Australian Dictionary of Biography

Vivian Bullwinkel, by Bruce Howard, c.1975

National Library of Australia, 42270171

Vivian Bullwinkel (1915–2000), war nurse, prisoner of war, hospital matron, and advocate for war nurses, was born on 18 December 1915 at Kapunda, South Australia, daughter and elder child of English-born George Albert Bullwinkel, timekeeper, and his South Australian-born wife, Eva Kate, née Shegog. Vivian grew up at Broken Hill, New South Wales, and attended Broken Hill High School (captain 1933) where she excelled at basketball, tennis, and vigoro. ‘Bully,’ as she was fondly known, undertook nurse training at the Broken Hill and District Hospital (1934–38), and qualified in midwifery the following year. She then worked at Kia Ora Private Hospital, Hamilton, Victoria (1939–40), and Jessie McPherson Private Hospital, Melbourne (1940–41).

Volunteering for service in World War II, Bullwinkel joined the Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS) as a staff nurse in May 1941 and was posted to the 107th Australian General Hospital, Puckapunyal, Victoria. On 1 September she was appointed to the Australian Imperial Force and posted to 2/13th AGH, embarking in the Wanganella for Singapore the next day. Arriving on 15 September, she was temporarily attached to the 2/10th AGH at Malacca, Malaya (Malaysia). After three weeks she returned to the 2/13th at Tampoi, near Johore Bahru, before the advance of Japanese troops forced the hospital to relocate to St Patrick’s College, Singapore. With a Japanese attack imminent, on 10 February 1942 the nurses were ordered to prepare to leave. On her final night in Singapore, she ‘sat & had champagne on our villa verandah’ (Bullwinkel 1942), but the noise of shelling made sleep impossible.

On 12 February Bullwinkel was amongst sixty-five AANS nurses who, as well as civilian women and children, left Singapore in a requisitioned cargo vessel, the Vyner Brooke. Proceeding cautiously towards Java, the overcrowded ship was bombed and sunk in Bangka (Banka) Strait on 14 February. Many on board drowned. Bullwinkel was one of twenty-two nurses and a large group of civilian women and children who drifted to Radji Beach, Bangka Island, where they were joined by Commonwealth servicemen and merchant mariners whose ships had also been attacked and sunk. The civilians walked to a village to find the Japanese and capitulate. Those who remained on the beach, including the nurses, had little choice but to surrender when a Japanese patrol discovered them. The men were taken behind a rocky headland and executed. The women, including the matron, Irene Drummond, were forced to walk into the sea and were machine-gunned from behind. Bullwinkel was shot above the hip and eventually was washed ashore, where she saw that she was alone: ‘I got up and went up into the jungle and lay down and either slept or was unconscious for a couple of days,’ she stated in evidence to the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in December 1946 (AWM AWM54). She was the only survivor.

Bullwinkel encountered and tended a severely injured British soldier Cecil Kinsley, before they surrendered on 28 February 1942. Kinsley died of his wounds soon afterwards. Joining thirty-one AANS nurses who had survived the destruction of the Vyner Brooke, she was interned at Muntok, Bangka Island, along with Dutch and British civilian women, then transferred to camps at Palembang, Sumatra, where she spent the next two and a half years. For her own protection, while they remained captive the women never spoke of Bullwinkel having witnessed the massacre. She was promoted to sister on 27 May 1942, and on 23 March 1943, when AANS nurses—including those in captivity—were given military rank, Bullwinkel’s nursing rank of sister became lieutenant. They were taken back to Muntok (October 1944–April 1945), and finally to Loebock Linggau (Lubuklinggau), Sumatra, from where they were liberated on 16 September 1945. In the camps the AANS nurses had ministered to internees as best they could, while enduring persistent brutal and inhumane treatment. Many prisoners died from beriberi and malaria, including eight nurses. Bullwinkel recalled an atmosphere of ‘apprehension, fear, greed, sickness, hunger, filth and death,’ in which ‘crisis followed crisis’ (Bullwinkel 1989). The contrast following liberation was astonishing: ‘one night sleeping with bugs, the next almost like princesses’ (Bullwinkel 1945).

News of Bullwinkel having survived the Radji Beach massacre appeared in the Australian press within days of the nurses’ liberation. By the time she was repatriated in October after a short period of recovery in Singapore, she was a national hero. Undergoing treatment in Melbourne for debility, she established a pattern of diligently responding to the many letters she received, notably those from the families of missing AANS nurses seeking reassurance that their loved one had ‘behaved so bravely in her dreadful ordeal’ (Wilmott 1945).

