Australian Dictionary of Biography

Joyce Whitworth

Sun (Sydney), 16 May 1941, 16

Joyce Ethel Whitworth (1911–1998), army officer, farmer, and community worker, was born on 30 May 1911 at Randwick, New South Wales, second of three daughters of New Zealand-born parents John Whitworth, racehorse trainer, and his wife Florence Sophia, née Miller. The family’s financial difficulties forced Joyce’s early withdrawal from Sydney Church of England Girls’ Grammar School, Darlinghurst (1926–27). At eighteen she commenced a nursing traineeship at Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children, Camperdown, but after two and a half years contracted scarlet fever, then resigned to care for her ailing father, until he died in May 1938. She completed a secretarial course and became a stenographer and secretary for Claude Neon Industries Ltd, a manufacturer of advertising signs.

In June 1940 Whitworth joined the Women’s Australian National Service, participating in outdoor exercises and courses in map-reading, signalling, and military administration. Revealing leadership ability, she was appointed as an honorary lieutenant and by June 1941 was an honorary captain and commandant of the WANS one hundred–strong Eastern Suburbs defence unit. In August she volunteered for the new Australian Women’s Army Service (AWAS), having been recommended by the WANS commander-in-chief, Lady Wakehurst, as ‘a born leader’ and ‘very steady and dependable’ (Howard 1990, 25). Years later she recalled being ‘terribly excited’ and ‘bursting to do something’ (Whitworth 1990). One of the first women called up in December, after six weeks of training she was commissioned as a captain in January 1942. Following a brief stint at Victoria Barracks, Paddington, helping to interview and process the first recruits to the service, she was appointed chief instructor of an AWAS recruit training school at Killara which opened later that month.

Whitworth was promoted to temporary major in July 1942 (substantive 1944), having been transferred the previous month to Ingleburn as officer-in-charge of the AWAS wing of the 1st Signals Training Battalion. From September she commanded the 2nd AWAS Training Battalion. Showing drive and zeal, she pushed her staff and students to succeed, acquiring the nickname ‘Bertha Blitz’ (Whitworth 1998, 6), yet she was respected and popular, showing compassion and concern for new recruits. Between April and July 1943 she commanded the 4th AWAS Training Battalion at Darley, Victoria, before returning to the 2nd (retitled 2nd Australian Women’s Training Battalion when the AWAS and Australian Army Medical Women’s Service recruit training merged in August). At this time, she formed a close friendship with Captain Barbara Gilchrist Donkin, AAMWS. They would become lifelong companions. From July 1944 she served in Melbourne as assistant controller, AWAS, Victoria.

Having been transferred to the Reserve of Officers on 28 June 1946, Whitworth and Donkin, with Donkin’s mother and brother, purchased a 35.5 acre (14.4 hectare) farm at Dural on Sydney’s outskirts. Through trial and error, the ‘peasant farmers’ (Whitworth 1990) settled on growing fruit trees and raising poultry, sheep, and later beef cattle. In January 1949 Whitworth became engaged to Roland Maclean, a solicitor of Sydney, but they never married.

Whitworth was active in community affairs. A woman of faith and conviction, by the late 1950s she was a member of the parish council of St Jude’s Church of England Church, Dural, and head of the church’s women’s fellowship. For eighteen years she was on the council of Tara Church of England Girls’ School, Parramatta. In 1960, while she was serving on the State council of the Girl Guides’ Association, she was approached by Outward Bound Australia to establish and direct a girls’ developmental program. Leading by example, she participated in adventure activities: ‘I wasn’t going to ask anyone to do anything I wasn’t prepared to do myself’ (1990), she later explained. She also served on the organisation’s Federal executive. In 1968 she was made MBE for services to the community.

As a proud former army officer, Whitworth attended ex-AWAS officers’ social functions, and from 1948 served on the organising committees of several reunions. She was president of the AWAS Association of New South Wales (1959–71), then vice-patron, and patron from 1997, having been appointed a life member in 1966. Highly esteemed in the ex-servicewomen’s community, in 1989 she became patron of the Council of Ex-Servicewomen’s Associations (New South Wales). She was generous with her time, and dedicated to sustaining the camaraderie forged in wartime. Keen to ensure that women’s service was remembered, she led the AWAS contingents at Sydney’s annual Anzac Day marches.

Whitworth remained close to her mother, and to her sisters and their families, while she and Donkin enjoyed socialising and travelling around Australia and overseas. In 1981 they left the farm for a retirement village at Castle Hill, occupying units close to one another, assisting with chaplaincy and welfare work, and serving on the village council. She died of a heart attack on 19 September 1998 at Castle Hill, and was cremated, survived by her sister Lorna, her nephews and nieces, and her ‘loved friend’ (Sydney Morning Herald 1998, 33) Barbara Donkin.