About this production

A lot of people want to know where I got the idea to create a play about nurses serving in World War I and the answer is that the venue – for want of a less mystical phrase – spoke to me.

Headland Park in Mosman was the site of the third largest wartime hospital in Australia during WWI. I have lived just up the road all my life and I passed the wire fences of the army base never knowing what was inside. Now a harbour foreshore park has been established, opening up the military defences and facilities to the public. My daughter’s ballet school is actually situated in one of the buildings of the hospital, with sweeping views across the Heads. It must have been an amazing place to rest, recuperate and work.

I wasn’t aware of its history until one day, waiting for my daughter to finish her class, I entered a little museum called The Hospital on the Hill at one end of the buildings. The story it told was sad, affecting and humbling, but one thing stood out to me. We know of the soldiers, their suffering and bravery – it is etched in our national psyche – but I had never heard about the women, their contributions – pivotal – to the story.

Within Headland Park are battlements and tunnels from 1871, built to protect our harbour from attack. About 50 meters into the side of one hill is a room that was used to store ammunition. This was to be our performance space. And having found the venue, I needed something to perform in it.

And the nurses kept coming back to me.

One night I was googling (as you do) and saw a photo of an Australian Casualty Clearing Station that was operating in the basement of a chateaux in France. It looked just like the ammunition room. I think that sealed my decision, I began my research. Florence Nightingale, Edith Cavell, Lucy Osburn, then onto the Australians – Matron Grace Wilson, Matron Conyers – awe inspiring, all, and I wanted to know more. So onwards to the Australian War Memorial and the chance to read the nurses’ first-hand narratives and descriptions, then to the small museums at both RPA and RNSH. Books by Elsie Tranter, Peter Rees, Jan Bassett, Marianne Barker and Vera Brittain (UK) made their experience all the more vivid.

I don’t know what is worse, the occasional graphic description of what was endured or the stoic refusal to ever mention what they had seen. The imagination, perhaps in this instance, can never fully comprehend what their life must have been like. But the play does not wholly centre on the horror. It is one nurse’s journey but it has been created from many descriptions, encompassing both the tragic and the sublime, from personal loss to the simple heart-aching serenity of a bluebell field in spring.

These amazing women experienced more than we ‘non-nurse types’ will ever understand. I feel emotional at the thought of what they went through both during and after the war. Having never been called on to face my fears, I feel humbled to have been able to read their words and hopefully come close to telling their stories.

—Cheryl Ward, Producer & Director