Chapter 1

‘THE TRAIN WILL WAIT FOR YOU!’
21 January 1946

Away from the ordered kingdom of lecture halls, three pioneer deaconesses were enjoying their summer break while the fourth sat in a steam train ambling across the back of New South Wales.

A hot January sun beat upon the old carriages, making the leather seats sticky and the air thick and muggy. Fine soot fluttered through open sash windows as the six-coupled locomotive chugged through wheat paddocks across the Western Plains like a black needle stitching up a piece of hessian.

Marjorie Wilkinson journeyed in the Brewarrina-bound carriage, gazing upon the rural scene quietly. Her face was as beautiful as fine porcelain with eyes as blue as the summer sky, full of promise and hope. She blew a little sigh of relief when she heard the clanking bells of a level crossing beside the Mitchell Highway as the train slowed on approach to Nyngan. At each major railway station out to the Far West, ongoing passengers had time to take a break: to sit in the shade of the verandah or have a meal in the smoky Refreshment Room.

Nyngan Station would be Marj’s last chance to go to the Ladies’ Room and join other women passengers all hurriedly powdering their faces. This was the last big town stop before her destination and she wanted to be feeling refreshed when she arrived in the remote inland town at the end of the line — Brewarrina.

Expecting to be met that very evening by an honorary board member of Brewarrina Hospital, Marj knew it was important that she create a good impression. The success of the future Methodist Nursing Service No. 1 unit in Brewarrina rested on her nursing skill, personal poise and social diplomacy. The town would be waiting for her like a hinged door, capable of either swinging open or slamming closed.

The locomotive hissed in vaporous clouds of steam as people flooded onto Nyngan Station. While Marj walked to the Ladies’ Room, she heard a well-mannered voice calling after her.

“Hello Sister Wilkinson!”

Marj’s eyes set upon a Protestant clergyman, neatly attired in a black chest bib with a stiffened white clerical collar, whose engaging blue eyes suggested a pleasant disposition. He introduced himself as Jack Brand, the Methodist minister for Nyngan.

“Come with me, I’ve lunch ready at the parsonage.”

“There’s been some misunderstanding, Mr Brand. I can’t leave the train. I must be in Brewarrina tonight or else the hospital will close down!”

It was to Sister Marjorie Wilkinson that the call of help had gone out when Brewarrina Hospital was about to shut its wards for lack of trained staff. The recent world war had depleted the country of good nurses: Australia had not only lost its sons to war, but its daughters too. However, nurses with Obstetrics Certificates had not been encouraged to enlist. As one Naval officer said to Marj’s elder sister, Eileen, ‘We don’t deliver babies on the battlefield.’

In the publicity generated by the formation of the Methodist Nursing Service, Marj and her colleague, Ethel Helyar, had become known statewide as ‘The Golden Girls’, receiving accolades for their pioneering spirit wherever they went. Right now the pioneering pair were working hectically in the final stages of preparation for the commencement of the Methodist Nursing Service (MNS) in Brewarrina in March 1946.

When the essential Brewarrina Hospital was threatened with closure, the honorary secretary had appealed to the Methodists in Sydney for help. And with that, Marj was sent out on the Brewarrina-bound train at very short notice. Now she was faced with the all too sociable clergyman in Nyngan.

She reiterated to the Reverend Jack Brand that she could not leave the train, but he was unmoved.

“I realise this, Sister Wilkinson, but it’s a long refuelling business here. Come along and meet the station master. He’s a friend of mine and he’ll ring me when the train’s ready to pull out.” Seeing the uncertainty in her face, he reassured her quickly, “The train will wait for you!”

* * *

Marj heard the station master promise to hold the train before the clergyman rushed her down the ramp towards his big car, a 1940 V8 Ford coupe with brown interior trim and moon hubcaps. As he drove at high speed to the parsonage, she had first thought he was hurrying for her benefit, but later came to realise that Jack was a speedster at all times.

Methodists had an uncanny code of looking out for one another. They formed an energetic evangelical denomination in its heyday, full of enthusiasm for singing lively Weslyan hymns, living by a strict code of teetotalling temperance, making moral bans on dancing, fornication, smoking, gambling and card-playing, and giving what they could for charitable service.

Marj wondered by his wife was not bustling about. “Is Mrs Brand going to join us?” she asked.

“Joyce is in Sydney having our second baby and little Lorelle, our two-year-old, is staying with her grandparents.”

Marj felt immediately uncomfortable, surprised at his domestic naïveté: freely he invited an unmarried woman to take lunch in the parsonage while his wife was away, having a baby of all things.

Nyngan tongues would wag, she was sure. Under the circumstances, a quick sandwich together in the railway’s Refreshment Room would have been sufficient sociality. After freshening up in the bathroom, she sat smartly down to lunch as Jack. She closed her eyes for grace and took a serviette before Jack engaged her in light conversation.

After glance at her wristwatch, Marj suggested they ought to return to the station, but Jack would hear nothing of her protestations. Finally, the telephone jangled and she nearly dropped her teacup. Jack took the call from the station master while Marj eyed the kitchen sink, grateful she had no obligation to wash the lunch dishes. She tensed when they heard an engine whistle as they drove back to the station.

Striding past the buildings onto the platform, Marj was unnerved: the station was dead empty. She looked frantically along mélange of rail tracks to see her train chugging off along the north-west line.

* * *

Jack was galvanised into action. It was three days until the next train to Brewarrina or a heck of a long drive to get her there.

“That’s Sister Wilkinson’s train that’s just pulled out!” he called, jabbing an arm at the disappearing train. “You said you were holding it for her!”

“I rang yer at the parsonage, Rev’rund, then I saw ‘er board,” said the station master rolling up his white flag.

“Well she didn’t board, mate! She’s here!” Jack shouted.

