Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Olive Ada Kestel
SFX1489 RRC
1904–1997
 
Summary of service
* Olive Ada Kestel AANS was sister-in-charge of the first contingent of South Australian army nursing sisters to go to the Middle East with thousands of Australian and New Zealand troops in April 1940
* She served with 2/2 Australian General Hospital at El Kantara Egypt before being appointed matron of 2/11 Australian General Hospital in December 1941
* She remained matron of 2/11 Australian General Hospital, serving in Queensland and Papua New Guinea from 1942 to 1944
* She was decorated with the Royal Red Cross (1st Class) for her service in Papua New Guinea, an honour bestowed on only 20 members of the Australian Army Nursing Service in WW2
* Olive was matron of 114 Australian Hospital in Goulburn, NSW in 1944-45
* She was appointed Principal Matron, 4 Military Division (South Australia) in 1945 and held the position until she was demobilised in 1946 and placed on the Roll of Officers with the rank of lieutenant colonel.
 
 
Before the war
Olive Ada Kestel was born on 16 October 1904 in Fremantle, Western Australia. She was the second of five children (all girls, four surviving to adulthood) born to Frederick Isaac Kestel and his Lily Victoria (née Hickey), both of Port Adelaide.[1]  
 
Olive’s Kestel forebears arrived in South Australia in 1848 and became well known as builders and contractors in the Port Adelaide area. In the early 1900s Frederick and his wife, a brother and cousins moved to Fremantle to take advantage of building opportunities there. Frederick and his family returned to Adelaide around 1906, very likely to assist his wife’s recently widowed sister and her small children. Their other children were born in Port Adelaide.
 
Frederick had followed in his father’s footsteps as a builder but since childhood had wanted to own land and farm it.[2]He used building contracts and customers in country South Australia to pick up basic farming information. In 1911 he secured a Crown Lease on newly opened up land at Rudall on Eyre Peninsula, nearly 400 kms from Adelaide. He, his wife and three youngest children lived on it with the most minimal amenities. In December 1912 their five year old, Eileen, died there.
 
In 1913 Frederick relinquished that lease and acquired another block (Block 24). He gradually cleared it and eventually built a house. He cropped, raised sheep when the water supply permitted and took on construction contracts from locals and the district council. The Cleve Memorial Hospital and the Memorial Hall in Kimba were among his buildings in the district.[3]
 
The farm was isolated with only primitive facilities and Rudall had no school. The school age Kestel children, Elsie and Olive, remained behind in Adelaide. They lived with their widowed grandmother Ann Kestel and unmarried twin aunts Lily and Rose in the family home at Franklin (later Alberton). They attended the Port Adelaide School and visited the farm at Rudall during holidays. They spent 1918 at Woodville District High School until Olive reached the school leaving age of 14 late in the year. The school, which had around 150 girls among 320 pupils, had limited facilities and comfort. The girls’ subjects included English and an emphasis on the ‘domestic arts’ (cookery and laundry).[4] Elsie and Olive then lived on the farm at Rudall and assisted their mother with domestic duties. They participated in events in the district:  shortly before Christmas 1919, for example, both sang at a welcome home for a local soldier returning from WW1.[5]
 
01 Olive Kestel as a young nurse (see Photos)
When Olive reached the minimum age for nursing (21) she enrolled as a probationer at the Adelaide Hospital (RAH), the state’s largest institution for training nurses.[6] Nursing offered an avenue for young women from the country to pursue a career and earn an income. She completed the statewide examinations run by the Nurses Registration Board in 1928 and later the requirements for midwifery (1938). Her aunt Rose may have been the inspiration. Rose had at least some nursing training in Fremantle in 1905. She had also maintained a connection with an army nursing sister who served in WW1 while school age Olive was living with her.[7]
 
02 Gawler Ward, (Royal) Adelaide Hospital, 1930s (see Photos)
Olive was appointed to the RAH staff soon after her registration. From 1931 she was in charge of a large medical ward, Gawler Ward. A leading RAH honorary (doctor) praised her professionalism and devotion to duty: in his 25 years at the hospital, he wrote, he had never encountered a ‘ward sister possessing so many good and well-balanced attributes’ as she did.[8]
 
WAR
Middle East 1940-42
To the Middle East
War broke out on 4 September 1939.  Olive Kestel was among 200 or so South Australian trained sisters who quickly applied to join the Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS) to serve overseas with the 2nd AIF. Born in 1904 she was tvery close to the maximum age for joining the AANS (35). She gave her date of birth first as 1905 then amended it to 1906, just to be on the safe side. (No proof of age was required to enlist).
03 Olive Kestel's adjusted age in her Service Record (NAA) (see Photos)
 
In December 1939 Olive was selected as sister-in-charge of the 12 South Australian sisters to join AANS members from other states on the second convoy of AIF personnel to leave Australia.
 
She officially commenced duty on 21 January 1940.[9] It was a hectic time. Each sister had to have her indoor and outdoor uniforms made as well as collect numerous items for her kit, including a camp stretcher, bed roll and primus stove. The sisters spent several weeks in Woodside Army camp in the Adelaide Hills where they inoculated troops for travelling overseas and treated those with minor injuries and illnesses. They received instruction in marching, saluting and other military basics. They also assisted with inoculations and medical assessments of volunteers for the AIF at the camp dressing station on the Wayville Showgrounds.
04 Wayville Camp Hospital, February 1940 (L–R: Sisters Lesley Beddome, Constance Roberts and Olive Kestel) (See Photos)
 
The sisters were also busy attending various farewells. There were smallish occasions such as tea with Lady Muriel Barclay-Harvey (the state governor’s wife) and with supportive organisations such as the Commercial Travellers’ Association. The highlight was a grand official occasion with state dignitaries in a packed Adelaide Town Hall on 25 January.[10]
 
There were special occasions with friends and family. In Cleve, the largest town near Olive’s family home in Rudall, friends, members of patriotic organisations and family gathered to express their pride and wish her well. The evening of speeches, music and dancing was declared ‘one of the best social gatherings ever held in Cleve’.[11]
 
The South Australian sisters left by train for Melbourne on 3 April 1940. They staged in an army camp until on 15 April they embarked on Convoy US2 bound for the Middle East. On board were sisters from around Australia and thousands of Australian and New Zealand troops. Olive and most sisters were allocated to ship Y4, the code name for the P&O ship now troopship Strathaird. High ranking military officers were also aboard Strathaird, one of five requisitioned liners in the convoy.[12] The ships and naval escorts had a rapturous send off at Port Melbourne from a crowd estimated at over 80 000.[13]
 
The convoy spent several days at sea en route to Fremantle. Sisters participated in a radio quiz broadcast from the ship to Australian listeners.[14] Personnel were given shore leave for a day in Fremantle/Perth and for a few hours in Colombo for quick sightseeing and shopping.
 
