Where have all the flowers gone? Long time passing.

The soft and catchy retro song – Peter Paul & Mary’s version – comes to mind as past and future hopes blend and swirl like a 1960s poster.

As the author of Angels of Augustus, I am finally picking up where I left off, on the long-awaited (long time passing) sequel to the outback nurses’ adventures.

Trading in the heavy military-style Ford ambulance for a tiny Morris Minor, Sister Marjorie Wilkinson’s pioneered the Home and Aged Nursing Service in Newtown, in inner city Sydney, from 1949 onwards; her documented story on the page is taking shape.

I anticipate about another year in the working drafts of, not just one, but of several, home and aged nursing care services – which Marjorie and other young nurses – delivered in several large cities and towns of New South Wales and Queensland. In fact, these nursing services founded and spearheaded the assist home health care services we take for granted in Australia today.

Registered Nurse Marjorie Wilkinson speaking to a crowd beside the ambulance named ‘Augustus’, 1946.

I’ve also learned of amazing life stories of nurses in other states – who travelled to care for people – on trams, bicycles, aeroplanes, and on camels – over in the Centre, the South and the West. I’m planning that they’ll definitely get a peek into the epilogue of my manuscript.

From 1946, rural nursing services delivers medical check ups and emergency care to people living in remote Australian towns and homesteads.

Author Stephanie Somerville is fulfilling a long-held promise to the pioneer nurses, to write their biographies.

UK visitors to Brewarrina

“It was a lump in throat moment’, said Malcolm Sawdy after he and his partner Chrissy Proctor visited the memorial plaque and stone outside Brewarrina Hospital.

Former residents of Noosa, Chrissy and Mal became good friends with Sister Marjorie Wilkinson Somerville after reading Angels of Augustus. 

When the time came for Chrissy and Mal to return to the United Kingdom, they packed up a 4-wheel-drive ute and drove along the outback roads to Brewarrina to see where Marjorie (Marj) and Ethel had nursed patrolled in Augustus the ambulance many decades before.

In this photo are are Mal Sawdy and Chrissy Proctor beside the memorial plaque to the Methodist Sisters, outside Brewarrina Hospital, January 2013.

The memorial plaque and rocks at Brewarrina Hospital which Chrissy and Malcolm visited. The plaques were unveiled  on 29 May 2010.

During their service to the folk of the outback, Marjorie and Ethel received many  visitors, who were enthusiastic to see the pioneering nurses in action. Marjorie particularly appreciated her mother, Cecelia Wilkinson nee Holloway, making the long train journey to visit. (see photo below)

An outback bite at Non-Fiction Literary Festival

The horse reared and the drover’s knife slipped from the saddlebag, cutting a long, deep gash in the drover’s nuggety leg. He was a long, long way from help in outback northern New South Wales. The patrolling Methodist Sisters were telephoned. Sister Marjorie Wilkinson and her colleague, Sister Winnie Bowmer, drove ‘Augustus’ from Brewarrina and set up a clinic in the Collerina Post Office. 

The young Queensland drover had been in the saddle since a toddler: not a hair was to be seen on the insides of his legs which were smooth as silk yet tough as leather. When Marj Wilkinson tried to suture the gash, the delicate suture needle broke. One by one, the needles broke, until Marj asked for a sewing needle.  The postmaster’s wife offered her darning needles, which Marj and Winnie boiled (to sterilise). But these also snapped on the drover’s leathery leg.

The postmaster was next to get an idea and he went out to a shed. He came back with a wide sharp curved upholstery needle.