In the urgency, Marj pleaded, “I’m needed at the hospital tonight! My suitcase is on that train!”

“I might have got ‘er muddled with someone else,” he said, eyeing Marj closely. He jogged into the narrow signal room. The station master plunged levers forward and backward. Somewhere along the line, a signal arm was raised.

“I’ve stopped the engine up the line! Yer can get the little lady aboard there!”

This was the free country, the lucky country. Australians would do unusual favours for their mates. Jack ran to the car, throwing open the door for Marj and gunning the vehicle like a seasoned racing driver. Marj was heady with the strain of it all. Suddenly, over treetops, there was a rising column of smoke: the train stood motionless.

Sprinting from the car, Jack grabbed a fence’s barbed wire and held it apart in a taut triangle. Marj climbed through the small tangent of space. She scaled the flood embankment, to find herself eyeballing a gigantic con rod and greasy wheels. The driver and fireman peered down from the cabin, in their puffy railway caps, moleskin trousers and leather vests.

“I’ve got to get Sister Wilkinson onto the train!” Jack called.

“Yer could try usin’ the railway station, Rev’rund!” shouted the driver.

Jack gave him a look that said all a minister ought not say.

The rail tracks were bolted onto wooden sleepers on ash and granite gravel so on this chunky surface, Marj and Jack lurched along more like drunks than Methodists. From ground level, the rolling stock of logs and freight looked unfamiliar and the remaining two carriages identical. From every sash window, heads peered.

Marj’s humiliation deepened as she failed to recognise her compartment. Someone pushed open a door. Marj tottered towards it and reached for the vertical grab-rails but could not lever herself up. These trains were built for 4′ high station platforms: there were no internal steps to be lowered to the ground as on Continental and American trains.

Without warning, she felt Jack’s arms curl around her thighs. In a flash, he hoisted her up into the air. Inside the doorwell, she fell on her knees. Clambering to her feet, she looked back at the Nyngan minister with a thin smile that was not altogether favourable in its appraisal. Jack stumbled down the embankment. The whistle blew long and piercingly; the engine puffed like a gruff dog. The passengers settled onto their seats and made room for the new unruly passenger.

A grazier eyed Marj with morose interest. She smiled demurely. Suddenly she realised she did not recognise these good folk as her travelling companions out of Sydney. She studied the wire luggage rack above her head: her suitcase was not there.

These ancient dog-box carriages were nicknamed ‘lavatory cars’. Each having their own toilet and washbasin, there was no need for an internal corridor to link them. And as such, each eight-seater compartment was completely separated from the others, with no access between them.

“Excuse me.” Marj spoke to the grazier reading a book. “I think I’m in the wrong dog-box. I guess I’ll just have to find my luggage when we pull into Brewarrina.”

“Brewarrina?” His face turned in laconic surprise. “This is the carriage for Bourke.”

“Bourke? Oh brother!” Marj fretted that an honorary executive of the hospital waited for her at Brewarrina station while she herself would be stranded in Bourke.

It was one thing to agree to start a mobile Nursing Service, but she felt that being rushed off to save a country hospital from closure was turning into an adventure from Girls’ Own Annual.

* * *

She sank deeper into her reverie as the train rattled and wobbled into the back of beyond. Marj rued that she would not be in this misplaced position if Albert Manefield had not telephoned Jack to tell him to welcome her to the Far West. Reverend Albert Manefield was a blustery, strong-willed ex-footballer and ring-boxer with a frosted eyeglass and a considerate yet overbearing manner.

Always possessing a deep partiality for the Far West region, he, along with the Reverend Walter W Whitbread and the Reverend Leonard MK Mills, had formed the trio of ministers who had toured New South Wales in 1944 in search of a location for a remote area nursing service.

They had motored about in a narrow-wheeled car, sketching maps, having long talks with shire authorities, bush nurses, hospital matrons and doctors. At last they pencilled lines on charts, “ummed” and “aaaed” and summed up their regional objectives with delightful cartography resembling a rough-cut diamond. This jewel was loosely bordered by such towns as Lightning Ridge, Nyngan, Hungerford and Dirranbandi, forming an area of roughly 35,000 square miles.

In the south of this geographic desert jewel, Brewarrina was a busy but isolated rail town, supporting the wool and beef industries. Yet it had no link up with the Flying Doctor, no government ambulance and only one small hospital which often closed down for lack of trained staff. It was just the spot to trial a new concept in mobile nursing and emergency care, which they dreamed would cover all Australia.

In planning its formation, the trio of ministers decided that all trained nurses wishing to work with the MNS should undertake courses in dentistry, mechanics and theology, and to be ordained as deaconesses. It was an extra theological component which the Presbyterians did not require for their nurses or doctors in the Flying Doctor Service, but it was the code the trio of ministers fancied. Before this interruption to go urgently to Brewarrina, Marj had nearly completed the curious training course at Leigh College.

As she ruminated about what would happen while she was stranded in Bourke, she became aware that each time the grazier leafed over a page, he gazed at Marj as if she were a stray lamb.

Suddenly, he spoke.

…

(This chapter continues in the book)

Sample of Chapter Headings in Part One: The Training.

1.  The train will wait for you!

2.  Did you say “Matron”?

3. We’re in drought!

4. Sorry, these ladies have booked.

5.  Get better or pass on.

6. A cloud from heaven.

7. They’re crazy up there!

8.  I do need you, Marj!

9. Give back the badges!

10. The Aylesbury ducks.

11. Do any Methodists live here?

12. VP Day

13. You are naughty!

14. What next, Augustus George?

15. Under the mistletoe.

16. We give Thee but Thine own.

17. When you die, can I have that car?

Part Two: The Inland comprises chapters 18-37

Part Three: The Cottage comprises chapters 38-56