And the Logie goes to...

On our journey up to QLD, Scale Free Network(ers) Briony Barr and Gregory Crocetti encountered a chap named Clinton, who lived in a beautiful rainforest home in a hidden little valley of Mullumbimby. Without having even mentioned that we were working on The Invisible War - Clinton told us he was the keeper of a Logie - awarded to his dearly departed friend Megan Williams. 

Before we knew it, the Logie award was in front of us, showing that Megan Williams won 'Most Popular Actress in a single drama/mini-series' for her work in ANZACs.

Megan is also remembered for her role as Alice Watkin Sullivan in the famous Australian tv series 'The Sullivans'. And with a little digging, we discovered that Megan had played the role of Sister Kate Baker in the 1985 TV mini-series ANZACs, which was a hit for Channel 9. 

ANZACs was the first dramatic role for Paul (hoges) Hogan of Australian Tax evasion and Crocodile Dundee fame, but Megan Williams was the real star of the series, winning the only individual Logie.

It's so great to see the role of an ANZAC nurse given Australia's premier TV award so many years ago!

As a rather amazing coincidence, the lovely lady at Auspcious Arts - who manages our project funding from the Department of Veterans Affairs - is also named Megan Williams.

Researching "The Invisible War": State Library and the nurses

Sitting in the La Trobe Reading Room with its great arched ceiling and old timber chairs. My book requests arrive from the stacks and are announced by text message, lighting up my silent phone. Nurses’ writing. Olive Haynes, Elsie Tranter, R. A. Kirkcaldie, a collection of letters, a contemporaneous diary, an after-the-fact memoir respectively. I read them quickly in the echoing afternoon, skimming for the trenches, for the women’s workload, for their political opinions.

Olive Haynes, from the website of The State Library of South Australia, item B68419

Of course the letters are censored. The memoir is rosy and nostalgic. The journal is full of descriptions of new landscapes, of days off, and the songs the soldiers sang. What did their working days look like? What exactly did they do? What did the wards smell like? Which muscles ached at the end of the day? I want to see the grit of their daily lives. I want to see their horror and despair (did they feel those things? I can’t find it. They are so unerringly brave and hopeful in their own texts). I love Olive best, possibly because of Anzac Girls, finding the letter which must have inspired the Turkish delight scene, or the one from the night of the storm on Lemnos, And of course when she contracts dysentery. She’s so stoic though, and gives very little information, just rails against being kept in bed. I’m going to have to find a first hand account from a person who suffered dysentery elsewhere. I’m only part way into Elsie’s diaries – she’s still so full of hope, of love for the soldiers, of wonder at the places she’s visiting. I wonder how things will change for her and if it will reflect in her diaries?