Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Mackellar, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

It was a great delight to attend Peter Cosgrove House in ‘War Vets Village’, as it is familiarly known in my electorate, on Saturday to celebrate Mrs Doreen Washington’s 110th birthday. When I first sent birthday greetings to Mrs Washington, she was turning 100 and I was the Minister for Aged Care. I am very pleased to say that she now lives in Peter Cosgrove House, which is state of the art and has the best care that could be available, which was a result of the accreditation system that we introduced. Believe me, if she had gone into the old nursing home, prior to accreditation, it would not have been such a happy birthday party. But the thing I believe is so important about celebrating her birthday is that she is, I think, the last surviving First World War widow.

She comes to us with many messages as to how people can live independently for a long time. I went to Mrs Washington’s 102nd birthday party, which was held in her own apartment. The reason she was able to live independently in her own apartment for so long is she had two splendid neighbours, lovely friends. One was Chris Pike and the other one was Fred Leon. Those two gentlemen used to shop for her, look after her, enjoy her company, have a beer with her. What I am saying is: she was able to live successfully at home because she had a community that cared about her, and she had personal contact that kept her alive and vital. She was a bit of a character. She imported the first Mini Minor into Australia and used to drive around in it and was often seen around the northern beaches in it.

Her husband Bill, whom she did not meet until they were working in a munitions factory in World War II, had served at Gallipoli and on the Western Front. He was very badly injured. His battalion, the 16th Battalion, sailed from Port Melbourne on 22 December 1914. On 25 April, with a strength of 22 officers and 979 other ranks, they landed at Anzac Cove. At roll call on 3 May, the battalion had been reduced to nine officers and 290 other ranks. Those who survived, of whom her husband was one, were then sent to the Western Front where Private Washington, as he was, was seriously injured when a shell landed in his trench. It wounded both him and a British officer. When the stretcher bearers arrived, they immediately went to treat the officer, but that officer insisted that they attend to Private Washington instead. The officer died, but Washington survived and was repatriated to England for medical treatment. He suffered for the rest of his life from shrapnel embedded in his head.

Bill and his wife, Doreen—she did not like ‘Alice’; his name was Lavington and she did not like that either, so she called herself Doreen and she called him Bill—built a house at Clontarf, where they lived until he died in 1965. She continued to be an independent person, as I said. She travelled a lot. She was alive and active and she certainly does like her beer and also whisky. In fact, when we went to celebrate her 108th birthday party, we went to the Sands at Narrabeen, which has only recently been demolished. It was a good local pub and we had fish and chips and she had her beer and talked about a life that had been exciting for her.

From her example we can learn many things: if you are engaged and active, you can live a long and productive life, but you need friends and companionship. To Chris Pike and Fred Leon, I know she is eternally grateful for their friendship. But if we as a community can always extend ourselves to reach out to people who are living in aged-care facilities and people who are bound in their own home and say they matter just because they are with us, then we will all be the richer for doing so.

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