Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to share with the House an event that occurred in the electorate of Lalor on 17 July. That day I joined Senator Ronaldson, Professor Janet Butler, author of Kitty's War, an historian from La Trobe University, Wyndham Mayor Peter Maynard, Colonel Jan McCarthy and Mrs Pat McIntyre from the Returned Nurses Club of Victoria, Les Sanderson, proud President of the Little River Historical Society, family and friends of Sister Kit McNaughton and Sister Sadie McIntosh of Little River. We joined and gathered to unveil a commemorative statue honouring nurses who served in World War I. The statue pays specific tribute to Kit McNaughton and Sadie McIntosh—cousins, who left Little River to serve their country.

On 17 July it was 100 years since the Sister Kit McNaughton sailed on the Orsova for Egypt. Janet Butler shared some facts with us about their travel overseas and their war service. Sisters McNaughton and McIntosh were in the thick of things, though their experiences again were typical of all the nurses who served. Both travelled first to Egypt where they nursed in hospitals created in converted hotels. Sadie McIntosh then moved to care for soldiers suffering from what we would now see as frightening infectious diseases at the Military Infectious Hospital in Egypt. This was a time when there were no antibiotics, and it was nursing that made all the difference. Kit meanwhile travelled to Lemnos Island near Gallipoli where, in tents, in a hospital camp where women were not expected to be, and in harsh conditions, she nursed the Gallipoli wounded and ill.

In 1916, after the evacuation of Australians from Gallipoli Sadie stayed on to nurse the soldiers, including the light horsemen, in the desert campaigns in Sinai and Palestine, while Kit travelled with her hospital to the Western Front. After a stint in England Sadie would follow her. In different hospitals both experienced the rush and horrific casualties of the battle of the Somme. Kit would serve at a clearing station during the Battle of Passchendaele a year later when she came under fire, and Sadie's own hospital would come under threat during the German advance a year later. Through it all the nurses made it a point of honour not to complain. The Australian nurses' service was recognised with 388 decorations, including 42 Royal Red Crosses, military nursing's highest honour, which Kit was awarded on her way home in 1919.

I was proud that day to be part of the community while we acknowledged the contribution made by these courageous, compassionate women who served so professionally and, in doing so, changed the world. They were, as history teaches us, changed by war but were equally change agents in the theatre of war and on their return to civilian life. I am pleased to see that we have a memorial in the electorate of Lalor and in Little River in particular.

See this speech in context