Olive’s story: women were there too – Olive Haynes (Dooley)
By Liz Pidgeon
‘I am so glad I brought my gramophone that was given to me. The men simply love it, and I have to promise it days ahead to the different huts and tents. They start it going the minute they awake, and never stop until they have to. I am going to try and get some more records when I next go to Marseilles.”
So wrote Sister Olive Haynes, one of over 2000 Australian nurses who served with the Australian Army Nursing Service during World War One. It is estimated another 1000 or so Australian women volunteered as nurses during the war.
Olive was born in Adelaide in 1888, the second child and eldest of four daughters to the Reverend James Haynes and his second wife Emma, nee Creswell. She completed her nursing training at Adelaide Hospital in 1912 before enlisting in 1914 aged 25.
She arrived at Alexandria in mid-January 1915 where the organisation of hospital sites and accommodation for nurses was still being established. She was later posted to Lemnos Island.
She endured stifling heat at a time when nurses’ uniforms were long and voluminous. When the temperature reached 122 degrees Fahrenheit, Olive wrote that the minute she got on duty she took her cape off, rolled up her sleeves and turned the collar in. To the heat, the flies, long hours – sometimes only a break of a few hours between one shift and the next. On June 25, 1915, Olive wrote in her diary, “250 wounded in tonight or tomorrow. Ghastly smell like decomposing mummies.”
In 1916 she was posted to France. She wrote in June, “Three more convoys in tonight. Pete [her nursing sister friend] and I agree we’ve never felt so homesick and sick of things before. It is so lonely, and I never feel anything but tired and fed up… Such a lot of gassed men with the last lot.”
Olive met Lieutenant Norval H. Dooley, also known as Pat. Pat was born in Bendigo in 1893 but later with his family moved to Ivanhoe. Pat attended the University of Melbourne and studied law and at one time was a champion walker. Following his graduation in May 1915, he enlisted in the Australian Army Medical Corps, probably partly due to poor eye sight which made him unsuitable for the front lines in this early stage of the war. He was assigned to the No. 2 Australian Casualty Clearing Station, which received the wounded from the Gallipoli Campaign. It is here that he met – and worked with Sister Olive Haynes.
In November 1917, now while serving in France, he was wounded and while recovering in England, her married Olive in Oxford in December. He was sent home. Olive set sail for home herself at the end of February 1918. She had given three and a half years to the Australian Army Nursing Service.
They returned to Ivanhoe where they settled to bring up a family of seven children.
Pat Dooley continued his military service and was promoted to a captain in 1920, and then Staff Officer, 3rd Grade, Intelligence Section, General Staff. He resigned from this role in 1931. World War Two led to further service where he was appointed a Staff Captain in October 1940 with the Australian Army Legal Department.
In the 1940s he was the honorary treasurer of the Melbourne Legacy Club – an organisation formed following World War One to support the dependents of deceased men and women.
He later operated a successful legal business – Norval H. Dooley and Breen in Queen Street, Melbourne during which time he provided legal advice to the State Electricity Commission of Victoria.
During the depression Olive helped people who were out of work and “on sustenance”, providing them with meals and work, and during World War II she worked for the Comforts Fund, repairing and classifying books. She rolled bandages for the Red Cross and served on the Children’s Hospital canteen. She also volunteered as a V.A.D. or aid for the Women’s Hospital, and was made a Life Governor in 1945.
One of her daughter’s Phil, had Down Syndrome. Olive helped establish a school for the mentally retarded which evolved into “Helping Hand” and the “The Ivanhoe and Diamond Valley Centre for Intellectually Disabled Adults. Olive became a proficient crafter, knitting dolls and other gifts to sell at fetes in Hawden Street Heidelberg to raise money for the organisation.
In 1970 The Ivanhoe Helping Hand Association presented Olive with a silver medal to commemorate 30 years of service to the organization.
Olive passed away on 10 April 1978 in Heidelberg aged 90. Pat died that September. They had been together for over 60 years.
Her World War One story received public attention following the publication of her wartime diary and family letters after her death in 1991. In recent years the nurses stories have emerged and Olive has been portrayed on stage * and screen bringing recognition to the dedication and service of those “other Anzacs”. Lest we forget.
*Through these lines is an original Australian play based on the letters and diaries of Australian army nurses serving in WWI. (Source: “Through these lines” on Facebook)
*ANZAC Girls is an Australian television drama series that first screened on ABC1 on 10 August 2014. The six-part series tells the rarely told true stories of the nurses serving with the Australian Army Nursing Service at Gallipoli and the Western Front during the First World War. The series is based on Peter Rees’ book The Other ANZACs as well as diaries, letters, photographs and historical documents. (Source Wikipedia)
SOURCES
Advertising. (1941, February 8). The Argus , p. 20.
Australian War Memorial Exhibitions Nurses WW1
General Items. The Register 1 Jun 1916: page 6.
Heidelberg Historian (newsletter of the Heidelberg Historical Society) August 1991
Through these lines Olive Haynes
WEDDINGS. (1918, February 23). The Mail (, p. 8.
Photo: Dooley Grave at Warringal Cemetery, Heidelberg. Photo: David Weatherill
This story also appears in “Fine Spirit and Pluck: World War One Stories from Banyule, Nillumbik and Whittlesea” published by Yarra Plenty Regional Library, August 2016