That one did the trick! The drover was so tough, he never even winced. 

~~~~~~~

Author Stephanie Somerville recalled this account as one of the favourite stories that Sister Marjorie Wilkinson liked to tell when she spoke to audiences at book events, up until shortly before her passing in Buderim in September 2009.

Last Sunday, Stephanie Somerville was honoured to be invited to speak about Angels of Augustus at ‘Reality Bites’ non-fiction literary festival in Cooroy – as Marj’s torch-bearer.

Light drizzling rain set the scene for a quiet Cooroy on the Sunday afternoon as events across Noosaville and Cooroy were wound up for the first weekend.

Our much-loved Marj Wilkinson Somerville would have wanted to be there herself – she loved public speaking and she entertained her audiences delightfully – but we believe she was looking in from heaven with her blessing all the same.

This is the third year for Reality Bites – a non-fiction literary festival on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast hinterland. It is a treat – with a wide range of authors and topics.

Author Stephanie Somerville by Noosa River, QLD

Marj Wilkinson Somerville tells it like it was.

Sister Marjorie Wilkinson Somerville enjoys accolades after her speech at The Big Wrap for Nurses Gala Ball, in 2008.

Illness and grief are fangs of a beast – and so are some terrible hardships that we go through.

We have lost Marj – our hearts are torn open. Our pioneer nurse of the 1940s, Marj, really loved life and her biography and talking to people about her nursing adventures.

With intense sadness, we miss Marj. She died on 30 September 2009 in Buderim Private Hospital – and we have lost a living treasure. It’s hard to accept she is gone and she won’t come wheeling by in her wheelchair, smiling, letting her beautiful blue eyes sparkle as you wait for whatever message she planned to tell you next.

She was the pulse in the veins of all who loved her.

Sister Marjorie Wilkinson Somerville speaks to a book club in the Sunshine Plaza in 2009.

She had waited all her married life to see her pioneering nursing achievements come into print and acclaim. After attempts to write her story herself during her middle-age, and when promises by Methodist minister-authors to write the nurses’ story were never fulfilled, Marj’s youngest daughter, Stephanie Somerville, took up the baton in 1992. Research began with several research journeys with Marj’s youngest grand-daughter, Rachel, to the outback towns, then expanded to Marj’s friends and colleagues from her theological years at Leigh College.

Battling obstacles one after the other, Stephanie learned the art of writing the biography genre and she was tenacious to fulfil her mother’s wish. Marjories’ wish was granted when her biography Angels of Augustus – carefully edited and beautifully designed – was launched in December 2006.

Marj was thrilled to re-establish contact with long-lost friends and ‘the youngsters’ from Brewarrina and Leigh College when her story came into public acclaim.

From then on, Marj reveled in giving public talks about her pioneering nursing life – those vibrant years where she felt alive and useful more than any other time in her life.

What sadly turned out to be her last talk was to an audience in a full courtyard at the then Possums Books & Coffee, at Cooroy, in the Noosa hinterland, on 11 July 2009.

Marj was a diplomatic people-person – it took insight to understand the layers of her love for others. She also loved the interaction with her audiences and their feedback. After this book event, a lady in the audience sent Marj a CD of school songs from the 1950s Methodist Ladies College, Burwood, school choir. Marj enjoyed putting on her headphones to listen to the choir.

And Marj was really tickled to see the local newspaper, the Cooroy Rag, head the column about her talk as “Marj tells it like it was!”

Yes, she could do that well. A gifted public speaker and a sage and wise, gentle and noble woman.

Marj was the last of the two 1945 pioneering nurses of the MNS.

She graces our new-look header.

WHO ARE ‘MARJ AND ETHEL’?

Pioneers of the Methodist Nursing Services – a free service for people of ‘any class, colour or creed’ – was established by these pioneer nurses, Ethel Helyar and Marjorie Wilkinson, in March 1946, in outback Australia.

Marj and Ethel were taught basic mechanics for their years and miles of arduous driving in the harsh Australian outback. Here, Ethel is changing a tyre, 1946

Marjorie is fixing an electrical problem under the bonnet of Augusutus, the ambulance, about 80 miles from the nearest town in outback N.S.W., 1946.

Marj and Ethel transfered patients from isolated properties and transported them to hospital.

The pioneering nurses also brought outback children to the city for summer holidays, under the auspices of the Christian Endeavour (C.E.). Here they are on a ferry on Sydney Harbour, 1947-48,.

 

Marj and Ethel received training in dentistry. Here, Sister Marjorie Wilkinson attends to the weekly dentistry clinic outside Goodooga Hospital. circa 1946-1947.

With not a lot of time for romance, Marjorie enjoyed friendship and ‘walking out’ with a Baptist preacher, the Rev Bill Thitchener, 1948.

MARJ SPEAKS OF TIM, from the Bre Wool Scour

