As Anzac Day approaches, History Goulburn is holding a special talk on nurses who served overseas in WW I.
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Joyce Edwards will give the talk and she will cover the important role nurses had in the First World War.
The talk will be held at 2pm on Saturday, April 6 at the Goulburn Soldiers Club on the corner of Market and Sloane streets.
Several local women served as nurses in WWI, including Alice Joan Twynam (1882-1967).
Alice Joan Twynam (known as Joan) was born in October 1882 at the family home Riversdale in Goulburn, to Edward Twynam and Emily Rose Bolton.
Miss Twynam trained as a nurse in Sydney and also qualified in obstetrics before becoming a Bush nurse at Carinda (near Walgett NSW) and later in Jindabyne.
She joined the Australian Army Nursing Service Reserve, two years before enlisting for war service in September, 1914.
Attached to the 2nd Australian General Hospital, she was one of six nurses to embark in Sydney in October, 1914.
As a part of the First Convoy, they departed from WA on November 1, 1914 for England, before being diverted to Egypt.
She served in Egypt and was then posted to the Hospital Ship Gascon at Gallipoli. She was one of the seven Australian nurses originally at Gallipoli and continued to ferry sick and wounded soldiers between Gallipoli, Malta, Gibraltar, Egypt, Salonika and England.
Nurse Joan Twynam then served in France and England. When the war ended she was Head Sister at a convalescent hospital in England.
She returned to Australia in April, 1919 and was discharged two months later. She was awarded the Royal Red Cross (RRC) Medal First Class in 1919, by the then Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII) "... in recognition of her valuable service with the armies in France and Flanders."
Joan Twynam lived at 'Riversdale' and I have fond memories visiting her there with my mother, Margaret Allison. We were served afternoon tea on the veranda by Miss Joan, dressed in a long black gown and wearing a black straw hat and wheeling a very old traymobile.
Miss Twynam died in September 1967 in Goulburn, aged almost 85.
The Twynams owned Riversdale from the 1870s through to 1967, when it was purchased by the National Trust.
- To make a booking to attend the talk on Nurses in World War 1, please RSVP by April 4 to historygoulburn.events@gmail.com by April 4 with the subject line WWI Nurses.
