By Mikayla van Loon
The sacrifice and dedication of wartime nurses from the eastern suburbs will forever be immortalised in a bronze statue in Montrose.
Receiving a grant from the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Saluting Their Service program, a bronze bust of Sister Edith Yeaman, a World War I nurse from Montrose, will be created and installed in the special nurses garden in the town centre.
This process was initiated by Montrose Men’s Shed member Max Lamb in 2023 by planting a memorial garden fitted with plaques to recognise the service of nurses from the region.
Having envisioned that a bronze statue would one day join the memorial site, Mr Lamb, the Men’s Shed, the Montrose Township Group, with the help of Yarra Ranges Council, applied for funding to arrange the statue.
The Montrose Township Group proudly announced the success on Sunday 10 November ahead of Remembrance Day.
“Sister Edith Yeaman served as a WWI nurse, embodying the courage and compassion that defined her profession during such challenging times. We are proud to recognise her legacy and the legacy of all nurses who served,” a social media post read.
“The statue will be placed in a special garden located between the Montrose War Memorial and the Historical Cottage, where it will complement two existing nurse plaques.
“This garden will serve as a serene space for reflection and remembrance, highlighting the dedication of those who have served.”
Mr Lamb said while some towns around the state are starting to recognise the nurses, it is still quite rare.
“Every town’s got its memorial to the soldiers who lost their lives, but virtually no one’s got a memorial to the nurses,” he said.
“They are starting to appear now. There’s one up at Myrtleford. I believe a mural has just been unveiled in Violet Town and I think there’s one closer to Melbourne but they’re very few and far between.”
Remembering that nurses too were thrown into the horrors of war, Mr Lamb said many died and many came home injured or after being a prisoner of war.
“They went overseas, and they served very close to the front and they did get bombed a couple of times,” he said.
“When Japan took over Singapore, quite a lot got captured and then when they were evacuated out, the ship got bombed, and quite a few lost their lives or they were captured by the Japanese. So the nurses certainly were in the thick of it.”
Nurse Yeaman enlisted in 1915 at the age of 30 and on 15 May that year, just three weeks after the landing at Gallipoli, she sailed from Sydney on board RMS Mooltan headed for an island in the Aegean Sea.
She served on a hospital ship at the port of Mudros in Lemnos. This was the port that the sick and wounded from Gallipoli were sent to.
After the evacuation of Gallipoli, Nurse Yeaman served in hospitals at Alexandria, Egypt, then on to England before finally serving in France.
In May 1917 Nurse Edith was promoted to Sister.
Fortunately, Sister Yeaman was able to return home safely to her family in May 1919, almost four years after she left and continued to work in hospitals in Melbourne and Sydney.
Her name currently sits on one of the plaques in the Montrose Memorial Gardens for Nurses, as Mr Lamb likes to call it, surrounded by names of other women who served from the district.
Unsure of when the statue will be complete, Mr Lamb said he hopes for early to mid next year, with the aim being May given Sister Yeaman’s ties with the month.
Mr Lamb said this addition to the town centre will ensure important figures from all facets of past wars will be commemorated, with the cenotaph standing in the middle and the story of the Montrose man who is said to have fired the first shot in World War I, completing a true memorial.
