Sister Rosa O`KanePrint Page

The memorial, erected at the grave site, commemorates Sister Rosa O`Kane, a nurse at the Quarantine Station Hospital who died after nursing victims of the influenza epidemic aboard SS Boonah.

Sister O`Kane was originally bound for the battlefields on the SS Wyreema with a party of other nurses. As a result of peace being declared their journey was cut short having never reached the battlefields, they disembarked the SS Wyreema at Fremantle on 10th of December 1918.

By this time the effects of the worldwide influenza epidemic were being felt, volunteers from the nurses aboard the SS Wyreema worked at the Quarantine Station Hospital tending to returning soldiers. The troopship SS Boonah had arrived at Fremantle on the 7th of December 1918 with a reported 90 cases of influenza (Spanish Flu) on board. Rosa O`Kane volunteered for this duty and shortly after died from influenza.

Mr J. G. McClelland, Town Clerk, is in receipt of a letter from Messrs Wilson, Gray and Co., Perth, W.A.,stating that they have completed the monument on the grave of the late Sister Rosa O'Kane and trusted that it would be to the satisfaction of the deceased Sister's mother who was now on her way to Perth and was expected to arrive there per the "Orsova." It was suggested by some officers of the Defence Department, that in view of the local interest in the case of the late Sister O'Kane, whose heroic sacrifice was so well known here, that the monument should be erected in the principal cemetery and the remains transferred there, but Mrs O'Kane advised that she would not have the remains disturbed. 
Evening Telegraph (Charters Towers, Qld.), 7 February 1921.

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