AANS sister Dora Burchill described life aboard His Majesty’s Transport (HMT) Strathaird. It was still more luxury liner than troopship. Sisters had single or double berth cabins. The ship’s menus showed the fine food in the 1st Class lounge which they and (separately) the male officers dined on.[15] Military regulations and protocols about uniforms, mess (dining) and formal parades were enforced. There were daily boat drills using life jackets and gas masks, and a complete blackout at night so the ship was invisible to enemy craft. The sisters attended lectures by the medical officers (doctors) on relevant topics including the organisation of military hospitals, evacuating the wounded and diseases in Egypt and Palestine.
 
There was a lighter side of the voyage, summarised by Burchill as ‘plenty of entertainments, including concerts, officers’ dances, screening of full length films and a wide variety of talks and lectures.’[16]
 
The Middle East
HMT Strathaird travelled through the Suez Canal and arrived at Port Said, Egypt on 17 May 1940. After disembarking the sisters boarded a train to travel 200 kms northeast over the border into Palestine to the vast Australian army camp at Gaza Ridge.
 
The sisters had been posted to 2/2 Australian General Hospital (2/2AGH) but it was nowhere near ready. Instead they were allocated tents in an area adjacent to the already established 2/1AGH. Like Burchill, Kestel saw ‘rows of white canvas tents surrounded by desert.’ She also saw Arab men and veiled women in flowing robes, men leading camels and other scenes ‘right out of the Bible.’
 
The 2/2AGH sisters were accommodated in a compound fenced with barbed wire to keep out intruders, human and animal.  Nets hung over the camp stretchers in their three person tents for protection against mosquitoes. Their first meal introduced them to army rations – bully beef and hard biscuits.
 
The 2/2AGH sisters had no hospital but they were not idle. Some were attached for duty at the adjacent 2/1AGH, some were sent to train medical orderlies in nearby units, and some were posted to British military hospitals in Palestine and Egypt. Olive was in a group sent to a hospital in Palestine, probably 61 [British] General Hospital in Haifa, to ‘learn Military Hospital routine’ from the very formal English sisters in the Queen Alexandra Imperial Miliary Nursing Service.[17]
 
05 Olive Kestel in Cairo (see Photos)
Olive spent the hottest months, July and August, in Cairo at another British General Hospital.[18] In her time off duty she experienced the unfamiliar but exciting sights and sounds of the crowded city, its markets and mosques. She and her close cousin Harold Deakin (a private in the 2/6 Australian Field Ambulance) visited the Pyramids, Sphinx and other famous attractions on Cairo’s doorstep.
 
By September Kestel was back in Gaza Ridge still awaiting the opening of 2/2AGH. The Australian camp at Gaza Ridge site was sufficiently close to the Suez Canal to warrant precautions against air attacks from Italian planes. Mud was smeared on the tents to reduce their visibility from the air and slit trenches were dug large enough for stretchers. Personnel rehearsed air raid drills regularly.
 
Daily route marches were compulsory for the sisters. Dora Burchill included in her description a ‘volatile sergeant major bellowing orders’ at the sisters. A photograph of sisters on parade at the camp by war photographer Frank Hurley appeared in the Australian press with the caption ‘they showed that Australian girls can march as well as regular soldiers.’[19]
 
Hurley was on hand to record the formal visit to the unit of Matron in Chief Annie Sage on 20 November 1940. He photographed the sisters to accompany Sage’s Christmas message for their families in Australia: ‘The girls are well and happy …’.[20]
06 ‘A bunch of “Roses in No Man’s Land”’, 20 November 1940 (004114 Australian War Memorial, hereafter AWM) (see Photos)
 
Olive would have enjoyed the same social events that Burchill recalled: evenings at the Officers Club in Gaza (‘a large white house formerly owned by a wealthy Arab family’) and feature films and entertainments in the open air cinema at the camp.
07 AANS sisters Rosa Huppatz, Melna Brown and Olive Kestel, Gaza Ridge 1940
 
From the time they left Australia the sisters were travellers and sightseers. Writing to her family a fortnight after she arrived in Gaza, Olive expressed her incredulity at being ‘in the birthplace of Christianity’. She listed the biblical sites she had already visited and others she hoped to see:
I have been to Haifa, Gaza and Tel Aviv. A party of us went to Mt. Carmel. We visited a new convent and an ancient monastery of the Carmelite Fathers. We also went to Tiberias and Sea of Gallilee. It is 600 feet below sea level and the temperature was 120 degrees … The ruins of the Temple of Loaves and Fishes, the Chapel of Miracles, Caperaum and Nazareth were also visited. I hope to go Jerusalem and Bethlehem and Dead Sea when I go back to our own camp [Gaza Ridge]. I realise how lucky I am to have this opportunity of seeing the Holy Land.[21]
 
She joined several other sisters and officers taken for a traditional meal with a Muslim Arab family in Gaza City. An interpreter translated conversations and provided explanations while they ate with the men. The sisters then drank Turkish coffee with the women who had prepared the lavish spread. Olive also attended a concert performed by Polish officers and men. ‘They all seem such fine men, but so sad’.[22] The German army had invaded their country in September 1939, arguably the catalyst for the war.
 
Finally in mid December the 2/2AGH personnel received orders to move to the new hospital site. The sisters’ last day at Gaza Ridge was hectic, in Burchill’s words ‘packing, changing money to Egyptian currency, farewelling friends at the 1stA.G.H. and finally parading in front of Matron before boarding buses for the railway station.’ They were headed for El Kantara in Egypt, 140 kms south.
 
2/2AGH El Kantara
The 2/2AGH occupied a large sandy site adjacent to the Suez Canal. Tents and huts for 1200 patients and 250 personnel had been built, together with the medical, ablution and cooking facilities required to accommodate, treat and feed them all. Arriving they saw the ‘familiar sight of rows of white tents and unfinished buildings’ (Burchill). The first patients were admitted on 29 December 1940.
08 2/2AGH, El Kantara showing the AANS area fenced, July 1941 (030011/01 AWM)(see Photos)
 
Exactly a year had passed since Burchill, Olive and their 2/2AGH colleagues were accepted for overseas service.
 
