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HALL, DOROTHY nee ALLEN (1905–1989), nursing sister, was born in May 1905 at Castlemaine, Victoria,
one of five children, four daughters and one son, of first generation Australian parents. Her grandfather migrated
to Victoria in 1852, as a boy of thirteen, to work for two brothers who kept a butcher’s shop on the Forest
Creek goldfields. His son, Dorothy’s father, later ran a butchery in Castlemaine, and the family lived close by
on the outskirts of the town. The five Allen children were educated at the South Castlemaine Primary School.
After completing her schooling Dorothy worked in her father’s business doing the bookwork until 1928 when she
left the district to train in nursing at Prince Henry’s Hospital Melbourne (known at the time as the Homeopathic
Hospital). Dorothy returned to Castlemaine in 1931 after she had completed her basic nursing training and stayed
for 12 months helping to care for her family. In May 1932 Dorothy returned to Melbourne, to the Queen Victoria
Hospital, where she completed a six-month course in midwifery. Towards the end of that period Dorothy was
approached by the Australian Inland Mission (AIM) to see if she would take a position at the Halls Creek Hospital
in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Accompanied by a colleague, with whom she had trained, Dorothy
went to Halls Creek in November 1932 for a two-year posting.
The experience in Halls Creek appears to have whetted her appetite for pioneering in frontier northern Australia
and in May 1937 Dorothy set forth from Melbourne once more, this time in the company of Joyce Falconbridge
(later Fuller), and spent another period as an AIM nursing sister in the north. It was then that Dorothy first came
to the Northern Territory where she eventually settled. Dorothy and Joyce had been recruited to staff the AIM
hostel, Wimmera Home, situated on the banks of the Wickham River close by the Victoria River Downs (VRD)
homestead. The Presbyterian Church on land excised from the VRD pastoral lease had built the hostel/hospital in
1922.
During the 1920 and 1930s, the AIM conducted a number of similar establishments in north and central Australia.
A common pattern of management was followed in all the hospitals—subject to small variations created by special
circumstances. Two fully trained nursing sisters, with midwifery qualifications, and who professed the Christian
faith, were contracted for two-year terms. The sisters had to be self-sufficient and, in addition to providing nursing
care for the sick, for pregnant and nursing mothers, and child care, were expected to perform emergency dental
care. Health and nursing care were offered as part of an overall medical and social welfare programme to settler
families, itinerant workers, travellers and, at Wimmera Home, to Aboriginal people. Dorothy and Joyce were also
expected to send and receive telegrams using Morse code.
The nursing staff worked as a team available 24 hours a day for each day of their term. Generally nurses shared
professional and domestic tasks on ‘a week and week about’ basis—one would nurse, one would maintain the
domestic arrangements (cooking, cleaning, etc). If a nurse became ill her partner would necessarily have to do the
work of two. Part of the social welfare programme involved the staff in conducting informal ‘church services’ and
entertaining single white men (drovers, stockmen, contractors) in a Christian environment (parties at Christmas
time, bridge parties, discussion evenings). The Presbyterian Church actually specifically stated that it was hoped
that the nursing sisters might marry in the north and help establish there a pattern of ‘civilization’ based on Christian
family life. One joke at the time was that AIM stood for Australian Institute of Marriage. Both Dorothy and Joyce
fulfilled the expectation; they married drovers they met while they were nursing at Wimmera House.
Apart from the obvious contribution the AIM sisters made towards the general well-being of northern
communities, they have also contributed considerably to our understanding of the conditions experienced by
settlers and Aborigines on the pastoral frontier. In letters and reports to AIM headquarters, in diary records, and in
oral history interviews, many of these women have created vivid accounts of their life and work. These accounts
have helped researchers piece together a clear picture of life in the Northern Territory in the 1920s and 1930s.
Dorothy and Joyce left Melbourne on 1 May 1937 to begin their Northern Territory adventure. They sailed
on SS Marella via Sydney, Brisbane, Townsville and Thursday Island to Darwin—a 16-day voyage. After a short
stay in Darwin they flew to VRD Station via Daly Waters. At Wimmera Home they relieved sisters Mackenzie and
Langham who had just completed a two-year term. During the period of Dorothy and Joyce’s term the AIM decided
to close the Wimmera Home, and so they were the last sisters to conduct the hospital. Controversy surrounded
the AIM decision that was forced on them by an unfortunate set of circumstances including the antagonism of
Dr Cecil Cook, Chief Medical Officer in Darwin, and of Dr Clyde Fenton, medical officer in Katherine.
Some of her time at Wimmera Home was, however, very happy for Dorothy who met Noel Hall, her future
husband, while she was there. They were married in Katherine on 1 May 1939 and shortly after they settled on
a small block on the Edith River. In 1940 they moved to the South Alligator River area where Noel Hall had a
contract to shoot buffaloes. They went back to the Katherine district at the end of 1940 where they once again set
about building a house.
Life in Katherine was disrupted when the town was bombed during Japanese air raids in 1942, and, along with
other civilian women and their children, Dorothy was evacuated. Dorothy acted as nurse and welfare officer on the
convoy of evacuees from Katherine to Alice Springs. From there Dorothy travelled to her family in Victoria and
spent the rest of the war nursing at the Berry Street Babies Home.
Dorothy and Noel were reunited at the end of the war and they lived on Bonrook Station, near Pine Creek, from
1945 until approximately 1950. Their daughter, Diane, was born at Katherine Hospital on 27 October 1946. During
1950 Dorothy spent six months at the Aboriginal settlement Yuendumu, in Central Australia—recalled to nursing