Nurses Memorial - Pt.Walter
Point Walter is a recreational reserve on the edge of the South bank of the Swan River in the City of Melville between Perth and Fremantle. Located on the edge of a small lake behind the tennis courts, the Memorial is in memory of the Nurses who left Singapore on Feb.12th.1942 aboard the 'Vyner Brooke' and comprises a small granite column bearing a bronze plaque surrounded by a grove of twentyone trees, at the foot of each tree is a brass tablet upon which are engraved names of Nurses on that voyage. The plaque on the granite column, reads, below the badge of the Royal Australian Army Nursing Service:
Our Nursing Heritage
the Vyner Brooke tragedy
On 12th.February,1942 sixtyfive Australian Army Nursing Sisters were ordered to leave Singapore in the wake of the advancing Japanese Army. They boarded the ship the 'Vyner Brooke' along with civilians. Two days later the ship was discovered by Japanese aircraft and bombed. Twelve Nurses drowned after the attack. Twentytwo Nurses,many of them wounded,landed on Banka Island. The group was found by Japanese soldiers and forced to walk into the sea and were shot. One Nurse named Vivian Bullwinkel although shot,feigned death, and later made her way to shore. She and the remaining thirty one Nurses became prisoners of war for three and a half years. A further eight Nurses died during this period of captivity. Twenty four Nurses returned Home.
This Memorial was officially unveiled by 2 May,1999 by Mrs.Vivian Statham (nee Bullwinkel) AO,MBE, ARRC and another POW survivor Mrs.Wilma Young (nee Oram) AM to celebrate the 100th. year of Womens Suffrage in Western Australia.