Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

AUDREY SIMPSON

Physiotherapist in WW2

Introduction

(For a detailed account of Audrey Simpson's life before she enlisted in 1941 and the influences on her, see 'Audrey Simpson: her early life' in the Documents section of her profile.)

Audrey Katherine Allen Simpson (1917–2014) was born in South Australia, the second daughter and fourth child of six born to Alfred Allen Simpson and his wife (Janet) Doris Simpson. The Simpsons were wealthy manufacturers, A Simpson and Co, well established and well connected with university, scientific, medical and legal circles in Adelaide. Cape Simpson in Antarctica and the Simpson Desert in central Australia were named in honour of Audrey's father by polar explorer Douglas Mawson and interior surveyor Cecil T Madigan, in gratitide for his financial assistance to their expeditions.

Audrey's parents and her maternal forebears in particular set great store on education for their daughters as well as their sons. After leaving school Audrey attended Adelaide University in 1935, taking some science subjects and participating actively in the social life there. In 1936–1937, Doris Simpson took her two daughers Janet and Audrey on a trip to England and the Continent. This extended finishing school experience lasted 19 months. Highlights for Janet and Audrey included driving tours through the British Isles and nine European countries, Janet's extended stay with relatives in Germany in 1937, being presented at court with other debutantes to King George Vl and Queen Elizabeth and having seats in Westminister Abbey for the coronation service.

Audrey returned to university in 1938, this time to study physiotherapy. She maintained her busy social life but in 1939, three events changed her life. Her sister married Lieutenant Eric Mayo, a torpedo officer on HMAS Sydney, Australia followed Britian into the was against Germany, and her father died after several years of incapacity. She completed the physiotherapy course and received the Diploma in Massage, Medical Electricity and Medical Gymnastics in November 1940. 

The three major events in 1939 each had a major impact on her life but none more so than the outbreak of war. Her story continues ...

 

Overseas Service: Malaya and Singapore 1941–1942

Part 1: Calm before the storm

As a family the Simpsons had been touched by previous wars. Audrey’s maternal grandfather Samuel Hübbe, for example, had been killed in the South African (Boer) war in 1900 when fighting with the 3rd (South Australian) Bushmen’s Contingent.[1] His widow successfully created a new life for herself and their children including Audrey’s mother Doris, grounded in education. One of Doris’s brothers had been killed in WW1; another served, won the Military Cross and survived. The family business, A Simpson and Co, manufactured munitions in WW1 and again in WW2.

Enlistment

The next generation, the adult children of Alfred and Doris, became deeply involved in WW2 both at home and overseas.

Audrey’s two older brothers enlisted in 1940. Bob (Robert), an engineer, enlisted in May but did not leave for overseas until February 1941. Moxon, the elder, had previously volunteered with the local Citizen Military Force (1930–36) but his responsibilities at the company made enlistment out of the question. To his dismay and embarrassment he was ‘required on defence jobs’ and exempted from military service. He joined the Volunteer Defence Corps (VDC) which was charged with home defence as captain of a gunnery platoon.[2]

As a married woman, Janet could only join voluntary organisations such as the Red Cross Society. Unmarried female physiotherapists could enlist in the Australian Army Medical Corps. Pre-war staffing regulations for Australian military hospitals stipulated one male physio (masseur) and five female physios (masseuses) for a 600 bed facility, and one and nine respectively for 1200 beds.[3] Following an urgent call for volunteers from the profession four female physios left with the 2/1 Australian General Hospital (AGH) for the Middle East in January 1940.
Audrey and Diana Kay from the same course (and like Audrey a Unitarian church member) enlisted on 21 January 1941, soon after receiving their diplomas (November 1940). Marjorie Hill who had qualified in 1938 enlisted the same day. Marjorie was almost 25, Audrey nearly 24. They waited eight months for their call up and Diana a year. While waiting Audrey worked part-time at the Royal Adelaide Hospital and in a voluntary capacity at the military camp at the Wayville showgrounds where she treated men injured while training or playing sport. She and Marjorie attended physical education classes with sisters in the Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS). They were conducted by Captain Ernest Cilento of the Australian Army Medical Corps, a physio (masseur) who had served in WW1.

Overseas: Melbourne to Singapore

On 22 August 1941 Audrey and Marjorie were called up for duty overseas with the 2/13AGH. They had two weeks to prepare for embarkation and join the unit assembling in Melbourne. They sourced as many components of their uniform as possible plus numerous other items. Marjorie’s list, no doubt very similar to Audrey’s, included
[a] kit bag + holdall and trunk … one small carrying case, your tartan rug Mum, my sleeping bag, groundsheet, writing case, vanity case, great coat, winter uniform + tropical frock + a couple of working uniforms … stretcher, mattress, pillow, sheets, eiderdown, underwear, dressing gowns, evening frock, blue cape, glengarry, books, shoes, gloves, towels and soaps and beauty preparations + tennis frocks … [4]
(The ‘evening frock’ was most likely the formal mess uniform worn when dining and dancing).

The role of the 2/13AGH was to support the 8 Division reinforcements. They had recently been dispatched to bolster the defence of the southern Malayan Peninsula against the mounting Japanese threat. The unit – personnel plus the tons of stores and equipment to set up a new hospital – left Melbourne on 2 September aboard the Wanganella, a designated hospital ship.[5]

After a week at sea traversing the rough Australian Bight and a day docked in Fremantle, Wanganella left Australian waters and headed north. Its destination was not the Middle East as expected. Instead the ship made forSingapore at the southern tip of the Malayan Peninsula. Singapore was the tropical jewel of the British Empire, protected by supposedly impregnable defences. Great coats and winter uniforms were surplus to requirements!

