Versatile Nursery Sisters

Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 29, 4 February 1937, Page 10

Versatile Nursery Sisters

ACCOMPLISHED WIRELESS OPERATORS Sisters J. Langham and V. Stewart, of the Victoria River Down® Inland Mission Hospital, who promptly despatched a message regarding tho lost mail aeroplanes which was bogged near the station recently, are accomplished wireless operators as well as nursing sisters, and due to their efficiency the name Victoria River Downs Hospital is kndwn throughout Australia and in other parts of the world. Last April the two nurses were able to send messages all over Australia ta assist in the search for a lost aeroplane, and when it was located they nursed the occupants back to health after their privations. Scorning the alphabetical keyboard installed on some of the 15 pedal seta in tho Northern Territory, to enable those who have no knowledge of Morse to send and receive messages, these two women are expert operators. They have sent as many as four thousand words in telegrams during three months, and their activities mean a big thing to Victoria River Downs. They send their messages through Wave Hill, about 80 miles away, not a great die* tance in the ordinary sense of the word, but in the Northern Territory wet season, at present in full swing, an almost insurmountable obstacle. The only other alternative is tho Katherine, about 200 miles away. When the Rev. John Flynn first ilreamed of “casting a mantle of safety over the inland by means of a flying doctor, and was afterwards able to install wireless sets to expedite hie work, he could scarcely have forseea the ramifications which would develop from the scheme, such as his nursing sisters assisting in the location of lost aeroplanes, and otherwise providing a link with the rest of the Commonwealth and the outside world.