The 2/2AGH official bed number (‘establishment’) was 1200 but in early 1941 casualties arriving from the fighting in Greece, Crete and Libya sent patient numbers soaring to around 2000. Olive and her colleagues were frantically busy at times. The churn of patients was determined largely by the unpredictable availability of hospital trains and hospital ships. One sister later recalled
When Greece and Crete fell to the Germans, our hospital expanded from one thousand to two thousand beds in 10 days, and we nursed two sisters and an orderly to a ward, working eleven hours a day without any days off for three and a half months till reinforcements arrived.[23]
 
Medical officers classified the patients. Those assessed as likely to recover quickly were admitted pending return to their units on recovery. Casualties judged to be medically unfit or requiring longer recovery time were treated then ‘boarded’ to return to Australia by hospital ship. Sometimes there were dozens of patients, walking and on stretchers, waiting for medical assessment or for transfer out. In April 1941 reinforcements arrived in the form of sisters from 2/4AGH Tobruk. They had been evacuated against their will shortly before the German army besieged the town.[24]
 
The hospital site was desolate, the desert was dry and the climate was hot. The khamseen (howling wind) blew for four or five days at a time, sending biting sand around up around and into the tents and huts. Keeping sand out of the wards, kitchens, service areas, quarters and food was a constant challenge that often ended in defeat. Years later Olive recalled that sandstorms blew tents over and cut into the skin of patients and nursing sisters alike.[25] By contrast her hut became ‘like Noah’s Ark’ after El Kantara experienced its heaviest rainfall in seven years.[26]
 
Many of the first patients arriving at 2/2AGH had medical problems rather than conditions needing surgery. They often suffered from infected desert sores on their heads and bodies or from sandfly fever. The relatively new anti-bacterial drug sulphanilamide proved of great benefit to many patients with infections. Battle casualties with fractures and gunshot or artillery wounds steadily became more numerous. The 2/2AGH medical officers and nursing staff developed a reputation for doing complex orthopaedic and facio-maxillary work, and for managing blood donations, storage and transfusions in hostile conditions. The time given by sisters to listening to the hair-raising experiences of their patients in Greece, Crete and Libya was an important part of their work, therapeutic for patients and steeling the determination and patriotism of sisters.
 
Olive was sister in charge of a large medical ward, her forté in civilian life. The senior medical officer there described her as a ‘tower of strength’:
She was not ruffled by lack of facilities, dust storms, or by working in improvised tented wards, but could always be depended upon to have her patients efficiently cared for and the ward well organised. She could always preserve discipline amongst the men patients in her wards without causing any friction or ill-feeling.[27]
 
The hospital was vulnerable to attack. El Kantara was adjacent to the Suez Canal and Allied shipping in it. Enemy Italian aircraft often flew overhead searching for targets. The 2/2AGH personnel wore respirators at times and took shelter in slit trenches or behind sandbags during air raid alerts. Tents were coated with mud as at Gaza Ridge and huts roofed with camouflaged iron. The level of defensive measures was raised in reaction to reports of attacks in the Canal and rumours that German General Rommel was advancing towards the shipping route.
 
09 Sisters Sitting Room, 2/2AGH, July 1941 (03001/03 AWM) (see Photos)
El Kantara provided far less scope for sightseeing than Olive and her colleagues had enjoyed at Gaza Ridge or Cairo. Opportunities for entertainment and relaxation were generally confined to the hospital precinct in their sitting room or at concerts and films. Some sisters fossicked for relics nearby, finding traces of the 1 Australian Light Horse brigade which had occupied the site in WW1, pottery shards and even old Roman coins.
 
Sightseeing further afield depended on leave for several days or more. The Australian Red Cross arranged suitable accommodation and organised tours led by reputable local guides. Jerusalem and the ‘lands of the Bible’ or ‘Holy Land’ were popular destinations; they brought familiar images from childhood Bible stories to life.
 
Olive was in a small group of sisters and a physiotherapist who travelled to Petra in (present day) Jordan to explore the famous archaeological site dating back to 300BCE. After a car trip via Jerusalem and Amman, they rode horses over a rocky road to reach the Petra ruins on horseback. They spent several days exploring, always accompanied by a guide and armed escort. Olive’s account to her parents read in part:
The narrow entrance to Petra is only about 15 feet wide, with huge rocks towering above, almost meeting in places, and at the end of it is the treasury, the best preserved of all the buildings and a marvellous piece of workmanship. It is remarkable to think that all the magnificent buildings were carved out of the rock. We rode on to the camp, and were taken to our apartments, which were grottoes. The food was splendid, even though all of it, even the water, had to be carried in by mules and donkeys.
Accompanied by our armed escorts wherever we went, we climbed miles of rough rocks with their help. Our rubber soled shoes were a great help — we climbed, I think, as well as any goat could, but we puffed and panted a great deal more.[28]
 
A Nurses Service Club was set up in Ismailia, a town 30 kms south of El Kantara on the bank of the Sweet Water Canal and well known to Australian troops in WW1. Run by the YMCA, the club provided accommodation for sisters in very comfortable rooms with the luxury of private bathrooms – blissful compared with conditions at 2/2AGH. The sisters could relax, picnic beside the canal, enjoy the tree-lined streets crowded with local Arabs and Allied personnel, visit the popular French Club, walk in the oasis-like gardens and explore the sights.  Dora Burchill described being there as a ‘real treat’.
10 Canal beside the El Kantara Ismailia Road 1941 (004221 AWM) (see Photos) 
 
Tragedy struck when two 2/2AGH AANS sisters were killed while returning to El Kantara from Ismailia. Matron Gwladys Thomas and Sister Lilian McPhail died from injuries in a car accident on the dark narrow road on 31 August 1941. Accidents were common because of the poor roads, darkness and haphazard driving by both locals and personnel. The sisters had been posted to 2/2AGH after their evacuation from Tobruk. They were buried in the British Military Cemetery at El Kantara. Olive may not have known them well but the event sent shock waves through the hospital.
 
Another car accident a few months later in 1941 had an immediate and direct impact on Olive’s army nursing career. The 2/11AGH matron Edith Butler was critically injured in a car accident near Jerusalem on 14 December. The 2/11AGH had been awaiting further orders at Gaza Ridge after months in Alexandria. Since most of its sisters came from South Australia it was not surprising that Olive, a senior South Australian sister, was named temporary matron, two days after the accident. Butler survived but did not return to her unit. Olive’s South Australian colleagues presented her with a desk set on her departure. She remained matron of 2/11AGH until 1944.
11 Olive Kestel with the presentation desk set on departure from 2/2AGH (note the fence surrounding the sisters’ compound and the small garden) (see Photos)
 
Australia 1942-44
Movement East with 2/11AGH
Many Australian units withdrew from North Africa in late 1941 and staged at Gaza Ridge pending further orders. Medical units followed.  At the same time Japanese military aggression grew in South Asia and even threatened Australia itself in early 1942. The Australian troops were initially destined for South Asia until Australian Prime Minister John Curtin secured the return of most of them to defend Australia.
 
