, in just three months, Muttaburra and Jundah hospitals raised £300 in support of the Longreach Hospital’s candidate, Sister Betty Maxwell. Similar activities went on throughout 1948.
Funds raised went towards the purchase of Centaur House at 337 Queen Street, Brisbane where country nurses could stay while studying or on the way through to holidays and employment. Any information about rural entrants in the Queen of the Nurses Quest is welcome.
Other blogs by Dr Madonna Grehan
- Centaur Day Commemorations 14 May
- Highlighting Queensland’s links to the Centaur Memorial Fund for Nurses
- Imagining Centaur
- Centaur House Memorial Hostel, Magnetic Island
- Centaur Day, 14 May, and Red Roses for Remembrance
- 75 years on – Photographic conundrums in the Centaur Memorial Fund Collection
- A Centaur memorial event at State Library of Queensland, Monday 14 May 2018
- Centaur House, Mt Gravatt, 1949: Almost the first raffle of real estate in Queensland
- Flotsam from the 2/3 Australian Hospital Ship Centaur
- At the Brisbane Ekka, 1950-1977 – the Centaur Memorial Fund’s money spinner
- Centaur Memorial Fund For Nurses Records - Digitised @SLQ
- Centaur House, Queen St, Brisbane: A Memorial Edifice to Queensland’s Nurses in two World Wars
- Len Shillam’s 2/3 AHS Centaur Memorial, 1957
- Fiesta Gardens 1948 – a touch of Hollywood at Slacks Creek (with Dr Hilda Maclean)
- Brisbane’s First Street Markets – the Spring Hill Fair 1973
- Two men and a presentation cricket bat
- Queen of the Nurses Quest
- How to crown a Queen
- Avenging the Nurses: Government’s response to the sinking of 2/3 Australian Hospital Ship Centaur
- ATNA Nurses’ Rest Home, 17-19 Mallon St, Bowen Hills
- The Diggers Friend