The voyage was through calm seas and untroubled. Highlights included the ship’s escorts of flying fish and the traditional Crossing the Equator rituals. Coming from the Australian winter personnel found the increasing heat challenging. The days were occupied with boat drills, and lectures on tropical medicine and the peoples, customs and places of the Malayan Peninsula. There were deck games and entertainments as well as reading, letter writing, card games and socialising. Hailing as they did from around Australia, the AANS sisters and physios in the unit had time to become acquainted. Audrey and Marjorie came from Adelaide and the third physio Cynthia Sutton, from Melbourne.

Singapore–Tampoi–Singapore

The 2/13AGH personnel disembarked in Singapore on 15 September 1941. There were 216: 20 officers, 49 AANS sisters, 3 physiotherapists, 17 NCOs (Non Commissioned Officers) and 127 ORs (Ordinary Ranks). Additional personnel joined them from the 2/10AGH and 2/4 Australian Casualty Clearing Station (2/4ACCS), units which had been in Malaya since early 1941. Matron Irene Drummond from 2/4ACCS was appointed matron at 2/13AGH.

The unit had nothing to do: no hospital to work in and no patients. Some personnel were transferred out: Vivian Bullwinkel for example was sent to 2/10AGH. Most marked time in their comfortable quarters at St Patrick’s School in Singapore. They endeavoured to acclimatise to the oppressive hot humid weather and the sights, sounds and ‘smell of the East’. They attended medical lectures and demonstrations and on one occasion rehearsed admitting battle casualties. Audrey, Marjorie and Cynthia assisted the physios in the Singapore General Hospital where civilians were treated. They and the sisters trained the unit’s medical orderlies in basic first aid.

Free time was occupied with a great deal of socialising. They played tennis in the officers’ clubs. They became tourists, exploring Singapore’s shops, cinemas and bars. As honorary officers the sisters and physios had entry into the luxurious Raffles Hotel and other exclusive clubs. They could socialise there with each other and mix with British and Australian officers, eat, drink and dance.[6] Audrey had handy introductions to leading British and Australian civilians and military men in the city. Soon after arriving she and undoubtedly Marjorie had dinner with Commodore John Collins RAN who was in a senior role with the Royal Navy in Singapore. Collins had been Eric Mayo’s commander on HMAS Sydney in 1940.[7] Eric was currently with the Sydney which was patrolling in the Indian Ocean.

On 23 November 1941 after marking time for 10 weeks the 2/13AGH moved to Tampoi near Johore, 30 kms northwest of Singapore city and on the mainland side of the causeway to the island.[8] They set up the 2/13AGH in its new home – a newish but incomplete mental facility spread over a large area on the edge of a jungle. The sisters and physios travelled from their quarters to the wards by ambulance and between the wards on bicycles. Supplies such as linen were limited and British army rations served at meals were unappealing.[9] The nursing was light however. Most admissions had fungal infections, minor abrasions or, of most interest to the physios, broken bones from motor bike accidents.

In early December Audrey learnt that her sister’s husband Eric Mayo had been killed, lost with all hands when HMAS Sydney sank. The ship had been hit by a torpedo fired from the German raider Kormoran on 21 November. She was shocked, writing to her mother ‘I can’t bear to think of what it’s like for Jan.’ Janet had a toddler and was pregnant with their second child.
When Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbour on 6/7 December 1941, South Asia and the Pacific became war zones. At 2/13AGH the personnel donned Red Cross armbands and prepared to double the capacity to 1200 beds. Initially there was no fighting near Tampoi. A few patients injured in bombing raids on Singapore Island were admitted but most new admissions were as before, with skin or stomach complaints or accidental injuries.

Christmas and New Year celebrations continued almost as normal, apart from the brown out and compulsory tin helmets. However in early January 1942 the arrival at Tampoi of 2/10AGH personnel evacuated from Malacca 200 kms away and a sharp increase in casualty numbers signalled that danger was to come. Even then
for all the girls at Tampoi, the war was more an occasional inconvenience than the life and death struggle it was for others. They could still entertain visitors in their mess after 2100 hours, and go shopping in the shops and bazaars of old Johore.[10]
 
For her part, Audrey wrote reassuring letters to her mother.

Part 2: Terror on land and at sea

The situation for 2/13AGH at Tampoi changed dramatically on 16 January 1942. In the words of the unit’s unofficial historian
the war hit us right between the eyes. Men, on stretchers with tickets pinned to them showing the most urgent injuries, were delivered in rapid succession from transports of all types.[11]
 
Audrey and the other physios worked alongside the sisters in the wards and theatre. It was trying: plaster bandages for fractures had to be improvised using mosquito netting and wounds under plaster festered in the heat. The hours on duty were long.[12]
 
The Japanese bombardment of the southern part of the Malayan Peninsula intensified and casualties arrived at Tampoi in ever increasing numbers. Japanese propaganda radio Tokyo Rose broadcasts warned the hospital of an imminent attack. British and Commonwealth forces began retreating from the southern tip of the Malayan Peninsula, back across the causeway to Singapore. On 24 January 1942, 2/13AGH itself hastily withdrew from the Tampoi site and returned to St Patrick’s College on the island. The scenes were of orderly chaos. Physio Marjorie Hill described the relocation:

The Japs were extremely hot on our heels ... People told us that no A.G.H could be removed under 6 weeks! You just should have seen us pelting up and down stairs with mattresses on our heads and iron bedsteads practically tucked under our arms. I have never seen people work so hard, or so cheerfully ... By the end of the second day nothing was left in Johore – not even the fixed wash hand basins, and all the patients were in bed in Singapore ...[13]
 
The hospital was inundated with wounded patients. Marjorie recounted the scene:
Once the Japs got onto the island we turned into a casualty clearing station, and were admitting men straight from the front line. The 3 of us (masseuses) spent practically all our time in the theatre as we did all the plaster work, and the routine treatment of wounds after excision was to dust them with sulphanilamide powder, and pack them with vaseline gauze, and put them in a closed plaster. When we were not plastering, we were acting as theatre pros [trainee nurses] or as ‘secretaries’ to the surgeons, who couldn’t spare the time to write up descriptions of the operation in case notes. If there was ever a lull in the theatre, we went into the resuscitation ward ... We took it in turns to work back at night, one of us working right through till morning, another staying until the rush was over, usually about 2 a.m., and the third SLEEPING.
 
