By Mikayla van Loon
The day has been set for the unveiling of Montrose wartime nurse Sister Edith Yeaman’s statue, forever paying tribute to the dedication and sacrifice of women from across the outer east.
The bronze bust will be revealed on Sunday 18 May at 2.30pm in the Montrose Town Centre, at the Nurses who Served garden, adjacent to the war memorial.
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.
Getting to this moment of unveiling the statue began in early 2023 on a chance meeting with one of Sister Yeaman’s family members.
Montrose Township Group president Chelsey Cooper was in a meeting at the Historical Cottage when she met a woman wandering the grounds.
She introduced herself as Julie Davies and said she was visiting from Sydney. She was researching the family tree and history of the Yeaman family.
Connecting Ms Davies to Montrose historian Eddie Tichelaar, ideas sprouted.
In 2023 Montrose Men’s Shed member Max Lamb had also helped establish a garden, fitted with plaques, dedicated to the nurses from the area who served in the World Wars.
After hearing of Sister Edith Yeaman Mr Lamb proposed that she would make a fitting subject for a statue.
Securing a grant from the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Saluting Their Service program, wheels were in motion.
“As you could imagine, the family were thrilled to receive this news,” Mr Tichelaar said.
They offered photographs to help sculpt Sister Yeaman and also donated her war medals and uniform to be put on display, first for three months at the Montrose Library and then to be held by the Yarra Ranges Regional Museum for future displays.
When asked why this was an important acknowledgement and project when the grant funding was confirmed late last year, Mr Lamb said they, the nurses, served too.
“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 went overseas, and they served very close to the front and they did get bombed a couple of times.
“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.”
The unveiling ceremony will be followed by afternoon tea in the Town Centre Auditorium.
