Woodman Point Quarantine Station

Sunday Times (Perth, WA) Sunday 19 January 1919
TO THE NURSES.
Four nurses have died of pneumonia plague at the Woodman's Point quarantine station.
A fifth is seriously ill.

There is a love that courts, nay welcomes death.
To save a friend therefrom. Few men, I wis.
May know as great; No man, the Scripture saith,
Greater than this.
But these, ah! These a holier burden bore.
In life's first freshness or in Girlhood's bloom.
They trod the path that none retraces for
They knew not whom.
It was enough that stricken soldiers reeled
Where plague, like some fell beasts
Its victims tore.
It was enough humanity appealed;
They asked no more.
Soft hands might soothe the agony that galled
Where manhood fought for breath on stretchers rough
'Neath flimsy, sun-scorched canvas.
Duty called.
That was enough.
Unflinching and unfaltering, unafraid.
Counting the cost, yet careless of the price.
The suffering they succored. Aye and paid
In sacrifice
Their deeds no medals or dispatches tell;
They leave no fame to plow, no names to ring.
As on the battlefields where heroes fell
For God and King:
And yet and yet it seems at least to me
The Honor Roll holds few more lustrous there
Who faced their fate at grim Gallipoli?
Or Pozieres.
They sleep where ne'er was battle's strident stress
Or angry guns' interminable roar.
They sleep. "Peace hath her victories no less
Renowned than war."
They fought a grislier foe than wings or walks.
A subtler titan from 'neath the water smiles;
The scourge that stabs, the presence that stalks
Thro' noons and nights.
With heroes' blood who all sublimely died
Flanders is consecrate and France anoint.
But we, we have a scrap of earth. Inside,
With memories of heroines sanctified
In Woodman's Point.
Thomas the Rhymer.

The West Australian Saturday 18 January 1919
A NURSE'S BURIAL AT WOODMAN'S POINT
(By REL.)

They lifted the little pitch-pine coffin covered with the Union Jack out of the wagon reverently and carried it through the white sand to its last resting place. The sun shone very sweetly on the blossoming bush and a bird pausing on its way to the sea beyond, stayed and mourned softly. Somehow, though the nursing sister's friends were weeping, that was the only hopeless note that sounded at the burial of the little sister who had died while doing her simple duty. She who has passed to the Great Beyond must have had a gentle, joyous, lovely soul, happy in her work whilst faithfully carrying it on; patient, and smiling, they said, when sick, and contented now to rest in peace for ever, for in all that still air round her grave there was no discordant vibration, no wandering, restless looks, no sighing with remorseful memory. The firing party who had led the way with reversed bayonets from the quarantine hospital along the winding stone-flagged way to the little God's acre of happy souls, looked down; and, as at a queen's requiem, turned down also, their guns, and, resting their hands quietly on them, stood so while the exquisite words of the service rung out: "Oh death, where is thy sting; oh grave, where is thy victory?" The nursing sisters in gray dresses, white capped and red caped, wept, but there was no hopeless sadness at the funeral of the little sister who had died doing her duty; rather would one wish that might be one's own fate to die nobly, peacefully, gloriously, and be buried in the sunshine by the sea, with these who had worked and suffered with one standing so quietly near. "For blessed are the dead which die for the Lord, for they rest from their labours". For as much as it has pleased Almighty God to take unto himself the soul of our dear sister in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life. The four stalwart lads who had lifted and lowered the beloved sister's body in its shell, on which the whitecap and scarlet cape now rested, to its last home, stood humbly by, their hands folded, their young faces stern with regret, and the sister's friends bowed their heads sorrow fully weeping. There were others there also, others who had fought the world-wide dread disease through its virulence in this little corner of Australia to which it had crept, with less tragic result to themselves, and though they sighed the stillness was intense. Then one by one the three volleys went the air. The three volleys which tell a soldier that one of his comrades has been laid to rest, and then like a sharp shower of rain on an arid electric day the rifles clattered to the salute, and the men in khaki presented arms to the still body which lay unheeding with feet set towards the dawn, while the bugle rang out with its triumphant note, slowly sounding the Last Post, So do the bodies of some thirty valiant men and maids lie there at peace. Men and maids who have done what they could, who souls soar and whose lives live on in the memory of those who love them. And the example of work cheerfully done, of suffering nobly borne, at life freely given, will add laurels to Australia's flag forever. Wasted life! Is it waste if the dread disease is kept out of one country in the world? Those who have wrestled with it hand in hand, those who have gone down to the depths with it, those who have battled against fearful odds they know; and the little mounds surrounded by blossoming shrubs, canopied by the blue sky of heaven, in the tiny square along the coast where the birds pause on their way to the sea beyond, give testimony that our land is ready to do or die. Ready to fight, and lose if necessary, for the good of the common cause. Ready as other facts have shown to give its bravest and best for the glory of the nation. Advance Australia, your children are with you forever! And all this because one little nurse was buried today beside the still forms of three other sisters who died while nursing Spanish influenza in Western Australia. "Blessed are they who die in the name or the Lord."

