Gorman Stories: A Letter of Unfortunate Events

July 2025

Excerpt from a letter from a resident of Gorman House, to her family in South Australia, undated letter circa 1942

In August the measles were rife and there was a rule that no one with an infectious disease could remain in a Guest House. I was a victim so had to go to the hospital. The hospital was not so far away at Acton – a wooden building, the forerunner to the new one on the Peninsula which was built a year later and demolished last year under tragic circumstances. I was put in the Infectious Diseases Ward and nearby were Harry Turner and Mick Walsh, two of our fellow workers at Cables {the Department she worked at in the Prime Minister’s Office].

We were not very sick and I put them to work winding wool for me for some knitting. I have a good photo of them. I came out of hospital on my 21^st birthday, but was told to come back for my slippers and dressing gown which had been fumigated. I set forth after lunch on my bicycle with the basket on the front to put my clothes in and just in front of the Institute of Anatomy on my return, a motor cyclist went past me and I think I must have swerved as it was an unsealed road with gravel on the side and away I went. My bike wheel was badly buckled and so was I!

Hector Horsburgh, the man on the motor bike stopped and helped me into the Institute where the staff there doctored me up. I had been on a motor bike before, but this gentleman assured me I’d be safe and off I went on the back of his motor bike to Gorman House. When Mrs. Dickson, the Deputy Manageress at the time, saw me she said, “My God! What in the hell has happened to you?” I was rather shocked at her speech and re-action. My mouth was bleeding and swollen and my teeth had penetrated the skin underneath my mouth and my top tooth cracked as well as my leg being badly grazed. Mrs. Dickson was a big woman very forthright and with a stringent manner, the very opposite to Mrs. Holmes who had left to go to Hotel Ainslie. I was indeed a very sorry sight to behold and worse still I had to cancel my 21^st dinner which we were having at the Hotel Canberra.

My parents had sent me £6 to take my girlfriends to dinner. A 3-course dinner there was then £1 per head (without drinks). We could not have it for several weeks as I was away from work for 10 days or more. The dentist, Mr. Marshall at Civic, would not attend to me until my mouth had healed.