In fact Marjorie understated the work that she, Audrey and Cynthia did, particularly their inventiveness and efforts to maintain traction for patients with serious fractures.[14] They were buoyed by the matron’s expression of gratitude. Speaking the blackout darkness to the assembled sisters and physios, she said
… she really did not know how the hospital would have got on without us. She had always thought of masseuses as ladies of leisure, but not us we’d been wonderful.[15]
 
Bombs and shells fell around the hospital daily. Protected by its visible Red Cross the buildings were hit only once. The kitchen was all but destroyed but there were no injuries. ‘Quite good’, wrote Marjorie in a wry understatement, ‘seeing we were between the docks, the airport and the ack-ack defences’.

Evacuation

By 10 February 1942 the situation in Singapore itself had worsened. The evacuation of patients and women, including the AANS sisters and physios, became imperative. On 12 February dangerously ill patients left Singapore on the ship Wah Sui with six sisters to nurse them. The remaining sisters and physios refused to leave voluntarily. Matron Olive Paschke (2/10GH) randomly selected 59 including the physios and ordered them to prepare for immediate embarkation on the ship Empire Star.[16] The remaining 65 were to follow on the Vyner Brooke. ‘That was the worst moment of the war,’ Marjorie wrote soon after.

Marjorie’s account of what followed began
We went down to the docks in ambulance convoys after having grabbed a few things together in small cases and rolled a few more/up in rugs or groundsheets, and there we saw our ship – a cargo ship which normally had accommodation for about 16 passengers and was carrying 2,500 troops, nurses and civilians.
Audrey recalled that the guards at the Empire Star gangway tried to prevent them boarding. Their commanding officer drew his pistol and allowed them on the ship.
 
Marjorie continued:
We were stowed down in the hold and thrown tinned provisions ‘salvaged’ from the wharves – rusks, cheese, stew, biscuits, bottle of Guinness’s stout and skin food (‘revive those sagging facial muscles’)! It was dusk before we sailed and we watched Singapore, blazing from end to end, out of sight [sic]. There was just room for us to lie down in the hold and we lay flat on ground sheets and sweated as I have never sweated before.
 
The sisters had with them only what they had grabbed and could carry. The trunks that earlier carried their possessions to Singapore were still at the hospital, stacked up to create a protective wall. Conditions in the hold were cramped and frightening. Audrey recalled ‘[we] were allowed to go upstairs to the lavatory once a day; otherwise [we] used buckets down below. When bombs fell [we] hid under bridge tables.’
 
Marjorie’s account went on:
The next day at 9 a.m. we heard planes again and the order went round to take cover as the Japs were after us. We lay flat in our hold for four hours while flights of planes numbering in all 60 dive [sic] and high-level bombed us consistently. How we survived it no one understood, least of all the Captain ... Fourteen people were killed and twenty wounded, so we organised ourselves into a hospital once more and took 4 hour shifts on duty. Two British (English) corporals were our ‘refuge and help’ in all this. They were priceless Yorkshiremen who were tireless in keeping everyone cheerful (rocking with laughter in fact) and organising community singing and general buffoonery. They were much funnier than they realised.

The ship's captain, Selwyn Capon, described the sisters and physios as performing 'yeoman service in attending to the wounded.' [17] Two AANS sisters were decorated for their exceptional bravery during the voyage: Margaret Anderson with the George Medal (the first Australia woman so decorated) and Vera Torney with the Member of the British Empire decoration.[18]

Despite the attacks and damage, the Empire Star managed to reach Batavia in the Netherlands East Indies (Indonesia) for repairs. Audrey, Marjorie and Cynthia discovered that Commodore Collins was there and went to naval headquarters to ask him to cable their families with news they were safe. He did not, presumably for security reasons. For more than a week their families in Australia read conflicting reports in the newspapers about the fate of the sisters and physios evacuated from Singapore.

The sisters and physios spent what Audrey described as several ‘fairly peaceful’ days in Batavia before the Empire Star was made sufficiently seaworthy to attempt the return to Australia. The ship was crowded, uncomfortable and with limited provisions. Learning that Marjorie’s father was head of the Adelaide Steamship Company, the captain allowed the three physios to sleep on the deck, with cushions.

The Empire Star reached Fremantle on 23 February. At last those on board could cable or telephone their families.

In Audrey’s service record just four lines cover the period between the time she arrived in Singapore and returned to Australia six months later. The entries were in standard stark army language. ‘Embarked Singapore for return to Australia’ and ‘Disembarked at Fremantle ex HMAT Empire Star’ gave no hint of the danger, chaos and fear she and her colleagues experienced.

Notwithstanding the harrowing experiences, Audrey undoubtedly endorsed Majorie’s sentiments expressed when safely back home:
I wouldn’t have missed one day of our time in Malaya even with the Japs thrown in. It was a marvellous experience (especially now that I know I got through it alright) and all so worth while and full of interest and excitement. The one thing that saddens all our memory of it is that none of our men (M.O’s and orderlies) and only half our girls got out. We have heard nothing of them at all and can only hope that they are altogether and are being allowed to carry on as a hospital – it seems a lot to hope for.