Olive and her 2/11AGH unit left the Middle East on 31 January 1942. On 24 March, they disembarked in Adelaide – ‘home’. Between their departure and their final destination, the war situation had changed dramatically. Australian Prime Minister John Curtin had persuaded British Prime Minister Winston Churchill that the 2nd AIF at sea should return to Australia for its defence against the Japanese enemy.[29]
 
On the second leg of the voyage, from Bombay, Olive was kept busy organising rosters for her sisters to nurse numerous sick personnel on board. She herself was hospitalised with sinusitis. Her nurse, colleague and friend, Puss Campbell, found her matron a ‘very difficult’ patient.[30]
 
The heat, confinement and uncertainty caused tensions on board. As part of a crackdown on discipline on the ship, Olive prohibited any association between her sisters and officers on deck. The ban was short-lived but resented. An annoyed Puss Campbell who loved to socialise described her as ‘very narrow that way.’[31]
 
2/11AGH Warwick
Australian army authorities were scrambling to find suitable locations in Queensland and New South Wales for hospitals to take casualties from the intensifying fighting immediately to Australia’s north in Papua New Guinea.  The 2/11AGH personnel spent six weeks in Adelaide before their location was determined, at least in broad terms, to be southern Queensland. They left Adelaide on 11 May 1942. After a brief stint setting up a new hospital in Toowoomba (117AGH) they left their cold damp tents there and moved to Scots College in Warwick on the southern Darling Downs.[32]
12 Scots College, Warwick (State Library of Queensland) (see Photos) 
 
13 Olive Kestel, 2/11AGH Warwick 1942
For Olive, 2/11AGH was far smaller than 2/2AGH at El Kantara, 750 patients compared with 2000 at ‘crisis establishment’. She and her sisters faced numerous challenges. There were the usual peaks and troughs in patients numbers. The sisters’ accommodation was cramped. Clean hospital linen, even pyjamas and pillow cases for patients, was always in short supply. Some tented wards had no electricity:  the sisters boiled water on their primus stoves and nursed by lantern light.
 
14 AANS sisters Jessie Langham and Phyllis Mead at 2/11AGH Warwick (see Photos)
15 Patients with AANS sister, 2/11AGH Warwick (State Library of Queensland) (see Photos)
Most patients had been evacuated from Papua New Guinea, making the long journey by sea and hospital train. Some were battle casualties with serious gunshot wounds. Others required mundane ‘civilian’ surgery for hernias and tonsils. The majority were admitted to medical wards with tropical diseases. Malaria was the most common condition, scrub typhus the most dangerous and difficult to treat. Some patients were seriously ill and required intensive nursing but there were few deaths.
 
Olive and the sisters who had enjoyed sightseeing in the Middle East found that Warwick offered far fewer opportunities. Poor roads and slow trains isolated the town from Brisbane. The sisters spent their time off playing tennis on the school courts, golf at the local club and cards in their mess. Films and meals in town and picnics by the nearby Condamine River were also popular forms of relaxation. Warwick society hosted small parties for officers stationed in various units in the district including the sisters. They also attended patriotic fund-raising events organised by groups such as the Red Cross and Country Women’s Association.
 
From mid 1942, AANS sisters were permitted to marry without resigning. Three sisters at 2/11AGH promptly did so. Many, presumably including Olive, provided a guard of honour for their colleague Rita Sandland when she married in the Warwick Presbyterian Church.
16 AANS sisters outside Presbyterian Church Warwick (see Photos)
 
2/4AGH Redbank
In February 1943, 2/11AGH moved out of the premises at Scots College and another medical unit took over the site. The personnel were dispersed around southern Queensland to await orders for the next move. The medical officers and Other Ranks were in camp near Warwick. The sisters were attached temporarily to other hospitals.[33]
 
Olive was briefly a ‘spare’ matron without sisters to manage but in April 1943 she was appointed as matron of the new 2 Australian Womens Hospital (2AWH). The 2AWH had been set up hastily to meet the medical needs of the thousands of service women in Queensland and northern New South Wales. It was allocated a very basic site in a corner of the massive army camp at Redbank, 30 kms west of Brisbane. Fortuitously it was next door to 2/4AGH where several of her 2/11AGH sisters had been posted, including Puss Campbell. 
 
Olive was dismayed by her transfer. Dropping in from 2/4AGH Puss found her ‘most upset about the whole thing, its [sic] all so dreadful.’[34] The wards and accommodation were primitive. The huts were unlined so freezing in the unseasonably cold weather. The windows had no screens so let in clouds of insects and beetles. The showers and latrines had minimal privacy. There was no power in the wards so the sisters used their lanterns and primus stoves. There was one telephone in the entire hospital. Cases were ‘civilian’ in nature – whooping cough, colds, measles, gynaecological problems, scabies, psychosis and venereal disease. Some patients faked conditions to avoid uncongenial duties.[35]
 
Olive also faced discipline issues at 2AWH. Puss recounted that ‘poor Kes [was] having great trouble with her staff … one lass coming in very late and very drunk’. The nurse (not a sister) in question was fined a day’s pay (5/-) for being absent without leave for over five hours.[36] Olive let off steam to Puss – ‘told me all her troubles’ – on their regular outings off duty. She spent five months at 2AWH before resuming her position as matron of 2/11AGH when the unit’s sisters moved to Papua New Guinea in September 1943.
 
Life off duty was much richer and more satisfying than it had been at Warwick. Shops and hotel restaurants in central Brisbane were under an hour away by train from the Redbank railway station near the hospital. Olive undoubtedly made good use of the Union Jack Club for Nurses which opened in May 1943 in the inner Brisbane suburb of New Farm. The club provided meals, accommodation and relaxation and was a convenient base for other activities. She and Puss also enjoyed films and entertainments at the camp together, including the ABC Light Orchestra’s performance of well known classics and operetta.
 
Papua New Guinea 1943–44
2/11AGH Dobodura near Buna
By early 1943 the Japanese enemy had been driven back along the Kokoda Track in Papua New Guinea and defeated in the Buna-Gona-Sanananda campaign. Buna and the surrounding area quickly became a massive military base for Australian and American army, navy and air force personnel. Australian military medical authorities deemed it safe to establish large general hospitals in and near Buna on the east coast to treat casualties from the Huon Peninsula campaign further north.
 
In July the men of 2/11AGH (officers and Other Ranks) arrived in Dobodura, 15 kms inland from Buna, to set up a new 600 bed hospital in the midst of large areas of kurnai grass. By September construction was well advanced, the need for nursing care was acute and the area was considered safe enough for the AANS sisters. They were needed urgently. Olive flew from Townsville to Port Moresby and then on to Dobodura – the flight a new experience. Her 2/11AGH sisters travelled by ship to Port Moresby and then by plane over the spectacular Owen Stanley Range to their new site. They were the first sisters to be so far north.
 
