Elfrida Mary Stapley
Sister, Australian Army Nursing Service

Elfrida was the daughter of Thomas Frederick and Mary Frances Stapley. Her father was a Shire of Tambo councillor for the Bendoc Riding, serving several terms in the late 1880s and was Shire President in 1889-90.

Elfrida was born at Bairnsdale in 1881, but went to school at Jarrahmond when the State School opened there in March 1886. An imposing figure at 5’ 9” tall, Elfrida was nursing at Chatswood in New South Wales at the time she joined the AANS on 21 August 1915.

With the appointment of Nursing Sister, Elfrida embarked on RMS Moree from Sydney for active service abroad on 21 August 1915. She proceeded to Egypt and reported for duty at the 2nd Australian General Hospital on 23 September 1915. The nursing staff were moved around constantly: while in Egypt, Elfrida was transferred to the No.1 Australian Stationary Hospital at Ismailia on 5 February 1916 and six months later to the No.4 Auxiliary Hospital, Abbassia.

On 13 August 1916 Sister Stapley embarked from Alexandria as a passenger on the hospital ship Kanowna, bound for England, reporting for duty at AIF Headquarters two weeks later.

During 1917, Elfrida was appointed to the position of Temporary Head Sister at the Australian Nurses Convalescent Home, London on 4 August. She was then posted to the 42nd Stationary Hospital at Amiens in France on 3 November, and on 19 November to the 38th Stationary Hospital—a 520-bed hospital for British troops, which had just opened at a former boys’ school in Genoa, Italy.

Elfrida became ill while serving in Italy and was hospitalised in France, then invalided back to England on 13 February 1918 and admitted to the Southwell Gardens Hospital. On 6 April, Elfrida resumed nursing duties and was attached to the 1st Australian Auxiliary Hospital at Harefield. On 15 April she was appointed Temporary Head Sister at the St Albans Convalescent Home, and on 28 September attached to the 2nd Australian Auxiliary Hospital at Southall, which specialised in the fitting of artificial limbs.

Sister Stapley was again admitted to Southwell Gardens Hospital on 7 November 1918 – dangerously ill with pneumonia. A month later, she sailed for Australia on the hospital ship Orontes. Her appointment with the AIF was terminated on 8 May 1919 at Sydney and she was discharged as ‘medically unfit’.

Elfrida Stapley received the 1914-15 Star, the Victory Medal and the British War Medal and is listed on the Shire of Orbost honour board. She died at the Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital in Melbourne on 20 June 1971 at the age of ninety-one. She was cremated at the Springvale Botanical Cemetery and her ashes scattered.