Sheilah Sheldrake volunteered over many years, providing assistance to the military veterans who were patients at Bundoora Repatriation Hospital, see Timeline: Bundoora Repatriation Hospital | Mont Park to Springthorpe. She also served on Advisory Committees with the Victorian Department of Mental Health in the 1970s with Dr Donald Oldmeadow, see Mont Park to Springthorpe | Springthorpe Heritage Project and others.
She is best known for helping to entertain the men, taking them on local outings to, for example, Badgers Creek Healesville for picnics. The men were very appreciative of the change in atmosphere and surroundings, where they could walk and enjoy refreshments and sometimes a barbeque. She also helped with movie sessions, dances and Christmas festivities organised with many other local RSL representatives and Red Cross volunteers.
Sheilah Sheldrake is fondly remembered in the Meeniyan district of Gippsland in Victoria, for trips she made there, with the Bundoora veterans. She arranged to visit Meeniyan or Inverloch assisted by the Meeniyan RSL. She called the men ‘her boys’ and they really loved her attentive care.
A Memorial plaque was placed in the Old Cheese Factory Park in Dumbalk, near Meeniyan to commemorate her work
See picture Sheilah Sheldrake | Monument Australia
This plaque is now in the Memorial Park (or Peace Park) in Dumbalk near a newly planted sapling.
(Photograph kindly supplied by Richard Powell, November 2024)
Sheilah had died in February 1984 and the Meeniyan RSL immediately organised this plaque. The RSL had provided refreshments and companionship for the veterans when they visited with her.
Sheilah’s World War II service
Sheilah had served with the VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) in WWII – VADs usually started as nursing orderlies but received extra medical training.
Her military records show that she was 5ft 5 inches tall with hazel eyes and light brown hair and was employed as a typist, stenographer and clerk as well as her nursing duties. She was one of the contingent of 200 VADs to travel in November 1941 to the Middle East on the ship the Queen Mary. See pic https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C325899 Their 200 names appear on the VAD Memorial in Chatswood South NSW
Sheilah served in the Middle East for 2 years, working as the Secretary to the Commandant of the VADs in the Middle East at No.6 Australian General Hospital in 1942 (see picture of her in her VAD uniform at a typewriter Photo #24918 https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C8698 )
She returned to work in the Northern Territory in 1943, when these VADs were posted to army hospitals in Australia and New Guinea. She was subsequently listed as serving with the AAMWS (Australian Army Medical Women’s Service) and there is a photograph of her (as No. 14) in a group at Rocky Creek Queensland General Hospital in October 1943.
The AAMWS grew out of the volunteers in the Red Cross and St John Ambulance, VADs serving with nursing sisters in the hospitals.
Sheilah married Senior Sergeant William George Sheldrake (born in WA in 1917) on Friday 15th December 1944 in Atherton North Queensland. William Sheldrake was at the 2/1 Convalescent Depot at Rocky Creek, in North Queensland on his return from overseas service. He had also served in the Middle East and contracted malaria in May 1943. At the Rocky Creek Depot the soldiers debriefed, exercised, fished and swam in Lake Barrine on the Atherton Tableland.
Sheilah was discharged from the AIF in October 1945 with the rank of Sergeant.
Sheilah and William Sheldrake had a daughter (born April 1946) and a son (born on 8 March 1950) at St Andrews Hospital in Melbourne.
Her husband William was the only son of William George Sheldrake Snr, and had been born in Fremantle WA on 21 Oct 1917. His father had served in World War I. William worked for the Victorian Public Service in Melbourne on discharge from the AIF. He is buried with his parents in WA having died in 2008, at 90 years of age, a long time after Sheilah.
Sheilah Sheldrake (nee Lennox-Bigger) and the Lennox-Bigger family
Born in Liverpool England in 1918 (as Sheilah Aimee Lennox-Bigger), she passed away in 1984 in Parkville (aged 66 years). Her mother was Anne Emily (nee Sargant) and her father was Theodore Anthony Lennox-Bigger.
Her father had been born in Ireland in about 1890. His family were members of the Plymouth Brethren and he served in WWI in France and then transferred to India. The family came to Australia in 1922 as part of a soldier immigration program, and lived first in Camperdown Victoria. Along with her brother Desmond and her sister Doreen, Sheilah attended the Ultima State School near Sea Lake in northern Victoria. By the end of the 1930s the family were in Melbourne where Sheilah’s father worked as an accountant. Sheilah then attended school at ‘Lowther Hall’ CEGGS in Essendon having received a part scholarship. Sheila’s father died in October 1943 in Daylesford Hospital aged 53, after going to Daylesford for a rest which was needed because of illness. He was a very active and respected secretary of the Victorian Chamber of Commerce, and had worked with the RSL to raise money for the World War II war effort.
Sheilah seems to have followed her father in doing important volunteer work. A second plaque was presented at Bundoora Repatriation Hospital on November 17th 1987, to commemorate Sheilah Sheldrake’s work with ex-service personnel. She had received an Order of the British Empire – Civil (B.E.M.) in 1979 for services to the community.
The Bundoora plaque which is now at DVA in Melbourne:
Presented by the Department of Veterans’
Affairs in recognition of her outstanding
service in the field of mental welfare
for ex-servicemen and women
On 11th September 1987
– Thanks to Arnold Wheeler, Bundoora Homestead Art Centre, Margaret Jorgensen and Richard Powell and Meeniyan RSL, for the insight provided here into Sheilah’s much valued volunteer work.
Kathy Andrewartha December 2024