17 Sisters’ quarters at 2/11AGH Dobodura 1943 (see Photos)
18 Sisters’ mess at 2/11AGH Dobodura 1943 (see Photos)
The situation was completely novel to them.[37] Sisters who had nursed and lived in tents in desert conditions were now nursing and living in tropical condition. The native-built huts were thatched with the ubiquitous kurnai grass and the jungle began nearby. The sisters abandoned their traditional starched uniforms for tropical gear: long pants with puttees, and shirts with long sleeves which had to be rolled down at sunset because of the mosquitoes. The sisters’ ablution facilities and latrines were primitive and privacy was non-existent. Food for all personnel and patients was often bully beef and other tinned rations because supplies of meat, fruit and vegetables were limited as were refrigerators to store them. The sisters found the food in American officers messes far superior.
 
19 Olive Kestel in 'baggy breeches', 2/11AGH Dobodura 1943 (see Photos) 
The site was large and the huts separated as a precaution in air attacks. Olive and other sisters rode between wards and other huts on bicycles abandoned by the fleeing Japanese.
 
20 Surgical ward, 2/11AGH Dobodura 1943 (see Photos)
The casualties that Olive and her 70 sisters nursed came from the fighting on the Huon Peninsula to the north of Buna. Some were severely wounded with gunshot wounds but the majority had tropical diseases. As at Warwick and Redbank, malaria was by far the most prevalent condition and scrub typhus the most unpredictable and difficult to nurse. All patients and personnel had to take Atebrin, the new highly effective malaria treatment and preventative which was unpopular because it turned faces orange/yellow. The sisters encountered two other ground breaking treatments. Techniques had advanced significantly in blood storage and transfusions in tropical areas. Penicillin, already hailed as a miracle drug, was available in very limited quantities.
21 Blood bank at Buna near Dobodura (P00184.040  AWM) (see Photos)
 
Many of the medical officers, sisters and Other Ranks also became sick with malaria, dengue fever, dysentery or scrub typhus. Dermatitis was common (it seriously affected the surgical teams) and almost certainly under-reported. Enduring the heat and humidity was exhausting. Olive’s service record showed she was hospitalised for 18 days at 2/11AGH in February 1944 with an unexplained fever. Undoubtedly she was as exhausted as her sisters. 
 
22 ANGAU headquarters, Dobodura 1945 (809407 AWM) (see Photos)
There were opportunities, albeit limited, for relaxation and sightseeing. The hospital had a large outdoor cinema and stage and American blockbuster films were screened. Officers at the headquarters in Dobodura of 9 Division and the Australia New Guinea Administrative Unit (ANGAU) held parties to which the sisters were invited. Famous entertainers visited the hospital and performed: Gary Cooper and his troupe (who were almost washed out in a downpour) and Australian celebrities Gladys Moncrieff and Strella Wilson with their concert parties.
23 Glady Moncrieff’s visit to 2/11AGH, Dobodura 1943 (L–R: Sister Beryl Dwane, Flo Paton [pianist], Sister Leila Ganim, Gladys Moncrieff, Olive Kestel) (see Photos)
 
24 2/11AGH AANS sisters on a jeep, Dobodura c1943 (see Photos)
25 Inaugural race meeting, Soputa 10 October 1943 (057673 AWM) (see Photos)
When a jeep was available the sisters went on picnics, swam in a pool in the river at nearby Hanagela, saw native villages, visited Australian and American officers messes and sat by the beach at Buna. Horse races at Soputa (10kms from Dobodura) were very popular. The fleeing Japanese had abandoned horses which Australian troops found half-starving and then conditioned for racing. Puss Campbell and others from the AANS went to the races regularly, sometimes escorting patients to the events and laying bets with varying degrees of success. There were also more sombre occasions such as visiting the graves of colleagues’ families and acquaintances in the Soputa cemetery and the sites of the defeat of the Japanese at Gona.
 
Patient numbers peaked when the sisters first arrived and then again in December 1943. As another forward move north appeared imminent, the commanding officer and Olive the matron made plans for a smaller 2/11AGH with reduced personnel numbers. She accepted applications from her sisters for transfer: Puss Campbell, fatigued and battling dermatitis, applied to return to Australia to Olive’s surprise, and did so in May 1944.
 
26 Olive Kestel and Lieutenant Colonel K B Noad (head of 2/11AGH medical division), Madang 1944 (see Photos)
Olive herself went further north with the remaining personnel of 2/11AGH only briefly. Whether she applied for a transfer or was transferred is not clear. After 2/11AGH left, she remained at Dobodura for several months at the nearby 2/8AGH, a unit that specialised in dermatology cases. In August she was officially transferred back to Australia, as matron of 114AGH located in Goulburn, New South Wales. She left Papua New Guinea on 3 September 1944. She had been at Dobodura an entire year.
 
Olive was awarded the Royal Red Cross (1st Class) decoration for her role as matron of 2/11AGH at Dobodura. The official citation read in part:
MATRON Kestel has at all times carried out her duties with energy, tact and control. 
In consequence of her untiring devotion to duty, the work of the Nursing Staff of the hospital was beyond praise.[38]
This meritorious decoration was given to only 20 members of the Australian Army Nursing Service in WW2.[39]
 
Australia
114AGH Goulburn
Olive undoubtedly had several weeks leave at home in South Australia on her return from Dobodura before taking up her new posting. She also participated in a training course for senior officers from the army women’s services at the Land Headquarters School of Administration in Melbourne.
 
27 Main building Kenmore/114AGH, Goulburn 1948 (133711 AWM) (see Photos)
Olive’s new hospital, 114AGH, had opened in the NSW regional centre of Goulburn in 1942 in the buildings and extensive surrounds of the Kenmore Asylum. The main building dated back to 1895 and the grounds included gardens, an oval, swimming pool and piggery.[40] As many as 700 existing patients were relocated to other institutions for the duration of the war.
 
The hospital was well established when Olive arrived. The army had built 40 huts across the large site. There were wards, accommodation and messes for personnel, Red Cross hut, occupational therapy hut, pathology laboratory, operating theatre and prophylactic centre for prevention and treatment of venereal disease. Personnel included medical officers, nursing sisters and nursing aides, drivers, cooks and members of the Australian Women’s Army Service who undertook mainly clerical roles.
 
Intractable problems on the hospital site created inconveniences and discomfort for all personnel and patients. Drainage issues, water shortages and persistent flies made nursing, cooking, cleaning and most other work difficult. Wards were so scattered and distant from the kitchen that sisters had little chance of serving patients hot meals. At least by Olive’s time wards were heated with coke stoves as the personnel and patients who had served in Papua New Guinea felt the cold Goulburn winters acutely. Fire was a danger in summer. Soon after Olive arrived, a fire near the Wollondilly River bordering the hospital threatened a ward, the patients and staff.
 
Not all patients were ‘psychiatric soldier cases’ as they were sometimes described. Olive’s sisters worked in a range of wards: surgical, medical and dermatological. Italian internees and Japanese prisoners of war occupied some beds until April 1945. As patient numbers dropped from a high of around 480 in early 1944, however, an increasing proportion had psychiatric issues.
 
