Joyce Tweddell: A Remarkable Life Display Official Opening

President of the Royal Brisbane Hospitals Nurses Association,
Ms Cluny Seager; Executive Director, Cancer Care Services, Associate Professor, Dr Glen Kennedy; current and former staff; distinguished guests; ladies and gentlemen.

I begin by acknowledging the Traditional Owners of the lands around Brisbane, the Turrbal and Jagera people, and pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging, and to any First Nations people with us this morning.

The invitation to be with you today was a double delight to receive. First, as Governor, I regard it as a privilege to be asked to officially open such an important display; second, as a former health care professional and a proud Queenslander, I am very pleased to see the Museum of Nursing History honour Joyce Tweddell in this way.

The bare timeline of Joyce Tweddell’s life does not reveal what a truly exceptional person she was: born in Brisbane in 1916; qualified as a nurse and radiographer in 1939; enlisted in the Australian Army Nursing Service in 1941; spent three and a half years as a Prisoner of War; repatriated to Brisbane in 1945; became Queensland’s Chief Radiographer and remained in that position until her retirement in 1979.

What that simple timeline does not reveal is the courage, determination, altruism and humility of this remarkable woman.

It doesn’t tell us what it was like to be one of the 64 Australian nurses and civilians on the Vyner Brooke when it was bombed and sunk by the Japanese… It doesn’t tell us of the horrors she endured as a Prisoner of War in the jungles of Sumatra; nor does it tell us what she felt when she discovered that 76 of her sister nurses had died in the course of the war, including the 21 who were massacred when they were walked at gunpoint into the sea at Radji Beach on Bangka Island.

It is fitting that today’s opening falls during the same week we mark the 82^nd anniversary of the Bangka Island Massacre and remember the victims of that atrocity. 

This display helps us to understand the woman behind those experiences. It also helps us understand why “Tweedie”, as she was affectionately known, returned to Radji Beach in 1993, together with six other surviving POW nurses, to dedicate a memorial to the 21 nurses who died there, and why she refused to accept the honour of an MBE, because she believed that all surviving prisoners of war should have been awarded the honour.

It was most fitting, earlier this century, to see The Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital name a building in her honour after her death. Today, the Joyce Tweddell Building houses not only the Radiation Oncology Unit, but the Infectious Diseases Unit, the Cancer Care Unit, and the Bone Marrow Unit.

On behalf of all Queenslanders, I congratulate and thank everyone involved in assembling and curating this display. It is a fitting tribute to a remarkable life, and it now gives me great pleasure to officially declare it open.