Connection to the Hunter Valley – Sister Annette Murphy was born in Morpeth and is named on Morpeth District Memorial, “Nurse N Murphy”.

Training and experience – Netta graduated from St Vincent’s Hospital Sydney in 1915 and worked there before enlisting.  In 1929 she was working at Prince of Wales Hospital Randwick.

Service – Australian  Army Nursing Service (AANS)

Service location – Egypt (No 14 Australian General Hospital)

Medals, awards and mentions – British War Medal and Victory Medal

In 1929 Sister Murphy was a member of a party of returned service personnel and their relatives that travelled to the Middle East and Europe to visit war graves.

The visit was reported in the Sydney Morning Herald 5 June 1929, p14 (retrieved from Trove 3 December 2012):

A party of 70 Australians, who left Sydney by the Baradine yesterday, to inspect war graves on the battlefields of Gallipoli, Palestine and France, will be absent six months… 

Two well-known members of the party are Sister A Murphy and Sister E J Garvin of the Royal Prince of Wales Hospital Randwick.  Many returned Australian soldiers will recall that Sister Murphy was attached to the 14th Australian General Hospital at Cairo during the war.  She nursed many a wounded “digger” back to health and strength.  Sister Garvin, equally well known, served in hospitals in France.

“It is too wonderful for words to express to have the opportunity of visiting places where we spent so many years of our lives, and of renewing old friendships,” stated Sister Murphy.  “We shall never forget those years.  No one directly associated with the war could forget.”

References:

National Archives of Australia B2455 MURPHY ANNETTE MARY

Nominal Roll of the First AIF Australian War Memorial (AWM) 133, 38-079

Embarkation Roll of the First AIF AWM Nurses (July 1915 – November 1918)

Sydney Morning Herald, 6 September 1919, p.17, retrieved from Trove 10 August 2010; 5 June 1929, p.14, retrieved from Trove 3 December 2012

Australasian Nurses’ Journal, Vol XIII No 7 July 1915, p.234, No 9 September 1915, p.325

Do you know more?

________________________

© Christine Bramble 2013