During Olive’s time as matron two issues at 114AGH drew negative public attention. One was patients’ access to alcohol both within the hospital itself and in Goulburn hotels. Patients waiting near the hospital’s boundary caught bottles of beer and wine thrown over the perimeter fences then buried them for later retrieval. Convalescent patients on day leave in the city were served alcohol by visiting relatives and unscrupulous hoteliers. Patients discarded their distinctive 114AGH ‘hospital blue’ uniform, donned borrowed or secreted khaki uniforms and drank freely. The issue was regularly reported in the local and Sydney press.[41] Without a doubt excessive alcohol in patients caused discipline problems on the wards for Olive and her staff.
 
28 Suicides at 114AGH, Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 8 September 1944, p7 (see Photos)
The more serious issue drawing public attention was the number of patients at the hospital who took their own lives. When Olive arrived the hospital had just become the subject of a damning report to the New South Wales RSL State Congress. Eight patients at the hospital had committed suicide in the previous months. Inadequate staffing, especially too few male nurses, and inexperience in dealing with mental illness were identified as the causes. Both the Goulburn and Sydney newspapers carried the report.[42]
 
At least one former patient rejected wholesale criticism of 114AGH. Compared with other facilities for soldiers with psychiatric problems, to him it was ‘a home’. He pointed to the therapeutic benefits of working in the grounds, and to the amenities available to patients: library, huts for recreation, handcrafts and hobbies, regular film showings and radios in all the wards. There were cricket matches and excursions in the district and further afield.[43] In fact convalescent patients sometimes attended proceedings at Parliament House in Canberra. Some were in the public gallery, ‘immovable, faces stern and set’, to hear the speeches on the death of Prime Minister John Curtin.[44]
 
Olive left 114AGH in July 1945. She had been appointed Principal Matron, South Australian Line of Command (ie 4 Military District). She was promoted from the rank of major held by army hospital matrons to lieutenant colonel, the rank held by the principal matrons of a state line of command.
 
29 Alan D Baker, 'Kenmore', April 1945 (see Photos)
Olive’s collection of wartime memorabilia included a pencil sketch, ‘Kenmore’ signed Alan D Baker ARAS April 1945. An original and almost certainly a farewell gift when she left 114AGH, the sketcher was Alan Douglas (also Douglas Alan) Baker, a patient in the hospital. Before enlisting and service in Papua New Guinea Baker had been a commercial artist and art teacher, and affiliated with the Royal Art Society of NSW.[45] While in Papua New Guinea he conducted art classes for troops and assisted renowned artist (Captain) William Dargie with his preliminary sketches for portraits. Baker had been hospitalised during the war for various conditions including ‘anxiety state’ and was discharged as medically unfit in August 1945. After the war he built a reputation as an artist of considerable note, particularly for his floral and still life paintings.[46]
 
It is not known whether Olive knew of Baker’s reputation or followed his work after the war.
 
Adelaide
Principal matron and war’s end
Olive Kestel succeeded Edith Butler in a matron’s role twice, first at 2/11AGH in 1941 and then as principal matron in South Australia in 1945. Butler had left the role in May to take up a position with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration in Germany following the cessation of the war in Europe.
 
Much of the work of principal matrons was administrative. Olive was expected to maintain accurate lists of South Australian AANS sisters, enlistments, positions, transfers, leave entitlements, marriages and so forth. The lists were forwarded to the Matron in Chief for co-ordination with lists from other military districts.
 
Within weeks of Olive taking up the position, the administrative burden increased when the war in the Pacific ended, officially on 15 August. AANS sisters stationed overseas in the South West Pacific Area and within Australia had to be brought back to their home state as soon as possible, then attached to a local military hospital while they awaited their final army medical check and demobilisation. Keeping track of each individual’s situation required considerable administrative skill. Sisters also had to be selected for hospital units bringing back Australian prisoners of war as well for the Australian contingent of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force in Japan in 1946.
 
Olive followed her predecessor’s practice of regularly visiting the military hospitals in Adelaide at Keswick, Daw Park and Northfield. The hospitals were busy after the war ended. Freed prisoners of war returning home to South Australia needed hospital care, as did some sick or injured personnel. All personnel required a mandatory health check and assessment prior to demobilisation, a process that lasted well into 1946. Managing the deployment and the demobilisation of the returning AANS sisters without detriment to patients in the existing hospitals was a major logistical challenge.
 
At the same time all major miliary hospitals were being progressively taken over by the Commonwealth Repatriation Department. Olive kept her matrons briefed on the latest information from the Matron in Chief’s office, providing them with details about the availability of positions and working conditions under the new regime.
 
Meeting South Australian sisters who had been prisoners of war and hearing of those who perished were bittersweet moments for her both in her official capacity and personally as she had worked with many of them before the war. She welcomed to Adelaide the sole survivor of the Banka Island massacre and ex prisoner of war, Kapunda-born Vivian Bullwinkel and attended the welcome home gatherings for other South Australian survivors.[47]
 
Olive participated in numerous engagements in the months after the war in her official capacity. She addressed the Returned Sisters Sub-branch of the RSL, the South Australian Army Nurses Fund and attended the annual dinner celebrating the formation of the AANS in July 1942. She sat on a committee planning a memorial to the state’s sisters who had died in the war. She accompanied dignitaries on their visits, for example escorting Lady Louis (Edwina) Mountbatten around the military hospitals at Daw Park and Northfield when Lady and Lord Mountbatten, Supreme Commander South Asia, were on a tour of Australia in April 1946. 
 
One of her more unusual engagements was to receive debutantes at a church ball in Port Pirie. She urged the 30 young women who were presented to her to make up for the entertainments and social life they had missed out in during the war years.[48]
 
Olive relinquished her position as Principal Matron 4 Military District in August 1946, and resigned from the AANS the following month. She was placed on the Reserve of Officers (Retired) with the rank of lieutenant colonel. e
 
Post war
Almost immediately after she was demobilised Olive embarked on her civilian career: the newly created position of Staff Matron of the Hospitals Department. She had applied unsuccessfully for the position of matron at the RAH but the department created the new position specifically for her.[49]
 
The role gave her significant powers in relation to the registered training programs for nurses in government and government-subsidised hospitals. She inspected the training conditions, including accommodation, in city and country hospitals and interviewed all probationers and would-be probationers. She advised the hospitals on staffing problems – there were many because of the acute shortage of nurses immediately after the war.
 
Olive held the position until 1955, by which time she had passed the compulsory retiring age for women of 60.
 
