Connection to the Hunter Valley – Staff Nurse Kathleen McNamara graduated from Maitland Hospital in 1916.

Service – Australian  Army Nursing Service (AANS)

Service location – Staff Nurse McNamara was to have been sent to Salonika.  She embarked on the Wyreema on 14 October 1918 with other nurses one of whom was her sister, Staff Nurse Eileen Lilian McNamara.  The Wyreema was recalled at sea due to the end of hostilities on the Salonika front.  Some of the women from this ship nursed casualties from the influenza epidemic at the Fremantle Quarantine Station at Woodman’s Point (see Veiled Lives below in references.)

Medals – British War Medal

References:

National Archives of Australia B2455 MCNAMARA K

Embarkation Roll of the First AIF Australian War Memorial Nurses (July 1915 – November 1918)

Newcastle Morning Herald, 2 October 1919

Esme Meehan, Maitland Hospital, the way we were, the author, Largs NSW, 1996

Ruth Rae, Veiled Lives:  threading Australian nursing history into the fabric of the First World War, The College of Nursing, Burwood NSW, 2009

Do you know more?

© Christine Bramble 2013