This post is a tribute to the extraordinary Nursing careers of Nancie and Kathleen Kinsella, who grew at Cora Lynn.
On February 14, 1942 the steam ship Vyner Brooke was bombed by the Japanese and sank in the Banka Strait. On the boat, were sixty five Australian nurses and over 100 civilians who had been evacuated from Singapore three days before the fall of Malaya. Twelve nurses drowned, thirty one nurses survived the sinking and became prisoners of war, with eight dying in captivity. Another twenty-two survived and were washed ashore on Radji Beach on Banka Island where they joined a number of civilians and service men from other sunken vessels. Japanese troops bayoneted the men to death and marched the women into the water where they were machine gunned to death. The only survivors at Radji Beach were Sister Vivian Bullwinkel and a British soldier. Sister Bullwinkel was later taken prisoner, and joined the other nurses in captivity. Only 24 nurses survived the War, including Vivian Bullwinkel and Betty Jeffrey, the author of the book, White Coolies. Another survivor was Sister Wilma Oram, who married Alan Young in 1947. The Youngs lived on a dairy farm at Cardinia (1).
One of the nurses who did not survive the sinking of the Vyner Brooke was Sister Kathleen Kinsella. Sister Kinsella was the daughter of Michael James Kinsella (1858-1919) and Susan (nee Lockens 1857-1930) of Cora Lynn. Michael Kinsella had selected 60 acres of land on the north side of the Main Drain at Cora Lynn in 1900 and the family moved there in 1905. Kathleen was born on March 18, 1904 at South Yarra and she started school at Koo Wee Rup North (or Five Mile). In 1912 Kathleen, along with brother Norman and sister Nancie, switched to Cora Lynn State School, where she stayed until 1918 (2).
After leaving school, Kathleen trained as a nurse and was working at the Heidelberg Military Hospital when she joined the Army on August 4 in 1941. She was assigned to the 2/13th Australian General Hospital, the 2/4th Casualty Clearing Station unit. The 13th Australian General Hospital left Melbourne on September 2, 1941 and arrived in Singapore on September 15. In November it relocated to Malaya. As the fighting in the area increased, the casualties grew and by December the hospital had 945 beds in operation and was acting as a Casualty Clearing Station. It was the most forward surgical unit in the army’s medical organisation. As the Japanese advanced the Hospital had to withdraw to Singapore where by the end of January 1942 it had established a 700 bed hospital. The medical staff had to cope with bombings and blackouts but eventually it was too dangerous to operate and the nurses were evacuated on three ships, the last to leave being the Vyner Brooke on February 12 (3).
Kathleen had three brothers, Daniel Lockens (1894-1983), Norman Francis (1895-1959) and Arthur Ernest (1898-1974) and, as we said, one sister, Nancie May (1900-1967). According to Michael Kinsella’s will the three sons inherited farms from their father which they worked together. Dan was also a Councillor for the Shire of Berwick from 1928 to 1954 and Shire President on a number of occasions (4). Kathleen and her sister Nancie both went into nursing.
Nancie had left Australia before the War and when the War broke out she enlisted in the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service. This service was started in 1902 by Queen Alexandra and provided nurses for military hospitals and in 1949 it became a Corps of the British Army and renamed Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps (5).
Nancie Kinsella nursed in the Middle East, was in Normandy where she looked after D-Day casualties and also nursed the 1,700 survivors of the Belsen Concentration camp. At Belsen, the nurses had to de-louse and clean the captives and the wards as well as provide treatment for all manner of diseases such as dysentery, tuberculosis, typhoid, typhus, diphtheria, heart and kidney problems as well as starvation (6). Nancie was awarded a Member of the British Empire Medal (M.B.E) in the Military Division, in recognition of gallant and distinguished services in North West Europe.
It appears that Nancie remained in the Service and completed her time in the Reserve of Officers in 1955, according to this notification, below, from the London Gazette
(2) Indexes to the Victorian Births, Deaths and Marriages; Shire of Berwick Rate Books; Cora Lynn State School rolls.
(3) Australian War Memorial https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/U57200
(4) Indexes to the Victorian Births, Deaths and Marriages; the will is available on line at the Public Records Office of Victoria.
(6) Free Thought, December 2, 1951, see here.
Other versions of this post, which I wrote and researched, appear on my work blog, Casey Cardinia Links to our Past and have also appeared in the Koo Wee Rup Blackfish and the Garfield Spectator.