Although she chose a civilian career after the war, Olive did continue military nursing in a formal part-time role as principal matron. Like some of her AANS colleagues she joined the Citizen Military Force (CMF) (later the Australian Army Reserve). By 1951, the AANS had been transformed into the Royal Australian Army Nursing Corps (RAANC) which was part of the regular army. In South Australia as every other state a RAANC CMF corps was formed to provide a reservoir of trained personnel to support the RAANC in the case of a national emergency. Nine hundred women across Australia were recruited for the new RAANC CMF. The usual commitment was one night a week and a fortnight in camp a year. Olive retired from the role when she turned 60.
 
Olive was active in the Returned Sisters Sub-branch of the RSL in South Australia, attending their regular meetings and the annual dinner in July to mark the anniversary of the formation of the AANS in 1902.
 
On her retirement Olive lived with her sister Gladys (‘Tups’) in Linden Park until after Tups’ death. She subsequently lived in St David’s Home at College Park in inner suburban Adelaide until her death on 18 October 1997, at the age of 93.[50] She was buried in the Cheltenham Lawn Cemetery, the same cemetery where Kestel forebears and contemporaries lie.
 
30 They left Australia together in 1940: Rosa Zelma Huppatz and Olive Kestel with Adelaide, Anzac Day 1968  (see Photos)
31 Olive Kestel in formal dress with medals, Adelaide 1969 (see Photos)
32 Olive Kestel’s headstone, Cheltenham Lawn Cemetery, South Australia https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/158297619/ (see Photos)

Acknowledgements
Special thanks to the family of Olive Kestel, particularly Helen Donnell and Fran Dunn, for access to Olive’s memorabilia in their possession. Thanks also to the Goulburn/Mulwarre Library for access to Brendan O'Keefe's history of Kenmore
 
Select Bibliography
 
Bassett, Jan, Guns and Brooches: Australian Army Nursing from the Boer War to the Gulf War, Melbourne, Oxford University Press Australia, 1992
 
Burchill, Dora, The Paths I’ve Trod, Spectrum Publications, Melbourne, 1981
 
Cleary, Joyce Ellen, Lieutenant Australian Army Nursing Service, interviewed by Angie Michaelis for the Keith Murdoch Sound Archives of Australia in the War of 1939-45, 1989, S00566, Australian War Memorial
 
Goodman, Rupert, Our War Nurses: the history of the Royal Australian Army Nursing Corps 1902–1988, Boolarong Press, Brisbane, 1988
 
Kestel, Olive Ada, Papers, in the Kestel Family Collection (private hands)
 
O’Keefe, Brendan, History of Kenmore Psychiatric Hospital, Goulburn, 1993
 
Scarfe, Janet, Her Great Adventure: Dorothy ‘Puss’ Campbell WW2 army nursing sister, Janet Scarfe, 2024
 
Williams, Lesley, No Man’s Land: A history of the 2nd Australian Women’s Hospital, Brisbane, L Williams, 1997
 
 
Janet Scarfe
Professional Historian
2025
 
 