The fate of their colleagues on the Vyner Brooke was not confirmed until after the war ended.

Part 3: Home: Perth and Adelaide

Red Cross Society members met the Empire Star when it docked at Fremantle with supplies of food, clothing and other necessities for the survivors. Audrey, Marjorie, Cynthia and the AANS sisters were processed at the Returnees Depot at 110 Australian Military Hospital (AMH) in Perth before being taken to the 118AGH in Northam, 100kms north, for health checks, rest and recovery from the shock of their ordeal.[19]

The physical and emotional exhaustion from the past six weeks can hardly be imagined. The physios and sisters had spent a fortnight nursing casualties amid direct attacks on Singapore. They had been ordered to evacuate at a moment’s notice and against their will. They had tended to men women and children confined in the frightening and cramped conditions on the Empire Star. They had witnessed the destruction and casualties caused by Japanese bombers and then the burials at sea. They dreaded the unknown fate of their colleagues, the sisters to be evacuated after them and the men who remained to defend Singapore. They had no idea as to the whereabouts of the other personnel, patients and equipment of the 2/13AGH, 2/10AGH and 2/4ACCs.

The three physio friends spent a good deal of time together while recuperating. They gave thanks at church for their survival. They visited Perth several times to meet other survivors they knew and to find opportunities to dance. They even took over a local dance class.

After two weeks at 118AGH sisters and physios returned to their home states. Audrey and Marjorie arrived in Adelaide by train from Perth on 11 March 1942, desperate to see their families and friends. They were granted a week’s ‘disembarkation leave’. The Adelaide they saw was very different from the city they had left seven months earlier. There were blackout regulations, trenches, sandbags and air raid defences in city buildings and backyards. Rationing had begun and hospitals were preparing for casualties. Audrey’s family company, A Simpson and Co, was bidding for military equipment contracts and simultaneously losing employees amid recruitment drives for men and women to shore up Australia’s defences.

Audrey was not the only member of her immediate family who was directly and profoundly affected by the war at this time. She already knew that Janet, her older sister to whom she was close, had been widowed two months earlier, and left pregnant and with a 15 month old son. As Janet’s biographer noted, Eric’s death ‘came to shape her personal and professional life’.[20]

Their second brother Captain Bob Simpson arrived home on a ship from the Middle East on 15 March 1942, four days after Audrey. He had his own stories of escaping personal danger. An engineer with 2/3 Australian Field Park Company, he had fought in the ill-fated campaign that saw thousands of Australian troops withdraw in haste from Greece then Crete in April–May 1941. He had subsequently served in the Libyan desert supporting Australian troops in Tobruk and then in Syria, then returned with most Australian personnel for the defence of Australia. He was promoted to major in April 1942 and embarked for Papua New Guinea the following August. He rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel.[21]

A few weeks later, in April 1942 Audrey’s younger brother Derek joined the Royal Australian Navy Reserve. He was posted to the RAN’s shore establishments. He was at HMAS Coonawarra, the RAN’s base in Darwin where he experienced periodic bombing raids. He later served on HMAS Leeuwin in Fremantle then HMAS Torrens at Port Adelaide. He was an accountant in his post-war life so his role in the RAN was likely to have been mainly administrative.[22]

The siblings dissuaded 15 year old Donald, the youngest in the family, from falsifying his age and attempting to enlist.

On 26 March, Audrey and Marjorie attended a morning tea in the city to welcome home 34 sisters and physios from the Middle East and Malaya/Singapore. They and four sisters who had escaped Singapore were present and were no doubt ready to describe at least part of their ordeal. Lady Muriel Barclay-Harvey, wife of the state governor and an active supporter of women in the services, expressed the gathering’s gratitude for their safe return. There was relief that some were safe but everyone present knew that some sisters evacuated from Singapore were missing, presumed dead. Nine of them were South Australians, friends and colleagues of many of those present that morning.[23]

Lady Muriel was in the process of establishing a club in a Government House wing where sisters and physios could relax, socialise, enjoy refreshments and bring guests. Audrey and Marjorie undoubtedly used its facilities after it opened in April.[24]

In late April Audrey and Marjorie were posted to the new 105AGH in the Adelaide suburb of Daw Park. The state of the art hospital had been intended to treat South Australians returning home from the European and Middle East campaigns; now they were expected from Papua New Guinea and South Asia. It was still incomplete and facilities were limited.
Audrey and Marjorie were the first physios on the staff at 105AGH. They spent four months working there before orders came to move to their next posting.

Home Service in the Northern Territory 1942–1944

109AGH Alice Springs

For the AANS sisters and the physios returning from overseas in 1942, the reality was that continued service would be in Australia. Sending women to Papua New Guinea had proved too dangerous. In late August 1942, Audrey and Marjorie were posted to the 109AGH at Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. They travelled on ‘The Ghan’ train.[25] The arduous and uncomfortable journey over a narrow gauge railway line lasted three days and three nights.

The Alice Springs hospital, requisitioned by army authorities, was the nucleus of 109AGH. It was allocated 500 beds in anticipation of numerous military and civilian casualties arriving from the Territory’s north. Additional wards, accommodation and messes for personnel, kitchens and other services were set up in tents and huts near the existing hospital. The physiotherapy department occupied a basic hut.[26]

The weather dictated conditions. The living quarters, which had dirt floors, were ‘very hot and messy’. There were occasional dust storms, sometimes torrential rain, hot days in summer and freezing nights.

The additions were incomplete when the physios arrived – a familiar experience for them. With few if any screens to keep out the ubiquitous flies, many if not most personnel inevitably came down with severe dysentery soon after they arrived. Audrey and Marjorie were not as ill as some but were still laid low for a week.

