Page 8 - Luce 2016

E ssay

a certificate of service to Miss Joske for her work in the Civil
Defence Organisation during ‘a period of national emergency,
world war, 1939-1945’. It must have been a remarkable relief
to Miss Joske that things could now ‘return to normal’ in
the College. Her long service as Principal coincided with
a relatively conservative period in the life of the College,
and the nation, that would be severely shaken by Australia’s
engagement in another war – the Vietnam Conflict.
As College Fellow and President of the Australian Human
Rights Commission Prof Gillian Triggs (1964) recently
reminded our students, the ‘Vietnam years’ were a testing time
on campus as protest against the war grew in strength both
within and beyond our walls. She recounted that early one
morning Dr Eden had summoned her to wash anti-Vietnam
graffiti (not of her own making) off the front wall. Fuelled in
part by conscription, the bloody realities of war (now brought
home to civilians for the first time via television) forced
Captain Mavis Freeman, Australian Army Medical Corps, Australians to question if ‘just war’ was still possible.
in her lab at the Heidelberg Military Hospital in 1944

career during the war as only the second female scientist to It was a tumultuous time for the nation, and for the College,
join the AIF. Serving in the Australian Army Medical Corps in which Dr Eden sought to empower a growing number of
at home and in the Middle East, she began research into safe young women – and from 1973 young men – who sought to
methods for blood transfusions in malarial regions (a vital question the values of ‘Anzac’ that had dominated the national
topic as Australian soldiers were debilitated by malaria in the discourse since the 1920s.
Middle East, Kokoda and other campaigns). Margaret (later
Dame Margaret) Blackwood, whose long association with Many generations of JCH students have their own memories of
JCH began with her appointment as house tutor in 1951, had ‘Anzac’, and their personal and family stories that have shaped
served in the Women’s Army Air Force (WAAF) as a cipher our history since 1886. For me, it has been an honour to hear
officer and then as a senior administrator and Squadron just a few of these stories. College Fellow Dr Olive Mence
Leader. Margaret Henderson assumed the rank of Captain in (1939) still remembers students gathering in the Common
the Australian Army Medical Corps, as doctors and nurses Room (now the SCR) in her first year at JCH as Prime Minister
throughout Australia further developed techniques and Menzies announced that Australia was once again at war
procedures to deal with a new generation of combat wounds with Germany. College Fellow Barbara Falk (Cohen 1929)
and damaged young men returning from the Middle East or told me, upon her election as a College Fellow in 2005, that
New Guinea. she did find it hard to take some matters at the University too
seriously. When I asked her why, she recalled standing on the
As the Second AIF added new names to the honour rolls of deck of a convoy ship and holding her new born baby as they
the Great War, the College reflected a nation in which women steamed from Britain to America in 1942. She remembered
once again found greater roles and responsibilities opened up talking to the world-famous political philosopher Isaiah Berlin
by the necessities of war. With victory, gendered expectations as together they watched a German torpedo cross the ship’s
of domestic duties returned. On Remembrance Day 1945, bow, reflecting on that fine line in the water separating what
the City of Melbourne Civil Defence Organisation presented became a long and distinguished life from near certain death.

8 LUCE Number 14 2015