Redcliffe Remembers WWI Nurse Eva Frances Coote as Community Marks Remembrance Day

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Redcliffe’s Remembrance Day commemorations will bring residents together at Anzac Place, while the story of First World War nurse Eva Frances Coote, who is buried at Redcliffe Cemetery, recalls the women who served far from Australia’s shores and carried the effects of war into their later lives.

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The community will gather at Anzac Place on Redcliffe Parade on Wednesday, 11 November 2026, for a service from 10:45 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. Organised by the Redcliffe RSL Sub Branch, the ceremony will include wreath-laying, the Last Post and a minute’s silence at 11:00 a.m., marking the anniversary of the Armistice that ended fighting with Germany in 1918.

Coote’s service has been highlighted by the City of Moreton Bay ahead of the commemorations. Her life is documented in military records, historical nursing research and correspondence that reveals how the effects of wartime service continued years after her return to Queensland.

From Queensland nursing wards to wartime Egypt

Born at Normanby Hill in Brisbane on 25 October 1885, Eva Frances Coote was the daughter of Samuel Thomas Coote and Fanny Frances Lambert. She was among the nurses who trained or worked at Ipswich Hospital before joining the Australian Army Nursing Service.

According to her Virtual War Memorial Australia record, Coote enlisted on 2 June 1917, aged 31. Her address at enrolment was Kangaroo Point, while her mother, living at Normanby Hill, was listed as her next of kin.

Later that month, Coote left Sydney aboard the RMS Mooltan and travelled overseas to serve as a staff nurse with the 14th Australian General Hospital in Egypt.

The hospital operated at Abbassia, near Cairo, in former Egyptian Army barracks before also serving at Port Said during the war. Its medical staff treated soldiers suffering from battlefield wounds and serious illnesses, including malaria, dysentery and pneumonia.

An Australian War Memorial collection record documents the hospital’s surroundings and the diseases that placed considerable pressure on medical services during the Sinai and Palestine campaigns. Accounts from other nurses describe demanding work in large wards, although Coote’s individual experiences have not been recorded in comparable detail.

Coote returned to Australia aboard the Orari in July 1919, after just over two years overseas. Her military appointment ended on 8 August 1919, with historical nursing records describing her discharge as medically unfit.

Seven years after the war, a request for help

Years after returning to civilian life, Coote was among the Queensland nurses who sought assistance for health conditions associated with their wartime service.

Her experience appears in research by historian Margaret Doherty at the University of New England, examining the lives of Queensland’s First World War nurses after their return to Australia.

Doherty identified a letter dated 30 November 1926 in which Coote sought assistance from the Queensland War Nurses’ Fund for war-related conditions. The correspondence was written more than seven years after Coote’s discharge from military service.

The fund’s surviving records document returned nurses seeking help with illness, financial hardship and difficulties maintaining employment. Some continued working despite poor health, while others relied on assistance from fellow nurses and organisations established to support them.

The published research does not identify Coote’s particular medical condition or establish whether her request was approved. Her letter nevertheless forms part of a wider record of Australian nurses whose needs continued long after the First World War had ended.

A wartime nurse remembered in Redcliffe and Ipswich

Coote married George Ellis Doolan in 1953, more than three decades after returning to Australia. She died in Redcliffe on 13 March 1974, aged 88, and was buried at Redcliffe Cemetery.

Her grave is recorded in Section 100, Row I, Plot 22, preserving a local connection to a woman whose military service took her from Queensland to the hospitals of wartime Egypt.

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Coote’s contribution was also recognised in Ipswich in 2017, when Ipswich Hospital Museum honoured 15 nurses associated with the hospital who had served during the First World War. Their names were included on a commemorative plaque acknowledging the women who brought their nursing skills to Australia’s wartime medical services.

The Redcliffe Anzac Place War Memorial, where residents will gather for this year’s ceremony, commemorates service across conflicts including the two world wars, Korea, Vietnam and peacekeeping operations.

City of Moreton Bay Mayor Peter Flannery, an Army veteran, has encouraged residents to remember the contributions of soldiers, nurses and other personnel who served their country. Further services are scheduled across Moreton Bay, including at Samford, Deception Bay, Beachmere, Caboolture, Bongaree, Woodford and Bray Park.

Published 10-Nov-2026

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