From early 1942 onwards Alice Springs was a key location in Australia’s war effort. Since the bombings of Darwin, the small isolated town had become the de facto capital of the Northern Territory, an administrative centre for the army, a staging camp for troops in transit, a massive depot for stores and equipment, and the main base of the civil authority responsible for constructing roads, airstrips and bridges, the Allied War Council.

The expected high numbers of casualties did not eventuate. The 109AGH found a new role and treated all comers, military and civilian. Army personnel from nearby transport units typically suffered from ‘homesick backs’. The local population – aboriginal people, women, children, nursing mothers and infants – also received medical attention. Treatments were restricted by a lack of equipment but the standard of care was regarded as high.

Grace Trott, a South Australian nurse posted to 109 AGH at the same time as Audrey, wrote: ‘For two and a half years, the members of the Unit worked and played together, became rather like a large family and wistfully waited to be sent to Forward Areas.’[27]

Women required a male companion or driver to leave the hospital precinct but as Trott’s recollections and those of her colleagues showed, fun was found and created to relieve the monotony of the under-utilised hospital and its routine. There were chop picnics (barbecues) when the Todd River’s bed was dry and good viewing when it flooded in December that year. Trips were popular to scenic sites like Simpsons Gap (named for WW1 heroes Simpson and his donkey not Audrey’s father). There were dances, entertainments, picture shows and on Christmas Eve 1942 a festive concert. Romance blossomed: there were four weddings and numerous engagements between AANS sisters and army personnel, necessitating great ingenuity in wedding preparations.[28] There was also mild excitement when disgruntled troops threw rocks on the main building’s iron roof. The matron insisted on confining female personnel to their quarters and requiring armed escorts to accompany them to the wards.[29]

121AGH and 101AGH Katherine

In March 1943 after seven months at 109AGH Audrey was transferred to 121AGH in Katherine, 1200 kms north of Alice Springs and 300 kms south of Darwin. Marjorie was posted to 107AGH at Adelaide River, 200 kms beyond Katherine. The 121AGH was built of ‘corrugated iron huts and tents … in the middle of nowhere.’[30]

Meals were all from tins, including oily tinned butter and potatoes … The fine red dust covered everything, but when the wet season came, the dust turned to thick red mud. Heat and humidity were high, fungi grew on shoes and clothes. Snakes often invaded the wards, while mosquitoes, flies and insects were most troublesome.

Audrey spent from March 1943 to May 1944 in Katherine. She experienced two dry seasons and a wet one in those 15 months. She was initially attached to 121AGH and then to its successor from October 1943, the 101AGH. At its largest (in 1942) the hospital had 1200 beds. The facilities were basic but like 109AGH, there were surgical and medical wards plus allied health services, physiotherapy, pathology and dentistry as well as ophthalmology. Most admissions were Australian and American troops stationed in and around Katherine and some brought from further north on a hospital train. Like 109AGH, both units treated the local indigenous population and the few civilians in the area. Local aboriginal people were trained to be orderlies in the areas of the hospital set aside for aboriginal patients.

Social life was dictated by the location and the various Australian and American units stationed or staging in the area. Units included the Australian army’s headquarters for the Katherine area, sections of the Australian Army Service Corps and the Royal Australian Engineers, and RAAF and US Army Air Force squadrons at Manbulloo Airfield. There were undoubtedly many social occasions in the hospital mess and the messes of other units. Sisters and physiotherapists were popular guests at parties hosted by officers and non commissioned officers (NCO).

The nearby Katherine River was a favourite location for picnics and swimming, despite the crocodiles in it and the cattle drinking from it. Local attractions popular with service men and women included the spectacular scenery of Katherine Gorge (Nitmiluk) 30 kms away and the ’16 Mile’ caves.

During this time Audrey and Marjorie were given a fortnight’s leave home in Adelaide. They made the long trek there and back on The Ghan.

In mid-1944, both physios were transferred to Queensland.

 

Overseas Service 1944–1945

Part 1: Preparation in Queensland

Waiting and preparing for overseas service

In mid-1944, Audrey and Marjorie were transferred from the Northern Territory to the 2/4AGH at Redbank, a large army camp 30kms west of central Brisbane.[31] They arrived as the hospital was reducing patient numbers ahead of an expected move overseas. Patient numbers fell from over 700 in August to a fraction of that in October. The unit marched out and the 128AGH took over the facility in November 1944.

The 2/4AGH had served with great distinction at Tobruk, before and during the siege in 1941, and had a strong sense of pride and solidarity. Audrey and Marjorie found its personnel were ‘rather tired of hearing about Singapore.’

The hospital treated a wide range of casualties. Some including amputees and bedridden patients in the surgical wards required intensive nursing care and physiotherapy. The medical wards were busiest, treating patients with tropical diseases, most commonly malaria but also scrub typhus, dengue fever and dysentery. Audrey and Marjorie joined the small but well established team of physios. Physiotherapy was an integral part of patient treatment and the physios were popular with their patients. Increasingly the work involved preparing patients for discharge to their units or for transfer to another hospital.

Redbank was definitely a welcome change from the Northern Territory. It was a massive and busy army base with numerous units based or training there so sisters and physio were guaranteed a rich social life. There were dances and parties in the 2/4AGH messes and the messes of other units on the base. Redbank was on the circuit for concerts and entertainments specially arranged for personnel in large camps.[32]

Redbank had its own railway station close to the hospital. The regional centre Ipswich was a few stops west. Central Brisbane was less than an hour away in the other direction, easily accessible on a day, afternoon or evening off. Brisbane was a bustling city, with shops, cafés, hotels and picture theatres as well as thousands of military personnel based there or in transit.
In late 1944, 2/4AGH marched out of Redbank to prepare for the expected move forward. It did not happen until May 1945. In the meantime the male personnel spent months at Strathpine army camp north of Brisbane training for tropical conditions. The sisters and physios were temporarily attached to other hospital units. Audrey and Marjorie found themselves at 112 Australian Military Hospital (AMH) at Greenslopes, Brisbane.

