Commemorating 80th anniversary of 2/3 AHS Centaur’s sinking, celebrating Qld’s response in 1948 – a centre for the nursing profession

Guest blogger: Dr Madonna Grehan - 2015 John Oxley Library Fellow

Sunday 14 May 2023 will mark the 80th anniversary of the sinking of 2/3 Australian Hospital Ship Centaur. This year’s service, hosted by the Centaur Memorial Fund for Nurses, will be held in Brisbane at Australian Catholic University Banyo Chapel. The ceremony remembers the 268 personnel who lost their lives in the sinking of 2/3 AHS Centaur and pays tribute to their families, friends, and colleagues who bore unimaginable grief in the wake of this incident.

The 2023 commemoration will be live streamed and the recording made available on YouTube from 14 May, 10.15 am via this link.

The year 2023 is also one of celebration, born of commemorating the loss of the Centaur. In 1948, five years after the sinking, Queenslanders rallied to the cause of nurses and nursing, raising money to purchase a property where the profession could develop educational, recreational and accommodation facilities. This year marks the 75th year of the Centaur Memorial Fund for Nurses (the Fund).

Kicking off the fundraising for a physical centre for nursing, a monster art union run by the Queensland Branch of the Australasian Trained Nurses Association (ATNA) in 1947 realised just over £1000. They set their sights on a memorial “house” for nurses and nursing in Queensland, with a wing specifically dedicated to war service nurses of the 1st and 2nd AlF. It was intended as a tribute to all Queensland nurses who served during two World Wars on the military and home fronts. A group from the ATNA secured support for the cause from a range of people. Among them were influential businessmen, unions, Brisbane’s Lord Mayor, members of state and federal Parliaments, and senior churchmen. The Telegraph newspaper, a relative newcomer in Queensland's media landscape, agreed to be a major sponsor of a state-wide drive.

On Friday 13 February 1948, Miss Eunice Paten RRC, ATNA President and WWI nurse, chaired a meeting at the Brisbane Lord Mayor’s rooms. That meeting founded the Centaur Memorial Fund for Nurses and elected a “citizens committee” to execute a state-wide campaign.

This meeting also named the centre for nursing “Centaur House”, reviving the incident so familiar to Queenslanders of all ages and guaranteeing ‘a magnetic pull for the people’s sympathetic effort’. The incident had occurred only 56 kms from Brisbane, on 14 May 1943, when the 2/3 Australian Hospital Ship Centaur was torpedoed by enemy fire and sank. Of the 332 personnel aboard, 268 perished. Among them were 11 nurses, members of the Australian Army Nursing Service. 

The Fund used imagery to promote its campaign, seen in the poster by Telegraph newspaper artist Wilson Cooper, depicting the memorial “Centaur House” rising from the stricken 2/3 AHS Centaur in the Pacific Ocean.

The Fund’s state-wide Queen of the Nurses Quest, was an enormous success, enabling the purchase of “Exton House” towards the end of 1948. Renamed “Centaur House”, much of the building was converted into a hostel for nurses and offices for nursing organisations, while some business tenancies were retained for income. Leading up to the anniversary of the Centaur’s sinking on 14 May, the Fund sold paper red roses as a mark of remembrance.

In 1950, the Fund ran a second state-wide fundraiser, the “Most Typical Australian Woman Quest” which allowed non-nurses and married women to nominate. They raffled signed cricket bats, and almost ran the first raffle of real estate in Queensland. A Queen of the Nurses Quest next ran in 1955. Then, in the 1970s, the Fund partnered with the Queensland Cancer Fund to run Nurse of the Year.

Centaur House at Queen St was an old and troublesome building which the Fund sold in 1969. A new Centaur House was built at 391 Wickham Terrace. In 1976, for the first time, nurses were elected President and Honorary Secretary of the Fund’s Executive Committee. They were Barbara Oudt and Bernie McWilliams. To secure the Fund’s survival, the Wickham Terrace property was sold and money invested. This property was a rather modern design for Brisbane, surviving today as Alatai on the Park.ial Fund for Nurses.

Since the 1950s, the Fund has actively supported nursing education, providing grants for postgraduate course fees, conference attendances, and purchase of textbooks. Financial assistance ramped up as nursing education gradually moved from hospital-based training to degree courses in the tertiary sector. Students at the Queensland Institute of Technology (QIT) were substantial beneficiaries. For some years, QIT was the only tertiary institution in Queensland offering diploma programs leading to registration as a nurse.

Beginning in 1985, the Fund supplied all QIT final year nursing students with a $50 voucher for textbooks. A Centaur Memorial Silver Medal was struck, to recognise nursing excellence in the QIT student cohort.

Today, the medal is awarded to nursing students achieving the highest grade-point average in their final year of study at universities in Queendsland. The Fund also supports postgraduate research in nursing via Centaur Scholarships, launched in 1993 on the 50th anniversary of the 2/3 AHS Centaur’s sinking. The scholarships are awarded annually via a competitive scheme.

From a desire to commemorate the lives lost in the sinking of the Centaur, Queenslanders created a practical and meaningful memorial in the Centaur Memorial Fund for Nurses which continues today. Nurses and midwives, in turn, have supported Queenslanders professionally as bedside nurses, teachers, and researchers.

The Fund lodged its records with SLQ in the late 1970s. This collection contains a range of material, some of which has been digitised, an outcome of Madonna Grehan’s John Oxley Library Fellowship in 2015.

Lest we forget

Collections

• OMEG, Centaur Memorial Fund for Nurses Records, John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland.

More Blogs by Madonna Grehan

• Read more blogs exploring Madonna's research into the Centaur Memorial Fund for Nurses