Elizabeth Burchill

Dora Elizabeth Burchill (1904 to 2003) was an Australian nurse, philanthropist and author, the youngest child of a family from Camberwell, Victoria. She trained as a nurse at the Homeopathic and Women's Hospitals in Melbourne and joined the Australian Inland Mission, starting in 1930 at the Innamincka Nursing Home, where she worked with the new Flying Doctor Service. She gained further qualifications in London, helped care for children displaced by the Spanish Civil War at Almeria, and in 1937 joined Wilfred Grenfell's mission on the coast of Labrador. In the Second World War she served as a captain in the Australian Army Nursing Service in Egypt and Palestine. After the war she ran child welfare clinics in Darwin and on Thursday Island and worked with the New Guinea health service. She wrote books on her experience and on the history of Australian nursing, and received the Medal of the Order of Australia in 1998.