Historical information

The article tells how playwright, John Misto, won first prize and $20,000 in the Australia Remembers National Play Competition and proceeded to donated his winnings to the help fund a nurses memorial in Canberra. John's play, The Shoehorn Sonata, tells the story of an army nurse in a Japanese prisoner of war camp during World War II. John decided to donated his winnings after finding out, during his research for the play, that nurses did not have a war memorial. He stated that it was mindboggling how brave the nurses were in the conditions and that he didn't want them and their work to continue to be unknown.
Nurses have cared for the sick and wounded in every conflict in which Australia has committed troops, from the Boer war to present day.
Ex-service nursing organisations and the Royal College of Nursing, Australia convened a committee to plan a memorial. The committee want to unveil a national memorial at the centenary of the raising of the first military nursing service celebrations in 1999. The memorial will cost about $1.5 million and be funded by nurses, nursing organisations and donations and depict the various environments where nurses served.

Physical description

A photocopied article from a newsletter with three columns of text and a black and white photo of a man in front of a group of older women, all smiling