Ruth Heathcock

Ruth Sabina Heathcock, born Ruth Rayney in Murray Bridge, South Australia, on 11 January 1901, was an award-winning remote area nurse in the Northern Territory of Australia who specialised in the treatment of leprosy. She began nursing training at sixteen at the Adelaide General Hospital and later the Lameroo Hospital, and in 1930 sailed to Darwin to join John Flynn's Australian Inland Mission. Living at Borroloola with her husband, a mounted constable, she treated Aboriginal people with leprosy and lobbied for treatment on their own country instead of removal to an isolated facility on Channel Island in Darwin Harbour. In March 1941 she travelled 145 kilometres by dugout canoe to treat a man who had accidentally shot himself, and the act of bravery earned her the Order of the British Empire in 1951. She was named citizen of the year by the Marion Council in 1988 and died on 7 May 1995 at the age of 94.