‘Greenslopes’ (as it was generally known) was the largest military hospital in Queensland. It had opened in 1942 on a large site 8kms south of central Brisbane. It treated patients who had become seriously ill or severely injured while fighting in Papua New Guinea and the islands of the Pacific and South Asia. It had a reputation for skilled facio-maxillary and plastic surgery, and for innovative surgical repair of gunshot wounds to torso and extremities. The physios played a key role in the post-operative rehabilitation of many of the patients.

In November 1944 Audrey and Marjorie were recalled to the 2/4AGH to join the men training in the Strathpine camp. They spent three months there, preparing for the unit’s long-awaited move overseas. They were kitted out in their new tropical uniforms of long sleeve shirts, pants, boots and puttees, all designed for malaria protection.

Preparation consisted of various exercises and drills. The unit rehearsed setting up and dismantling a tented hospital in seven days – undoubted reminding Audrey and Marjorie of how 2/13 AGH was relocated from Tampoi to Singapore in just two days. Audrey recalled they learnt ‘mapping, pistol shooting, survival techniques such as swimming in their clothes, climbing up and down ropes and marching.’ The entire unit took part in the parade of 12 000 troops before the General Commanding 1 Australian Corps, Lieutenant General Sir Leslie Morshead, in January 1945.

Central Brisbane was an easy destination from both Redbank and Greenslopes in their hours and days off. Audrey and Marjorie stayed at the Anzac Club, a hostel for military personnel in the city centre. They enjoyed good meals in cafés and hotels. They discovered free Sunday night suppers at the Presbyterian Church and occasionally had supper with the Anglican dean after the Sunday evening service at St John’s Anglican Cathedral. On one occasion at least they met up with Audrey’s brother Major soon to be Lieutenant Colonel Bob Simpson, then based in Queensland.
They were undoubtedly impatient to serve overseas again.

Part 2: To Morotai and Labuan

Finally the 2/4AGH received orders to move overseas again. Most personnel embarked on USAT Sea Cat on 4 May 1945. The AANS sisters and physios followed on 21 May on the hospital ship Wanganella, the same ship that had transported Audrey and Marjorie’s unit 2/13 AGH to Singapore in 1941. It was hard to comprehend all that had happened since that first voyage.

On 1 June the unit landed on Morotai, an island of the Netherlands East Indies (present day Indonesia). It staged with 2/9 AGH while awaiting orders to move further forward once the Japanese army had been driven from the unit’s intended destination.

Audrey recalled they camped in a coconut plantation. They wore their tin huts almost constantly, despite the heat, for protection against falling coconuts. They found crabs invaded many places in the camp, giving them unpleasant surprises in their tents and bedding.

The sisters and physios found there were many ways to fill the time. There was a large American air force base on Morotai, and the pilots and officers were delighted to have female company. Hilda Briggs, a fellow South Australian, well remembered the film star attention the women of the unit received, ‘even clomping around in our heavy legginged boots, safari pants, and as yellow as oranges from our continued consumption of Atebrin.’ She and her colleagues enjoyed the lavish food served in the American officers’ messes (‘delights never heard of in our own’) and the royal treatment they received. By contrast the Australians paid them little attention ‘until the keg was finished.’[33]

Two Australian hospitals, 2/4AGH and 2/6AGH, were soon despatched to Labuan, an island off Borneo, 1400 kms from Morotai. By mid-June Australian troops had taken control of Labuan and with only a few Japanese snipers in the jungle remaining it deemed safe to set up the hospitals. The sites were cleared, tents were erected, then equipment, stores and finally personnel were moved in amid torrential downpours and enervating heat. The 2/4AGH consisted of tents ‘at the edge of the jungle and fronted on to the sea’.[34]

The hospital was fully operational on 16 July and by the end of the month had 418 patients. The medical team included five physios. Relatively few admissions were battle casualties; most had medical conditions, typically severe dermatitis, upper respiratory tract infections, dengue and undetermined fevers. Once well enough to travel patients were evacuated from the island on DC3 aircraft or hospital ships.

With the jungle nearby, danger was ever present in the form of Japanese snipers, insect bites and disease. Mosquitoes were well controlled by low flying aircraft spraying several times a day. The local native population was friendly but generally regarded by personnel as a source of dysentery, venereal disease and tuberculosis; the locals were given a wide berth.

Probably to their surprise Audrey and her colleagues found that many entertainments were provided on Labuan. The 2/4AGH boasted an open air cinema which drew huge crowds from the units nearby. They watched films through tropical rain storms huddled under groundsheets and gas capes. Singer Gracie Fields attracted a massive crowd to her concert on a specially built stage. A tropical downpour did not lessen the enjoyment.

Attentive American troops provided good company. Although not officers or pilots as on Morotai they brought fun nonetheless. They were always ready to escort off duty sisters and physios on picnics and sailing excursions around the idyllic islands off Labuan. The women could return the hospitality. The officers mess was strictly for (male) officers but Hilda Briggs remembered the female personnel had access to ‘a little “brother’s room” where we entertained brothers – not necessarily our own.’[35]

The war in the Pacific ended on 15 August 1944. The victory party at 2/4 AGH broke through the floorboards in the sisters’ recreation hut. Most sick and wounded troops were evacuated from the hospital but the respite was brief. They were quickly replaced by prisoners of war liberated from Japanese camps in the region including the infamous Sandakan and Kuching.

