Australian Dictionary of Biography

Edna Thompson, 1936

National Museum of Australia, 1991.0044.0281

Edna Mary Thompson (1914–1996), public servant, was born on 10 March 1914 at Prahran, Melbourne, second daughter of Victorian-born parents Thomas James Thompson, surveyor, and his wife Ethel Annie, née Cameron. Following Ethel’s death from tuberculosis in 1917, Thomas raised his two daughters with the help of his sister Grace, a creative and well-disposed woman who lived as housekeeper at the family’s home at Ripponlea, Melbourne, for some years. It was Edna’s aunt who bestowed upon her the lifelong nickname ‘Digger.’

From 1918 Thompson’s father began working periodically at the site of the new Federal capital at Canberra. Edna initially remained in Melbourne and was educated at Ripponlea State School, Caulfield High School, and Prahran Technical School, where she was a gifted hockey player. Her schooling instilled in her a lifelong pragmatism and athleticism. In 1928 she moved to Canberra when her father’s position with the Department of Works was transferred to the new Federal capital. Two years later, he married Mable Ellen Balmer, a New Zealand-born nurse, with whom he had a third daughter.

After finishing her schooling at Telopea Park High School, Thompson was employed by a local solicitor at Civic while waiting for an opportunity to join the Commonwealth public service. Despite the onset of the Great Depression, she embraced the multitude of low-cost sporting and social activities the capital offered. She also bought a scarlet Citroën, which she dubbed the ‘Red Terror’ and drove at speed. Slight and wiry, with short fair hair and blue eyes, she was known as an outstanding sportswoman and represented Canberra at hockey. She was also a keen bushwalker, joining some of the earliest bushwalking groups that roamed unchaperoned through the city’s surrounding high country. Friends admired her tenacity and ability to contribute to a singsong.

In 1933 Thompson joined the ranks of the public service, embarking on what she viewed as a tedious appointment as a typist at the Department of the Treasury. The following year she transferred to the investigation branch of the Attorney-General's Department. The branch, led by Harold Jones, chief of the Commonwealth Police, reportedly ‘wanted a woman for their tennis team’ (Thompson, in Miller 2013, 145).

Having joined the Voluntary Aid Detachments on 30 September 1941, Thompson was mobilised three days later for service with the Australian Imperial Force. She commenced duty in December at the 113th Australian General Hospital (AGH) at Concord, Sydney. Although she trained as a nurse, she was mainly assigned clerical work during World War II. Appointed acting corporal in January 1943, she was attached to the headquarters of the Australian Army Medical Women’s Service for special recruiting duty. She undertook non-commissioned officer training and was promoted to sergeant in June. Between September 1943 and May 1944, she was posted to the 2/5th AGH in Port Moresby, Papua, an experience that sharpened her appetite for overseas travel, before returning to the renamed 113th Military Hospital as a staff sergeant from February 1945. She was promoted to lieutenant in August and resumed duty at headquarters until being transferred to the Reserve of Officers in July 1946.

Thompson joined the Sydney re-establishment division of the Department of Post-War Reconstruction in 1948. Gregarious but equally prized for her discretion, she was unhappy with her role managing ‘the typing pool and all these confounded women’ (Thompson, in Miller 2013, 146). Happily, the following year she was recommended for a posting to Karachi, Pakistan, after a game of badminton with Colin Moodie, a senior officer in the Department of External Affairs. Over the next two years, she worked as personal secretary to John Oldham, Australia’s first high commissioner to Pakistan. ‘We worked very, very hard – mostly cable work … [but] I loved Karachi, I really did,’ she later recalled (Miller 2013, 147, 148).

Completing her assignment in 1951, Thompson took several months leave and travelled through Britain and Europe. She briefly returned to Canberra before taking up further postings, first to Tokyo (1953–56), where she worked in the office of (Sir) Edward Walker, ambassador to Japan. In September 1954 she attended the first South-East Asia Treaty Organization conference in Manila, Philippines, where she was tied down with cable work for two weeks. She was then sent to the Australian High Commission at Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa (1957–59), to work for Hugh Gilchrist. Possessing ‘a very dry wit’ (Degens 2022) and untroubled by ‘any fear of anything’ (Thompson, in Miller 2013, 150), she bought a car for leisure, on one occasion sightseeing alone through northern South Africa and Mozambique.

Although Thompson had no intention to return permanently to Canberra, her father’s ill-health and eventual death in 1966 grounded her in the capital for some years. From 1959 as personal secretary to the secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs she worked for several diplomatic luminaries including Sir Arthur Tange, and, in Tange’s absence, (Sir) Peter Heydon, all the while pining for overseas travel. She was awarded the BEM for public service in 1977 and retired in 1979. In 1990 she moved to Kalparrin Hostel, a retirement village at Kippax in Canberra’s north-west, where she died on 9 July 1996. She was a committed Presbyterian and her ashes were interred in the ex-services wall of Norwood Park crematorium at Gungahlin. The National Museum of Australia acquired a collection of her memorabilia in 1991 and Edna Thompson Crescent at Casey, Canberra, was later named after her.