Sister Agnes COATE

Agnes COATE was born in 1876 at Woodend, Victoria, to Elizabeth (nee Hamilton) and John Coate.  Her father died in 1887, leaving his widow to raise nine children under 20 years of age. 

She enlisted into the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) on 22 August 1916 and, as she was asked her age rather than her date of birth, she claimed to be 32 when she was actually 40 years old.

Agnes was one of the 560 members of the Australian Army Nursing Service to serve in India between July 1916 and 1919.  She served at the Victoria War Hospital in Bombay from mid-September 1916 to late July 1917. 

Agnes was posted to the British Salonica Force[1] and served at the 66^th (British) General Hospital - a tent hospital – at Exochi (formerly Hortokopi, 12km east of Thessaloniki) from late August 1917 until it was evacuated in November 1917, when she was posted to the 52^nd BGH at Kalamaria in the southern outskirts of Thessaloniki.

In May 1918 Agnes was admitted to hospital with ‘debility’, the term used to describe physical weakness as a result of illness, often involving muscle weakness, loss of strength and weight loss.

She was evacuated to Egypt and hospitalised at the 14^th Australian General Hospital in Port Said from early June until she embarked to return to Australia 22 July 1918. 

She spent some time recuperating at Osborne House in Swinburne Street, North Geelong.

Her AIF appointment was terminated on 25 November 1918.

She is recorded on the Australian Electoral Roll of 1926 as a nurse residing and nursing at the Caulfield Repatriation Hospital. 

In 1929, she gained a Special Certificate for Infant Welfare Nursing and became a member of the Victorian Baby Health Centres Association while living at 89 Booran Road Caulfield. 

Agnes did not marry and died at St Anne’s Private Hospital, St Kilda on 10 February 1974.  She was cremated at Springvale Botanical Cemetery and her ashes scattered.

Abridged from: Cheryl SCOTT and Margaret PHELAN War Worn & Weary The Convalescent Nurses of Osborne House Geelong 1917-1919, Osborne Park Association Inc, 2018.

[1]  The British Salonika Force (BSF) was formed in October 1915 when Greek Prime Minister Eleftheros Venizelo invited the Allies into Greece to confront the German-backed Bulgarians.  King Constantine I of Greece, who supported the Germans, later fled into exile.  It was considered safer to send Australian nurses via Egypt to Greece rather than nurses from England through the German submarine-infested Mediterranean Sea.  The force was named after Greece’s second city on the Thermaic Gulf, although that had officially been named Thessaloniki in 1912.