Indigenous Australia

Marion Walls (née Smith) and Victor B. Walls, 1930

Provenance unknown

Marion Elizabeth Smith (1891–1957), nurse, expatriate, and education advocate, was born on 12 March 1891 at Holdsworthy, New South Wales, on Dharawal Country. She was the first of five children of English-born George W. Smith, farmer, and his locally born wife Elizabeth (1865–1951), née Leane. George and Elizabeth were first cousins: George’s mother and Elizabeth’s father, William Leane, were English-born siblings. Elizabeth’s mother, Lucy Leane (1840–1895), formerly Burns, née Walker, was ‘a proud Cabrogal woman from the Dharug nation’ (Thorpe 2018).

The Leanes had a farm on the Georges River. In 1893 Lucy, describing herself as ‘the only surviving aboriginal of the Liverpool district’ (Sydney Morning Herald 9 June 1893, 6), petitioned the New South Wales Aborigines Protection Board for a boat to take her produce to market. A government report on the matter stated that the couple:

had a farm of 82 acres of freehold land, an orchard of 10 acres, and a vineyard of one acre besides a weather-board house, milch cows, and farming implements, the whole comprising property of considerable value. (Sydney Morning Herald 23 June 1893, 2)

As Lucy was believed to be living in ‘comfortable circumstances’ (Sydney Morning Herald 23 June 1893, 2), her request for a boat was denied.

Soon after Marion’s birth, she and her parents moved to England, where her younger siblings, George (b. 1892), Reuben (b. 1894), Marjorie (b. 1901), and Edward (b. 1903), were born. The family moved again in 1905, this time to Canada, arriving at Halifax, Nova Scotia, before settling at Fredericton Junction, New Brunswick. Marion would never return to the land of her birth.

In 1911 Smith travelled to Massachusetts, United States of America, to train as a nurse at New England Hospital for Women and Children. She graduated in 1913 and worked at the hospital as a general nurse and midwife for the next three years. Returning to Canada in 1916, she joined the Victorian Order of Nurses and commenced further training in district nursing and social service work. Members of the VON cared for patients who were unable to obtain nursing help in their own homes, usually the elderly, the poor, expectant and convalescing mothers, and those who lived in remote areas.

On 2 March 1917 Smith (using the name Marion Elizabeth Leane Smith, probably to distinguish herself from other Marion Smiths) joined Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service Reserve (QAIMNSR) as a staff nurse. Her brothers George and Reuben had already enlisted and were serving in France; George would be killed in action on 9 April 1917. Leaving Canada on 7 March, she arrived in England ten days later, before being sent to France on 30 March, where she was assigned to work on the No. 41 Ambulance Train. Ambulance trains transported wounded soldiers from battle; five hundred or more at a time could be moved. In cramped conditions, Smith assisted with surgeries and provided other medical aid. The sister in charge praised her work:

Staff Nurse Smith has given complete satisfaction in the carrying out of her duties whilst on this train; her work is both quickly and efficiently done. She is most capable in every way. (NA WO 399/7731) 

When her QAIMNSR contract expired in September 1918, Smith requested an extension, which was granted. She served with the British Expeditionary Force in Italy and at the University War Hospital, Southampton, England, before departing England for Canada on 14 May 1919.

Smith married Victor Benjamin Walls, a clergyman, on 1 January 1924 at ‘Home Farm,’ her parents’ residence at Fredericton Junction; they would have one child, a son, Victor Frederick Walls (b. 1927). The couple moved to San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago in 1924, as Walls was appointed principal of Naparima College. The college had been established by the Canadian Presbyterian Mission in the 1890s to educate Indo-Trinidadian boys and continued to cater mainly to these underprivileged students. Smith quickly became an integral part of the life of the college. She not only provided nursing care to the students, attending to fractures, cuts, and other maladies, but also raised funds for a dormitory, dining hall, and infirmary, and started glee clubs, holiday programs, and an annual banquet for resident students, staff, and other local missionaries. In 1928 she instituted a First Aid and Ambulance Corps at the college and she wrote the school hymn in around 1930.

Drawing on her experience of first aid and home nursing in the tropics, Smith had published a textbook, A Handbook on First Aid and Home Nursing, in the late 1920s. She was elected president of the South Certified Nurses’ Association (later the Certificated Nurses’ Association of Trinidad and Tobago or CNATT) in 1930, continuing in this role until 1946.

During World War II Smith and her husband were instrumental in bringing the Red Cross to Trinidad and Tobago, serving as commandants of detachment for the British Red Cross Society, Trinidad and Tobago Central Council Branch. Smith also organised the Junior Red Cross at Naparima College and gave instruction in first aid there and at Naparima Girls’ High School. In 1946 she was awarded the British Red Cross certificate for her war service and given the rank of lieutenant colonel. That year she conducted a survey of disabled children in Trinidad and Tobago for the government, identifying several cases that were too severe to be treated locally and were subsequently sent to Canada for treatment. Later she was instrumental in raising funds for the establishment of the Princess Elizabeth Home for Handicapped Children in the Port of Spain, which opened in 1953.

When Walls retired as principal of Naparima College in 1953, he and Smith returned to live at New Brunswick, Canada. Smith suffered a myocardial infarction and died at New Brunswick on 24 January 1957, survived by her husband and son. Celebrated in Australia as ‘possibly the only Aboriginal woman to serve during the First World War’ (Hong 2016), she occupies a singular place in Australian history, having served not for Australia, which prohibited people not substantially of European origin or descent from enlisting, though many did, but for Canada. To her Aboriginal family she is a role model whose ‘fighting spirit’ (Thorpe 2018) is a source of great pride.

Odette Best (Yugambeh, Goreng Goreng, Boonthamurra) and Abby Slinger (Wiradjuri) co-wrote the article.