Australian Dictionary of Biography

Sister Ellen Kettle on children's pet mule, at Flora Valley station, 1950s.

Libraries and Archives NT

Ellen Sarah Kettle (1922–1999), nurse, midwife, and author, was born on 21 April 1922 at Colac, Victoria, second of five children of Victorian-born parents Thomas Kettle junior, farmer, and his wife Mary Graham née Bicket. Educated at Colac High School, Ellen completed her general nursing training at the Geelong and District Hospital (1942–45). During these years, her older brother Matthew died while a prisoner of war on the Burma-Thailand Railway. She also became engaged to Henry Frederick Stephens, a Victorian farmer and soldier, in 1943. They married on 13 March 1946 at the Bairnsdale Methodist Church and settled at Toorloo Arm, East Gippsland, but later divorced in May 1954.

Following a period working in Victoria, Kettle completed her midwifery training at Townsville General Hospital, Queensland (1951). In 1952, after six months on Thursday Island, Torres Strait, she travelled to the Northern Territory, where she worked for the government welfare branch at Yuendumu, a remote Aboriginal community north-west of Alice Springs on the edge of the Tanami Desert.

Despite primitive living conditions, limited clinical facilities, and patchy medical records, Kettle proved determined and resourceful, often working alone through long ‘sleepless nights’ (Kettle 1967a, 41). She felt a strong sense of purpose in providing medical care to children, a particularly vulnerable group who were ‘the most interesting aspect of Yuendumu, and I dare say it was the children who convinced me I ought to stay there’ (Kettle 18 July 1991). In mid-1953 Kettle was transferred to Delissaville (later Belyuen) but soon fell ill with hepatitis. After eighteen weeks recuperating in Darwin, she was appointed as a survey sister for the Commonwealth Department of Health, giving her an expanded mandate to also record and report on Aboriginal health across the Territory.

By road and air, Kettle travelled to church missions, government welfare settlements, cattle stations, and remote camps to provide medical care. In 1959 she was finally allocated her own vehicle—a Land Rover with a canvas canopy—which allowed her to visit places that had been overlooked for years. Sometimes known as the ‘hook and eye sister’ (Kettle 18 July 1991) for her role in delivering hookworm and trachoma treatment, she was a pioneer of remote health care, managing influenza and typhoid epidemics, administering vaccines, and providing care to leprosy sufferers. Of strong Christian faith, the Bible was always with her, and helped sustain her during periods of loneliness and hardship.

Through the creation of medical records for thousands of patients, Kettle helped revolutionise Aboriginal health care, particularly for children. In 1958 she introduced standardised infant health records and compiled what is believed to be the first Territory infant health register. She also worked with the medical officer John Charles Hargrave on the first register of leprosy sufferers, her efforts included visiting camps and communities across Arnhem Land (1962–63, 1965). Two additional survey sisters were appointed in 1959, and her proposal for a rural health nursing workforce was finally being implemented by the late 1960s.

Kettle had completed an infant health course in Melbourne in 1956 and a diploma of nursing administration at the New South Wales College of Nursing in 1964. In 1966 she published an article in the Medical Journal of Australia that raised serious concerns about the health of Aboriginal infants and young children (between five months and five years) in remote areas. Her data also indicated that there had been no improvement since the introduction of communal feeding programs. The following year, she published Gone Bush, a memoir of her time in the Territory, and was appointed MBE for service to Aboriginal health.

Awarded the H. J. Heinz travelling scholarship for 1967, Kettle spent eight months abroad studying child health in East Africa, Iran, and India. Her report recognised education as integral to the provision of health care in rural and remote communities, and recommended that Aboriginal people be ‘fully involved in their own health programme’ (Kettle 1967b, 68). She saw many of the problems in Aboriginal health as a direct result of government intervention and openly advocated for approaches that recognised and respected traditional culture and agency.

In September 1968 Kettle was appointed as matron at the Alice Springs Hospital before being seconded to the Territory of Papua and New Guinea (TPNG) as principal matron (1969–74). From Port Moresby General Hospital, she worked to prepare nursing services for independence in 1975. She also became a member of the nursing council of the TPNG in 1971 and later published a history of nursing in Papua New Guinea (1979). Prior to her retirement in 1980, she worked as the regional matron for east Arnhem Land (1977–80).

Once described as an ‘intrepid woman’ (NAA A1658), Kettle was said to have ‘a high sense of humour and a healthy disrespect for the ravellers of red tape’ (Holmes 1968, 11). Others found her impersonable and ill-suited to supervising nurses new to rural practice, although she was remembered as being scrupulously fair. In 1991 she published a two-volume history of the development of health services in the Northern Territory between 1824 and 1970. She was also involved with treatment and reconstructive surgery for leprosy and burns in Timor and the island of Flores, travelling there on a number of occasions in the early 1990s. She died in Darwin on 2 August 1999 and was buried in Thorak regional cemetery at Knuckey Lagoon. Her personal diaries (1959–97) and photograph collection were donated to the Northern Territory Library. Kettle Street in Palmerston, Northern Territory, was named in her honour.