Sister Rosa O'Kane Grave

Sister Rosa O'Kane Grave, Woodman Point

For Valour
In Honoured and Revered
Memory of
Sister Rosa O'Kane
A.A.N. Service. Late of
Charters Towers, Queensland
Died here 21st December 1918
of Pneumonic - Influenza
Only Daughter of Mrs J.C. O'Kane
R.I.P.
Erected by the Patriotic Committee
Charters Towers Comrade Nurses
and Queensland Friends

Sister Rosa O'Kane (Born Queensland 14-Apr-1890 - Died 21-Dec-1918) was originally bound for the battlefields on the SS Wyreema with a party of other Nurses. As a result of peace being declared their journey was cut short having never reached the battlefields, they disembarked the SS Wyreema at Fremantle on 10th of December 1918. By this time the effects of the worldwide influenza epidemic were being felt, volunteers from the nurses aboard the SS Wyreema worked at the Quarantine Station Hospital tending to returning soldiers. The troopship SS Boonah had arrived at Fremantle on the 7th of December 1918 with a reported 90 cases of influenza (Spanish Flu) on board. Rosa O'Kane volunteered for this duty and shortly after died from influenza.