Sister Marjorie Wilkinson Somerville made Tim the subject of her recent speaking engagement ,when she talked about her hey-day in the Australian outback. Tim (as written about in Angels of Augustus)was the little 7-year-old boy whom she and Sister Ethel came upon at the wool scour out of Brewarrina, in 1947. It was a dark, cold night and Tim’s aunt had died in the derelict wool scour building.

As usual, Marjorie kept the people focused and interested during her talk to the people at Noosa Coastal Uniting Cafe Church. The solitariness of her wheelchair belies the strong courage of the pioneer nurse, now 88 years of age.

Tim still haunts Marjorie’s memory — the ambulance headlights had picked him out as the nurses drove into the compound and Tim looked so folorn as he stood there alone, in a man’s hat and coat.

Marj is still on the lookout for news of what became of Tim after he moved to the Newtown region of Sydney in 1947 with his uncle, Mr Barney.     SRS

Tim, at Brewarrina Railway Station, is on his way to a new life in Newtown, Sydney, with his uncle , Mr Barney, after Tim’s aunt died in a wool scour near Brewarrina, 1947. Marjorie and Ethel were called to this very sad case and they never forgot Tim, the brave little boy in their hearts forever.

 

PIONEER NURSES CHIN WAG TOGETHER

Two pioneer nurses of the Methodist Church become friends on the Gold Coast in their elder years. Sister Olive Crombie (m. Smith) (L) pioneered the Blue Nurses of Queensland in West End, Brisbane, 1951, and Sister Marjorie Wilkinson (m. Somerville) (R) pioneered the Brewarrina Nursing Service 1946.

Delightful ocean views from Olive and Ed’s beachside apartment are far, far removed from the dry, dusty conditions of outback Brewarrina, an arid inland region still so familar to Outback pioneer nurse, Sister Marjorie Wilkinson Somerville.

Before the rolling waves of the Gold Coast, laughs and memories were in high demand as Marjorie and Sister Olive Crombie Smith, pioneer of the Queensland Blue Nurses, re-united again in January and February 2009 for a bit of chin wagging and get togethers.

Their stories unfolded over many hours and cups of tea, on what they had accomplished for community nursing, and their experiences are to be recorded in the upcoming sequel to Angels of Augustus, a draft book in its early stages.

written by Jackie D’Bras, ELK & ICE BOOKS

 

Nancy Bird Walton at book launch

We sadly acknowledge the passing of Nancy Bird (Walton) and watched tearfully her memorial service at St Andrews Cathedral, Sydney, today.  Somehow, Nancy does not seem so far away. She is forever in the hearts and thoughts of the many people she inspired.

Pioneer pilot, Nancy Bird (m. Walton), was a much-loved support for author, Stephanie Somerville, when the biography of the Methodist nurses was published. The bold aviatrix had fond memories of landing on the grass airstrip of Brewarrina when she was a pioneer herself, flying for the Far West Children’s Health Scheme in the 1930s.

Nancy Bird kindly offered to be a guest speaker at our fourth book launch event for Angels of Augustus which was set in a gorgeous Mudgee vineyard, in the cellar of a winery, to a packed house of aviation enthusiasts from the Australian Women Pilots Association (AWPA). Warm support ensured as Nancy – with her well-spoken graciousness – gave accolades to the pioneering spirit of the outback nurses.

Stephanie Somerville responded with a moving speech about the supportive impact Nancy Bird had made on her life many years before.

Some tears brimmed in the audience as Stephanie related how her brother Peter had been eating a kiwifruit when he told his ‘kid sister’, “You should go back to flying, Steph” — she had learned to fly when she was seventeen but had given up flying when she became a family mum with her baby.

Only weeks later, Peter died from AIDS-related suicide — Stephanie was bereft. In her bereavement, wishing to keep her connection with her late brother, Stephanie went along to an aviation meeting at UNSW (where Stephanie studied English literature), where she met guest speaker Nancy Bird.

Nancy asked Stephanie if she was still flying – de ja vu – “No, sadly not”.  Nancy encouraged Stephanie to join the Australian Women Pilots’ Association. Stephanie did so and from that time on, Nancy Bird was a warm and vital support for Stephanie’s endeavours.

Stephanie went back to flying. For the research on ‘Angels of Augustus‘, she flew a Piper Archer – accompanied by her teenage daughter – from Coolanagatta across the Great Dividing Range and into the Outback to Brewarrina for one of her three research trips.

~~~~~

 

Angels met in Brisbane

Since publishing Angels of Augustus by Stephanie Somerville, the surviving pioneer nurse, Sister Marjorie Wilkinson Somerville (who pioneered the Methodist Nursing Services in the Australian outback in 1946) has been delighted to meet fellow pioneer nurse, Sister Olive Crombie Smith. They met in March 2008, in Brisbane, after Marjorie moved to Queensland a few months earlier.

They struck up a lovely friendship immediately. Olive was thrilled to meet Marjorie, because she adapted Marj’s Newtown model to pioneer the Queensland Blue Nurses in 1953.

Marketing Angels of Augustus

Angels of Augustus has been professionally edited and marketed (part time) by our marketing manager, Jackie D’Bras. When she’s not surfing or enjoying a Thai beef salad, she’s on the phone for Angels of Augustus!