[1] Most information about Olive Kestel’s family and life before WW2 is from the Kestel Family Collection held by her family. All images used are the Kestel Family Collection unless acknowledged otherwise.
[2] Elsie Dunn (née Kestel), History of Pendeen Rudall, nd handwritten (Kestel Family Collection)
[3] ‘A Short History of the Origin of the Cleve Hospital’, Eyre’s Peninsula Tribune, 22 December 1922, p4; ‘Kimba Memorial Institute’, Kimba Dispatch, 12 July 1929, p2
[4] Woodville High School, Admissions Register, 1918, Genealogical Society of South Australia; H. A Torr and J M Ryan, Woodville High School 1915–1990: a commemorative portrait, n d (1995), p1ff, p15ff
[5] ‘Rudall’, Eyre’s Peninsula Tribune, 12 December 1919, p1. Elsie began a small informal school for local children that was subsequently recognised by South Australia’s Education Department.
[6] The hospital became the Royal Adelaide Hospital in 1939.
[7] Rose Kestel was listed as a probationer nurse at Fremantle Public Hospital in October 1905. No other evidence of her nursing qualifications has come to light. She listed her occupation as ‘nurse’ on the Commonwealth Electoral Rolls from 1939 to 1943. Western Australia, Blue Book, 1905, p1103 (on ancestry.com.au); Australia, Electoral Rolls, 1903–80, Port Adelaide, County of Hindmarsh, South Australia, 1939, 1942, 1943 (on ancestry.com.au). Olive Kestel’s papers included a postcard written in November 1917 to Rose Kestel from E A [Eliza Ann] Watts, AANS sister in England in WW1 and previously a South African War sister. They likely knew each other in Fremantle/Perth. 
[8] William Ray, Senior Honorary Physician Royal Adelaide Hospital, 20 December 1939 (Kestel Family Collection)
[9] Dates and locations of Olive Kestel’s service have been taken from her service record, Kestel, Olive Ada, B883 SX1489, NAA
[10] For the occasion and more detail about the context for enlistment, see Janet Scarfe, Her Great Adventure: Dorothy ‘Puss’ Campbell WW2 army nursing sister, Janet Scarfe, 2024, pp3–5 (hereafter Scarfe, Her Great Adventure)
[11] ‘Cleve and District News’, Eyre’s Peninsula Tribune, 28 March 1940, p3
[12] Sister Dora Burchill was also on Y4, which she wrongly identified as the Stratheden. See Dora Burchill, The Paths I’ve Trod, Spectrum Publications, Melbourne, 1981, (p125). Information about the voyage has been taken from Burchill’s account.
[13] ‘Scenes at Port Melbourne’, Advertiser (Adelaide), 18 May 1940, p22
[14] ‘Second Contingent for A.I.F. Sails’, Mail (Adelaide), 18 May 1940, p1
[15] See for example P&O Menu, H.M.T Strathaird, 25 April 1940, RC11584.562, Australian War Memorial (AWM)
[16] Burchill, The Paths I’ve Trod, p128
[17] ‘Letter From Palestine’, Eyre’s Peninsula Tribune, 27 June 1940, p2
[18] Kestel’s Service Record is patchy for 1940. It wrongly identified 10 British General Hospital as being in Cairo when she was attached; she was more likely at 63 British General Hospital.
[19] ‘A.I.F. Nurses On Parade Outside Headquarters in Palestine’, News (Adelaide), 27 December 1940, p1
[20] See also Gaza Ridge – Outside Sisters’ Mess, 004113 AWM; Gaza Ridge – Matron Sage Leads The Parade, 004109 AWM. The 004109 caption read in part ‘Even The A.I.F. Is Impressed When “The Nurses Turn Out”’.
[21] ‘Letter from Palestine’
[22] Marian March, ‘They Spend Their Days Off In Mosques and Palaces’, Advertiser, 18 December 1940, p6
[23] Marjorie Hammond (née Smith), quoted in Jan Bassett, Guns and Brooches: Australian Army Nursing from the Boer War to the Gulf War, Melbourne, Oxford University Press Australia, 1992, p128
[24] Information about 2/2AGH at El Kantara has been taken from Bassett, Guns and Brooches, pp116–20, 126, 130–31, and Rupert Goodman, Our War Nurses: the history of the Royal Australian Army Nursing Corps 1902–1988, Boolarong Press, Brisbane, 1988, p138
[25] Marian March, ‘Nursed For 7/6 Week’ (Advertiser clipping, 1964, Kestel Family Collection)
[26] ‘S.A. Nurses Have Armed Arab Escort’, Advertiser, 3 June 1941, p6
[27] F Ray Hone, ‘To Whom It May Concern’, 6 March 1946 (Kestel Family Collection)
[28] ‘S.A. Nurses Have Armed Arab Escort’, Advertiser, 3 June 1941, p6
[29] The voyage from the Middle East to Australia is described in detail in Scarfe, Her Great Adventure, pp121–34
[30] Dorothy Janet Campbell, Diaries, 21 February 1942 (in author’s possession) (hereafter Campbell, Diaries)
[31] Campbell, Diaries, 19 February 1942
[32] For a detailed account of 2/11AGH at Warwick, at the hospital and away from the wards, see Scarfe, Her Great Adventure, pp135–60
[33] For a detailed account of 2/4AGH and 2AWH Redbank in 1943, at the hospital and away from the wards, see Scarfe, Her Great Adventure, pp160–84
[34] Campbell, Diaries, 6 April 1943
[35] Lesley M Williams, No Man’s Land: A history of the 2nd Australian Women’s Hospital, Brisbane, L Williams, 1997, pp118–23
[36] Campbell, Diaries, 22 April 1943
[37] See Scarfe, Her Great Adventure, pp185–218; Joyce Ellen Cleary, Lieutenant Australian Army Nursing Service, interviewed by Angie Michaelis for the Keith Murdoch Sound Archives of Australia in the War of 1939-45, 1989, S00566, Australian War Memorial, p24ff (hereafter Cleary, Interview)
[38] Member of the Royal Red Cross, Major Olive Ada Kestel SFX1489, Citation, nd (Kestel Family Collection)
[39] See the list at ‘Faith, Hope and Charity: Australian Women and Imperial Honours, 1901-1989, https://www.womenaustralia.info/exhib/honours/rrc.html, accessed 13 June 2025
[40]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenmore_Asylum#:~:text=Construction%20began%20in%201894%20and,site%20for%20a%20military%20hospital, accessed 10 June 2025. See also Brendan O’Keefe, History of Kenmore Psychiatric Hospital, Goulburn, 1993, pp30–39 (with thanks to the staff of the Goulburn/Mulwarre Library).
[41] For example, ‘Liquor Menaces Army Mental Patients’, Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 11 February 1945, p114
[42] ‘114th A.G.H. Criticised By Returned Men’, Goulburn Evening Post, 8 September 1944, p1; ‘Suicides Alleged in Military Nerve Hospital’, Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 8 September 1944, p7
[43] ‘Soldier in hospital’, Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 3 April 1945, p8
[44] Canberra Times, 6 July 1945, p2
[45] Douglas Alan Baker, Service Record, B883 NX80108, NAA; New Guinea … Drawing Class https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C35218;
[46] https://www.aasd.com.au/artist/239-alan-douglas-baker/ accessed 25 June 2025; see also Alan D Baker, https://www.garybaker.com.au/alan-d-baker/ accessed 25 June 2025
[47] ‘Survived Banka Massacre’, Advertiser, 7 November 1945, p8; ‘Ex-Prisoner Nurses Welcomed at Club’, News, 28 November 1945, p7; ‘Warm Welcome to P.O.W. Nurses’, Advertiser, 29 October 1945, p9
[48] Recorder (Port Pirie), 3 July 1946, p1
[49] Nurse: Sister Oliver Kestrel [sic], https://healthmuseumsa.org.au/collections/object/832481/, accessed 25 June 2025
[50] Olive Ada Kestel, Eulogy, nd (October 1997)

OLIVE ADA KESTEL (1906-1997)

OLIVE ADA KESTEL was born in Perth to Frederic and Lilly (nee Hicky) Kestel on the 16th of October 1904. In 1913 she and her family moved from Western Australia and settled in South Australia, in the small town of Rudall on the Eyre Peninsula. She trained as a nurse in Adelaide, and when World War 2 broke out, she enlisted in Adelaide on the 16th of December 1939, as one of the first three nurses (along with nine others) to be chosen from South Australia to travel overseas.

As the senior nursing sister, she was appointed with the rank of major, although at that time the nursing service was separate from the army, and they used appointment titles, in her case 'matron.'. Olive was in charge of this small contingent, and they initially served in an Australian hospital in Palestine and then an English hospital in Cairo in 1941. Later she served for 10 months in Kantara in the Ainai, with the 2nd/12th Australian General Hospital (AGH).

In 1942 she was transferred to be in charge of the 2nd/11th AGH in Palestine and later in that year returned to Australia with that unit. Back in Australia, she served in Queensland for eight months, following six months in command of the 2nd Australian Women’s Hospital in Brisbane.

In August 1943 she was in charge again of the 2nd/11th AGH, which went to New Guinea. These nurses were the first Australian women to serve in New Guinea, initially in the Owen Stanley Ranges. She and her team also served at Lae, Buna, and Madang.

After returning to Australia near the end of the war, Olive served in charge of the 114th Australian General Hospital at 'Kenmore' in Goulburn, NSW, before being posted for discharge on the 18th of September, 1946, as Lieutenant Colonel, 2nd/11th Australian General Hospital.

In 1945 Olive was awarded the Royal Red Cross (RRC), 1st Class; London Gazette, 8th of August 1945 refers. Citation is below.

After the war, Olive had a distinguished career being the Matron Inspector General of South Australian Hospitals for some years and then supervised the recruitment and training of young nurses to be employed in these hospitals.

Lieutenant Colonel Oliver Ada Kestral, RRC, died peacefully on 18 October 1997 and is buried in the Cheltenham Cemetery, Woodville.

Source:  Material provided by SQNLDR (ret) Tony Ford and  Mr Stewart and Mrs Helen Donnell Nov 2023

CITATION for the AWARD of the ROYAL RED CROSS, 1st CLASS to Lieutenant Colonel OLIVE ADA KESTAL. RRC.

 “Major Kestel arrived in New Guinea in September 1943 with 24 Australian Army Nursing Service personnel. During the ensuing period, the hospital was working to its capacity, and there were frequent enemy air raids in the near vicinity. She has at all times carried out her duties as matron with energy, tact and control. In consequence of Matron Kestel untiring devotion to duty, the work of nursing staff has beyond praise”.