Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

A bronze plaque on a granite obelisk situated on the banks of a lake.

Our Nursing Heritage. The Vyner Brooke tragedy.

On 12th February 1942 sixty five Australian Army Nursing Sisters were ordered to leave Singapore in the wake of the advancing Japanese army. They boarded the ship the "Vyner Brooke" along with civilians. Two days later the ship was discovered by Japanese aircraft and bombed. Twelve nurses drowned after the attack. Twenty two nurses, many of them wounded landed on Banka Island. The group was found by Japanese soldiers and forced to walk into the sea and were shot. One nurse named Vivian Bullwinkel although shot, feigned death, and later made her way to shore. She and the remaining thirty one nurses became prisoners of war for three and a half years. A further eight nurses died during this period of captivity. Twenty four nurses returned home. This memorial was officially unveiled on 2 May 1999 by Mrs Vivian Statham (nee Bullwinkle) AO MBE ARRC FNM and another POW survivor Mrs Wilma Young (nee Oram) AM to celebrate the 100th year of Womens Suffrage in Western Australia.

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