June 9th, 2025Our region’s history
with Natalie Poole
A lifetime of service
Trentham’s Edith Kathleen (Kath) Tresidder was born on March 12, 1907 in Blue Mountain, Trentham the second of five children to Martin and Ada Tresidder. Her father was a farmer at Cold Spring Farm, near Trentham and her mother kept house.
After leaving school she was a domestic, but yearned to help people. In 1934, Kath with her eldest sister Frances, left home to commence nursing training at the Mooroopna Base Hospital in the Goulburn Valley.
Kath graduated from her training and continued to work at the Mooroopna Base Hospital. A few years later, in July 1939, she qualified as a midwife at St George’s Hospital, Horsham. During World War II, Kath was nursing at Wembley Private Hospital in Horsham when she enlisted in the Australian Army Nursing Service on December 16, 1941, aged 34 years.
She saw service on Thursday Island and Rabaul from August 30, 1943 to May 16, 1947 serving 1817 days. She was promoted to lieutenant in 1943.
While serving, she contracted tuberculosis and entered the Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital upon her discharge from the armed forces in May 1947. She lost a lung due to the condition.
Immediately following her discharge from the Repatriation Hospital, Kath returned to Cold Spring Farm near Trentham where she looked after her ageing parents, and sister Sarah who had chronic arthritis.
She returned to full-time nursing in 1948 when she began at the Trentham Bush Nursing Hospital. Kath eventually became matron of the hospital and was the sole nurse for the six-bed hospital. She was assisted by a young woman who worked as the cook and laundress.
The demarcation between nursing duties and domestic duties was not so clear in those days and Kath involved herself in the preparation of meals and laundry duty as well as her matron and sole nurse commitments.
Dr Gweneth Wisewould was the town doctor at this time and Kath and Gwen got on very well and became friends.
From the Trentham Bush Nursing Hospital, Kath went on to nurse at Clunes District Hospital where she continued until her retirement in 1980, aged 73 years.
She moved to Bendigo in 1981 and became a resident of the Returned Serviceman’s League units. With a nursing background and having never married, Kath continued in an informal way to serve the profession she had entered as a young woman by attending to other residents when the need arose.
In her 90th year, Kath returned to the district in which she had been born and had lived a large part of her life.
In January 1997, she became a resident in the Trentham Hostel, a facility attached to the then Bush Nursing Hospital.
She had lived a wonderful life, serving many communities with her nursing skills but ultimately wanted to return to the place she called home for her final goodbyes.
Kath passed away peacefully on March 30, 1997 and is remembered on the Mooroopna Base Hospital Graduates’ Honour Roll and on her gravesite at Tylden, with the symbol of the Armed Forces.
