Description
The Museum of the Greater Southern in Albany is proud to host a small exhibition paying tribute to the women who have dealt with war first hand.
The involvement of Australian women as nurses in war began in 1898 with the formation of the Australian Nursing Service of New South Wales, from which sixty nurses served in the Boer War. Since the time of the Boer War, Australian nurses have served by caring for the sick and wounded in every conflict to which Australia has committed troops.
This small exhibition is a tribute to those women who have dealt face-to-face with war—the sick, the wounded, and the dead. Those who served close to the battlefield experienced at firsthand not only the discomforts of makeshift field hospitals, including mud, dust, bad food, and lack of normal amenities, but also the risks and horrors of war. Many army nurses sacrificed their health and well-being in the service of Australia. Some sacrificed their lives.
More recent conflicts have seen the gender based boundaries blur. These days, there are few jobs within Australia's armed services that are not open to women. Female soldiers are also commonplace and it is not unusual to see male nurses and female doctors working together on military missions, such as when the Australian military provided support to victims of the December 2004 tsunami in Indonesia.
This tribute, Australian Nurses in War, has been developed by the passion of one woman, Enid Home. A nurse herself, Enid was married to Major Arthur Home of the 13th Australian General Hospital. It was many of his nurses or ‘his girls’ as he referred to them, who were aboard the ill fated Vyner Brooke that left Singapore as the Japanese entered.
This exhibition is on display at the Museum of the Great Southern from Friday 5 October.
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