The terrible physical and mental states of the POWs were evidence of the brutal treatment and forced labour they had endured. British, Australian, Javanese, Chinese and Indian POWs poured into the two hospitals, brought by ship and by plane. Treating them and readying them for evacuation was a huge task.

Staff devoted long hours and all their skills to restoring the wasted bodies of these men … They were victims of deficiencies of diet: of all the common tropical maladies – malaria, dysentery, dengue, dermatitis; of all the injuries that had accumulated through the years of captivity, and death marches.[36]

In mid-October 1945, 2/4 AGH received orders to close down. The next fortnight was hectic as all the patients were transferred to 2/6 AGH, the other hospital on the island. On 10 November, Audrey, Marjorie and the personnel of 2/4 AGH boarded hospital ship Wanganella, Audrey and Marjorie for the third time, to return to Australia. Both would have echoed Hilda Briggs’s sentiments about leaving Labuan ‘with more than a little regret. We were leaving behind us months of excitement and adventure that we could never hope to relive.’

The Wanganella reached Sydney on 23 November 1945 and members of the unit dispersed to their home states for demobilisation.

Audrey was among a group of South Australian AANS sisters from the 2/4AGH and 2/6AGH who arrived in Adelaide on 27 November 1945. She was posted to the 105AMH at Daw Park until her discharge from the army came through on 13 January 1946. Her brothers Bob and Derek were demobilised the same month.

Audrey’s service record showed that she had served a total of 1644 days.
 

After the War

Physiotherapy

 
Audrey was 29 when she was released from war service and demobilised. In 1947 – later than she had hoped but on the first available passage for civilians – she returned to Britain. She remained there for three years, happily mixing work, sightseeing and travel. She worked with thoracic patients undergoing pioneering surgery in the Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospitals and with children in Edinburgh. Among the Adelaide doctors she encountered at Harefield or in other London hospitals were Hamilton D’Arcy Sutherland and William (Bill) Cleland. She attended a conference in New York and witnessed advanced surgical techniques in hospitals there.[37]
 
Audrey’s dislike of English winters prompted her return to Adelaide in 1950. She was appointed to a physiotherapist’s position at the Royal Adelaide Hospital (RAH) where she remained for a number of years. She also established a successful private practice. She took brief pauses during the illness and death of her mother Doris in 1950.
 
Audrey’s speciality was thoracic physiotherapy which she both practiced and taught. She worked closely in the RAH chest unit with D’Arcy Sutherland who was regarded as a leading and innovative cardiothoracic surgeon and with newly qualified physiotherapist Jill Jennings. They trained RAH nurses to pass on the skills to nurses in private hospitals. Audrey was undoubtedly on the physiotherapy team for the post-operative care of D’Arcy Sutherland’s first open heart surgery patient at the RAH in 1960.
 
D'Arcy Sutherland invited Audrey to join two of his medical clinics in Papua New Guinea, around 1958 and 1960. On the first trip they worked in a hospital built on piles over the sea near Port Moresby, and then in remote areas in the Highlands. Audrey used her spare time between shifts to travel around the local districts by herself or with the theatre sister. On the second trip she and the team were based in Rabaul. Once again her skills expanded: she learned to fill in for nurses when they were ill.
 
Audrey was also active in the state branch of the Australian Physiotherapy Association. She was a member of the local Physiotherapy Board where she interviewed applicants for the training course and participated in their assessment for registration.
 
Her contribution to the profession continues to be commemorated (2025) in the annual Audrey Simpson Physiotherapy Prize. It is awarded to an outstanding student in the field at the University of South Australia (Adelaide University from 2026).
 

Personal life

Audrey’s personal life after the war was long, varied and adventurous. A veteran traveller before and during the war, she continued to travel extensively for professional development and for pleasure. She visited England and Europe again and also South Asia and Papua New Guinea. At home her commitments included the Travellers Aid Society and the Friends of the Adelaide Botanical Gardens.
 
Audrey maintained many interests and friendships throughout her postwar life. Marjorie Hill remained a good friend and companion. Audrey’s sense of adventure was obvious in her enthusiasm for fly-fishing, whether before dawn in Adelaide’s River Torrens or in Canada, the United States, New Zealand or above the Arctic Circle. Her travels after the war included various hair-raising trips, alone or with others. She often seemed to make do with little money and limited knowledge of the local scene or travel timetable. She always survived and with apparent gusto.
 
The Simpson family had long been closely connected with Unitarianism. Their weddings and funerals took place at the Adelaide Unitarian Church on Wakefield Street in the city and from 1971 on Osmond Terrace, Norwood. Audrey was superintendent of the Sunday school for some years and organised camps for the children on the Simpson’s Burnside property Undelcarra. She was the impetus behind the establishment of a hostel at the Shady Grove Unitarian Church near Littlehampton the Adelaide Hills.[38] She organised many Unitarian worship services over the years.
 
Audrey was always deeply committed to her family, particularly to her sister Janet and Janet’s two sons born during the war in the absence of their father, the late Eric Mayo. Her brothers Moxon and Bob ran the family company, A Simpson and Co, Derek was an accountant and Donald built a notable reputation as a neurosurgeon. All four brothers had married. Audrey’s family circle expanded in 1967 when she married Professor Andrew Abbie, an anatomist and anthropologist at the University of Adelaide whose late wife Dr Ruth Heighway had been one of her friends.
 
Audrey was a generous benefactor to the University of Adelaide through the Abbie-Simpson Neurological Fellowship, established in honour of the late Andrew Abbie (d. 1976) and her brother Donald Simpson.
 
