Claudine Estelle CADWALLADER
Sister, Australian Army Nursing Service

The daughter of Sydney Oliver and Frances (née Colombo) Cadwallader from McKenzie River, forty-five kilometres east of Orbost, Claudine was born at Wallan Wallan in 1882.

She enlisted in the Australian Army Nursing Service on 23 August 1915 and served at the St Kilda Road and Caulfield Military Hospitals before embarking for overseas on SS Mooltan on Boxing Day 1916.

Arriving in Bombay on 15 January 1917, Staff Nurse Claudine Cadwallader served at various hospitals with the British India Service over the next eighteen months. On 6 October 1918, she embarked for Egypt on the hospital transport Nile and reported for duty at the 31st General Hospital in Port Said ten days later. The British 31st General Hospital was brought out from England in December 1915 and set up in a huge warehouse at the harbour.

After Christmas 1918, Claudine was promoted to Sister and sent to England. She was attached to the 3rd Australian Auxiliary Hospital at Dartford, where 884 Australian servicemen remained for ongoing treatment at the end of the war.

Sister Cadwallader returned to Australia on HT Rugia in 1919 and her appointment with the AANS was terminated on 20 March 1921.

She left the nursing service and took up the victualler’s licence for the Cabbage Tree Hotel on 15 May 1922, which she ran with her mother until November 1925. Claudine moved to the Marysville area, where she conducted the Black Spur Hotel at Narbethong.

She died at the Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital on 8 October 1978 at the age of ninety-six, and was cremated at the Springvale Crematorium.