ANZAC Girls

Fast Facts

Type of person	Group
Also known as:	ANZAC Nurses & Sisters
Principal occupation	Nurse

RUDALL Maude Bryce - c1910

Gawler's ANZAC Girls

In 2014, the Bunyip featured an article on ‘Gawler’s ANZAC Girls’ – it marked 100 years since the beginning of WWI and coincided with the 2014 Australian television drama series ‘ANZAC Girls’, which featured the rarely told stories of Australian and New Zealand nurses and sisters serving in WWI.

At that stage local researcher Beth Page had identified 7 local women who served as nurses or sisters in WWI, by the following year when the ANZAC Centenary Record was published by the Gawler RSL Sub Branch, there were known to be 17 local women who had served, they were:

Louie Ekers (35)

Name changed from Louie Eggers, daughter of Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Eggers

Lena Chloris Howie (31)

Sister to Leslie Bryant Howie and Frederick William Howie who also served WWI – Leslie was one of Gawler’s first 6 recruits

Sister Maude Bryce Rudall (31)

Daughter of Samuel Bruce Rudall

Sister Lucy Martha Tremlett (41)

Sister Tremlett appears to have been the first local woman to serve in WWI, embarking for overseas on 28 Nov 1914 and serving in Cairo, France and England. A “chatty” letter home from Egypt was published in the Kapunda Herald in August 1915, in which Sister Tremlett writes of being busy but happy, of her role nursing in the measles isolation tents and of her appreciation for good work of the women at home supplying the Red Cross boxes containing clean linen, pyjamas, games, notepaper and envelopes for “our men”. She also touches on the almost unbearable heat, the fine sand that drifts in everywhere and the “sad side”, “one feels keenly at times, for many of our boys will never return home from the Dardanelles, and many homes in Australia will be desolate.”

Following her war service, she went on to be appointed Matron of Gawler’s Hutchinson Hospital in February 1918. For more details and a photograph of Sister Tremlett, see the article published in the Bunyip in 2014.

Sister Elsie Maud Trenaman (35)

Sister Trenaman was the first Matron of Gawler’s Hutchinson Hospital and was serving in that role when she felt impelled to enlist by the urgent need for skilled nurses; she embarked for overseas on 15^th May 1915 aboard “Mooltan”.

For more details on these nurses and sisters

https://gawlerworldwar1.weebly.com [researched by Beth Page]

https://ausww1nurses.weebly.com

Gawler RSL Sub Branch (2015) “ANZAC Centenary Record for the Gawler Town and District – 259 Days that created the ANZAC Legend” (Evanston Gardens Library 994.04 RSL)

“ANZAC Girls” were Qualified Professionals

Use of the term “girls” in the title of this page, follows on from the Bunyip article, the television series and other historic usage. In a letter home, whilst serving in Egypt in WWI, Sister Trenaman herself referred to the “dear folks at home” awaiting the return of “us girls and boys”.

In fact the nurses and sisters who served for Australia were not “girls”, most were school educated and had completed at least three years of training to obtain their nursing qualifications, so they tended on average to be older (around 30 years old) than soldiers (around 24.25 years). The ages of the local women who served, fit with this, most were in their 30’s at the time they enlisted (see approximate age of enlistment next to each name).

To see the original "Gawler's ANZAC Girls" 2014 Bunyip article and photographs of a member of the Barossa Light Horse Historical Association in period nursing uniform, please [click here]

Related Articles

• Gawler Military Involvement
• ANZAC Day

References

Anzac Girls from Gawler Bunyip 10Sep2014

Memories of ANZAC Girls

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