HISTORY TALKING with HELEN McANULTY Chance Conversations

Some of the fascinating things about collecting Oral History are the unexpected links that occasionally occur.

This happened to me some years ago when I was living in the small country town of Gulgong in the Central West. When the town celebrated the centenary of the hospital, I was asked to investigate and write about its history.

First I spoke to the amazing woman who had been the matron of the hospital in those early years. She told me about the procedures performed in the operating theatres by general practitioners because there was no access to specialist surgeons.

“I remember in the early 1940s the doctor amputated a man’s leg”, she told me.

“I was the theatre nurse and he passed it to me. I was really surprised at how heavy it was!”

There were, of course, no antibiotics in those days and careful nursing was paramount to the patient’s recovery.

I could only hope that he survived