Events for September 19, 2012

Australia’s trained nurses who went on active service with the Australian Army had experiences in places, environments and situations very different to those for which their nursing training had prepared them. In the war environment, military nurses developed new skills and undertook roles not envisaged before August 1914, including non-nursing work. This presentation highlights the differences between civilian and military nursing.

Dr Kirsty Harris completed her history PhD at The University of Melbourne in 2007. It compared Australian civilian nursing training and work with the military nursing experiences of the more than 2200 members of the Australian Army Nursing Service during World War I. She has published several articles on military nursing work and is the author of More than Bombs and Bandages (Big Sky Publishing, 2011).

Her current research interests include examining the transnational experiences of Empire women at Gallipoli in 1915 and the life of ex-convict turned Sydney entrepreneur Francois Girard.

Free, but please RSVP. Refreshments will be served after the talk.

Mosman Library is at 605 Military Road, Mosman - just a few kilometres from Sydney's CBD. Get directions with Google Maps. The talk is part of a collaborative project to collect and display information about the wartime experiences of local service people.