Audrey was slowed by illness in her later years but nonetheless reached the age of 97. She died on 27 February 2014, a month after her birthday. She was cremated and her ashes were interred in Centennial Park Cemetery in the Adelaide suburb of Pasadena. She outlived four of her siblings; only Donald, her youngest brother who died in 2018, outlived her.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

[1] Captain Samuel Hübbe MID, https://bwm.org.au/soldiers/Samuel_Hubbe.php
[2] Alfred Moxon Simpson, Service Record, B884 569869, NAA
[3] Wilson, Physiotherapists in War, p.15ff.
[4] From Marjorie Hill’s letter written on Empire Star, 14 February 1942, for transcription see https://vwma.org.au/explore/people/595295. The list was items Marjorie had lost in the forced evacuation from Singapore.
[5] Information on the 2/13AGH and the voyage has been taken from the following sources: John Mayo, A masseuse goes to war’, nd, privately printed, University of Adelaide Arxhives; (A.C) Lex Arthurson, The Story of the 2/13 Australian General Hospital, 8thDivision AIF, Malaya, 1941–45, 2009,

https://digitize-vwma.s3.amazonaws.com/I/documents/3078/file/13th_AUST_GEN-HOSPITAL.pdf, accessed July 2025; Ian Shaw, On Radji Beach: the story of the Australian nurses after the fall of Singapore, Pan McMillan, Sydney, 2010; ‘Empire Star’, in Tony Matthews, Quiet Courage: forgotten heroes of World War Two, Big Sky Publishing, 2021, pp180-201.
[6] Arthurson, 2/13AGH, pp9-14, Shaw, On Radji Beach, pp53–58.
[7] John Augustine Collins, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Augustine_Collins
[8] Arthurson, 2/13AGH, p15; Shaw, On Radji Beach, p59.
[9] Shaw, On Radji Beach, p59; Arthurson, 2/13AGH, pp13-16.
[10] Shaw, On Radji Beach, p77.
[11] Arthurson, 2/13AGH, p19.
[12] Wilson, Physiotherapists in War, pp73-74.
[13] Marjorie Hill, Letter to ?, 27 April 1942 (private collection); Shaw, On Radji Beach, pp86–87.
[14] Wilson, Physiotherapists in War, p74.
[15] Mayo, A masseuse goes to war, pp6–7. Matron Irene Drummond of the 2/13AGH perished on Bangka Island a week later.
[16] Numbers vary in different accounts.
[17] Selwyn Capon to Marjorie Hill, 18.3.1942 (Hill family collection)
[18] Matthews, Quiet Courage, p199.
[19] 118 Australian General Hospital, https://birtwistlewiki.com.au/wiki/118th_Australian_General_Hospital. Th 118AGH had opened in August 1941. Its country location may have been judged more restful for the Empire Star personnel than the alternatives (110AGH and the Lucknow Convalescent Hospital) which were in inner Perth suburbs.
[20] Catherine Kevin, 'Mayo, Edith Janet (1915–1995)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mayo-edith-janet-27648/text35137, published online 2019, accessed online 14 August 2025.
[21] Robert Allen Simpson, Service Record, B883 SX2890, NAA.
[22] Derek Frederick Allen Simpson, Service Record, A6769, NAA.
[23] ‘Morning Tea for Returned Sisters’, Advertiser, 27 March 1942, p6. For the club, see Janet Scarfe, ‘Lady Muriel and Her Club for Nurses’, Journal of the Historical Society of South Australia, No 52, November 2025 (forthcoming)
 
[25] Wilson, Physiotherapists in War, p93; Rupert Goodman, Our War Nurses: the history of the Royal Australian Army Nursing Corps 1902–1988, Boolarong Publications, Brisbane, 1988, p178. At the time, The Ghan terminated at Alice Springs.
[26] Wilson, Physiotherapists in War, p93f; Goodman, Our War Nurses, pp177–79.
[27] Grace Trott, ‘109 Australian General Hospital’, in Lighter Shades of Grey and Scarlet, compiled by Stella Guthrie and Jill Clark, 1983, p33.
[28] M.G. Holland, Lighter Shades of Grey and Scarlet, p40.
[29] M.G. Holland, Lighter Shades of Grey and Scarlet, p49.
[30] Goodman, Our War Nurses, pp175-76; Paul Rosenzweig, ‘The 121 Australian General Hospital, AIF Katherine 1942–43’, Sabretache, the journal of the Military Historical Society of Australia, 1989, 30 (2), pp23–29.
[31] Much of the information about 2/4AGH is from Rupert Goodman, A Hospital at War: The 2/4 Australian General Hospital 1940-45, Boolarong Publications, 1983. Goodman served with 2/4 AGH. The chapter also draws extensively on ‘Audrey’s Story’.
[32] Janet Scarfe, Her Great Adventure: Dorothy ‘Puss’ Campbell WW2 army nursing sister, Janet Scarfe, 2024. Puss worked at 2/4AGH at Redbank in 1943–44, and at 112AMH Greenslopes in late 1945.
[33] ‘On the Lighter Side’, in Lighter Shades of Grey and Scarlet, p74.
[34] Wilson, Physiotherapists in War, p119.
[35] ‘On the Lighter Side’, pp74, 75.
[36] Our Kind of War: the History of the VAD/ AAMWS, Mary Critch (compiler), Artlock Books Trust, 1981, p192.
[37] Most of the information about Audrey’s postwar life has been taken ‘Audrey’s Story as told to Elizabeth Bleby 2005–2007’.
[38] D W Duffield, J C Duffield, W R Giles and D F Jones, Shady Grove: Tadmoor in the Wilderness. A history of Shady Grove Unitarian Church, 1989, p58.

Married name was Abbie