This article describes the funeral of Staff Nurse. Doris Alice Ridgway AANS

The West Australian Tuesday 25 April 1933
HEROIC NURSES.
Pneumonic Influenza Victims.
(By M. S. Rossiter.)

On, Anzac Day when our thoughts turn to those whose memories we honour, how many men or women think of a tiny cemetery hidden in the bush at Woodman's Point, where are a score or graves of men and women who died actually on active service. The story of the nursing sisters buried at the quarantine station, simply told in a letter from Lieut. Colonel P. A. McFarlane, writing from the Victoria Barracks in 1919: It is desired to bring to notice the magnificent self-sacrifice of the nurses doing duty at the Fremantle (WJL) Quarantine Station, particularly those who volunteered from the troopship Wyreema, which was recalled from Gape Town owing to the signing of the armistice. I was officer commanding troops on the ship referred to. She carried a detachment of 40 Australian Navy nursing sisters as reinforcements for Salonika. The troopship Boonah was two days behind us and we picked up her wireless messages nightly, detailing the daily increasing number of men suffering from pneumonic influenza. The West Australian Commandant asked me to land 20 nursing sisters to help nurse the Boonah patients at the quarantine station. Volunteers were called for, and there was not only a ready response, but so many offered that it was necessary to place the names in a hat and draw the 20 required. They knew, perfectly well the enormous risk they were taking. Yet they were eager to undertake the work, and those whose names were not drawn were disappointed.
The Supreme Sacrifice: They commenced duty on December 10th at Woodman's Point quarantine station. Three of them have already made the supreme Sacrifice; whilst 12 others contracted the disease and are still suffering from its effects.
In a letter recently published from Chaplain Rev. J. A. Ford, of the Boonah, we have been told of the tenderness and attention of these nurses to the stricken men. To me this striking case of courage and devotion to duty equate the action of a body of soldiers ordered to go over the top in trench warfare, the casualties being equivalent to those sustained in such an action, viz., three killed and twelve wounded out of a detachment of 20. I count it an exceptional honour to have been associated with such a gallant band of sisters, and would lay my tribute of praise of the graves of those who have fallen. The three nurses mentioned in the fore going letter were Sister Rosa O'Kane, Nurse Hilda Williams and Nurse Ridgway. Later a fourth nurse succumbed: A touching picture is conveyed in a letter from one of the quarantine sisters, describing the burial of Sister 0'Kane. Between 2 am and 3 am on a beautiful moonlight night, writes Sister Morris, four sailors carried the body, wrapped in a winding sheet of the Union Jack, to the mortuary out in the scrub. Later in the day the burial took place at the quarantine station. The nurses made little wreaths from West Australian wild flowers, which were placed on the coffin with the Union Jack. I did not leave the graven side till the Last Post was sounded. Over Sister O'Kane's grave is a granite column; erected by her friends in Queensland and upon the other nurses' graves, as well as on the 17 or 18 graves of the soldier victims, are the simple white crosses, which mark the soldiers' graves the world over. The men buried here are from the Eastern States and New Zealand. Let us, then, on Anzac Day, think for a moment of that lonely little cemetery in the bush and those white sanded graves lying in the sunlight in the sound of the murmuring sea.