On 21 January 1946 Bullwinkel commenced work at the 115th Military Hospital, Heidelberg, and in May she was promoted to temporary captain. She arrived in Japan on 31 October and was attached for duty with the 2nd Australian War Crimes Section, Tokyo, giving evidence of her ordeal in the trials of alleged Japanese war criminals. The officer commanding the Japanese battalion on Bangka Island did not appear, but later took his own life while in custody. In January 1947 Bullwinkel returned to Australia and the following October transferred to the Reserve of Officers in her substantive rank of lieutenant. In March that year she had been awarded the Royal Red Cross (2nd class), and in May the International Red Cross awarded her a Florence Nightingale medal.

Continuing her nursing career, Bullwinkel was a charge sister (1947–50) and assistant matron (1956–61) at the renamed Repatriation General Hospital, Heidelberg. With her friend and fellow former POW Betty Jeffrey, she travelled throughout Victoria during 1947 to raise funds to establish the Australian Nurses Memorial Centre in Melbourne. The centre opened in 1950 with Bullwinkel as inaugural vice president and Jeffrey as administrator. Between 1950 and 1953 she took leave to work in London at St Mary’s Hospital and Australia House. Accompanied by Jeffrey, she was presented at the Royal Court. In 1961 Bullwinkel was appointed matron and director of nursing at Fairfield Infectious Diseases Hospital, Melbourne, retiring in 1977. In 1970 she became a member of the council of the Australian College of Nursing (president 1973–74).

Bullwinkel had returned to service on 7 December 1955 when she was appointed from the Reserve of Officers as a captain and temporary major in the Royal Australian Army Nursing Corps, Citizen Military Forces. On 22 December 1961 she was confirmed in the rank of major and promoted to temporary lieutenant colonel. She was appointed commanding officer of 3 Royal Australian Nursing Corps Training Unit, Southern Command, remaining in the part-time role until 1970. Confirmed in the rank of lieutenant colonel on 8 September 1963, she retired in 1970. Between 1964 and 1969 she was a trustee of the Australian War Memorial, the first woman appointed to the role. From 1964 to 1969 she was deputy commandant and nursing advisor to the Australian Red Cross. In January 1973 she was appointed MBE, and in 1976 the Royal Humane Society appointed her to its court of directors.

On 9 November 1977 Bullwinkel married Francis West Statham, an engineer and former army officer whom she had known for many years, at the parish church of Saint Margaret, Nedlands, Western Australia. She relocated to Perth; at the time he was Commonwealth director of works for Western Australia. In retirement she continued her advocacy to recognise the contribution and sacrifice of Australian war nurses. She was involved in many organisations including the Australian Red Cross (honorary life member 1992), the Royal Humane Society, the Returned Sisters sub-branch of the Returned Services League (Western Australian branch president 1985–88), and the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (WA Association, council member). In 1988–89 she was warden of the Western Australian State War Memorial. She was appointed AO in January 1993 and in March that year, with seven other former AANS nurses, attended the dedication of a nurses’ memorial at Radji Beach, Bangka Island.

A tall woman with a ready smile and robust physique, Bullwinkel was an eloquent and convincing public speaker. She had a ready sense of humour and loved parties and social events. As the sole survivor of the Bangka Island massacre she came to epitomise the courage, sacrifice, and dedication to duty of the AANS nurses. Through her example during the war, and her indefatigable efforts afterwards, they have attained a conspicuous place in Australia’s historical culture. In 2017 the journalist Tess Lawrence claimed that Bullwinkel had told her in confidence that she had kept secret that she and other nurses had been ‘violated’ (the evidence strongly suggests that they were raped) and tortured before being shot. Following Australian government orders, she had maintained a sanitised account out of an intense sympathy for family members already coping with traumatic death.

Predeceased by her husband (d. 1999), Statham—she was rigorous in using her married name—died of cardiac arrest on 3 July 2000 in Hollywood Hospital, Nedlands, and was cremated. On 10 July she was accorded a State funeral at St George’s Cathedral, Perth, the minister for veteran’s affairs, Bruce Scott, delivering the eulogy. In August 2023 a statue by Charles Robb was dedicated by Governor-General David Hurley and placed on prominent display at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra. Hurley honoured a ‘great Australian,’ Bullwinkel’s legacy ‘a reminder of the people we are and the nation we aspire to be,’ whose qualities of ‘compassion, selflessness, loyalty, bravery, [and] honour’ (Hurley 2023) will long inspire Australians. Among many tributes to her life, a Western Australian Federal electorate was named in her honour in 2024.