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with Dorothy. In addition to these factors, Joyce had been advised to move from Melbourne to a warmer climate.
Both she and her medical adviser appreciate the irony of her move to the Northern Territory!
Joyce and Dorothy, 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 1920s 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. Joyce and Dorothy were
also expected to send and receive telegrams using Morse code, and later Dorothy made sure everyone understood
that Joyce was the expert.
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 ‘civilisation’ 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
more recently 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.
Joyce and Dorothy 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 their 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, which 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. Indeed it was left to Joyce to actually close the hospital in
late July 1939, as Dorothy Allen had left VRD at the end of her contract in May of that year. Joyce was assisted
in her task by her future sister-in-law Mildred Fuller (nee Mackenzie), who herself had been an AIM sister at
Wimmera Home from 1933 to 1935. Joyce’s future husband, Charles Fuller, was brother to Mildred’s husband,
Ted.
Despite the tension surrounding the closure of Wimmera House, and the first signs of what was to become a
long and debilitating illness, Joyce Fuller’s diary account, May 1937–May 1938, of her first year in the Territory,
bears witness to her commitment to the arduous work, to the people of the district, and to her love of the country.
The diary also records some detail of her meeting Charles Fuller (and of Dorothy Allen’s meeting her future
husband, Noel Hall) and of their courtship. Friendships were made with members of the Martin family who
managed VRD Station and Charlie Schultz on nearby Humbert River Station.
At the end of her term of duty Joyce travelled home to Melbourne for a brief visit to her family, and then
returned to Darwin for her wedding to Charles Fuller in Darwin on 20 January 1940. Later in the same year Joyce
went back to Melbourne this time to await the birth of their child. A daughter, Patricia, was born on 7 November- Because civilian women and children were evacuated from the Top End during the Second World War,
Joyce and Patricia did not return immediately to the Territory but stayed in Victoria until 1945. Charles Fuller after
some difficulty came back to the Northern Territory in 1942 where he worked until the end of the war. He travelled
to Melbourne late in 1945 to bring his wife and daughter back ‘home’ to the Top End.
The next few years were ones of hard work and challenge for Joyce. She and Charles established a bakery in
Pine Creek in late 1946, and Joyce took over the task of bread making while Charles worked as a ganger managing
roadwork teams. Later, in 1947, the family moved to Katherine where Charles and Joyce managed Ted Fuller’s
butcher shop. For the three years, 1951 to 1954, the Fullers worked at Beswick Station (an Aboriginal training
station) south east of Katherine. At Beswick Joyce once again took up her nursing duties. Joyce Fuller’s health
once again began to deteriorate in the mid 1950s, and during much of the rest of the time the family remained in
the Territory she was bed-ridden. In 1960 Joyce and Charles left for South Australia, finally settling in Adelaide
in 1977.