09/24/2025
Unsung Hero 00553 at The Australian Stockman's Hall of Fame
Elsie Beatrice SMITH (nee May), born. 19th August 1884, Melbourne VIC, died. 12th January 1980, Brisbane QLD
The reason I think I should nominate and write about my late mother, Elsie Beatrice (Bechanan Yuile) Smith, as an Unsung Heroine is because she was the first woman orchardist in Queensland. She trained as a nurse at the Alexandra Hospital for children in Sydney prior to marrying my late father, Dr William Douglas Buchanan Yuille. They travelled to Edinburgh, Scotland, where my father was in charge of a military hospital during the First World War. My brother, Ian Douglas Buchanan Yuille, and I were born during this period.
We returned to Perth, Western Australia, in early 1917 and my father took up practice until his death in September of that year. After about a year finalising business affairs, my mother returned with we children to Melbourne to see her relatives on route to Goondiwindi, Queensland. She was to rejoin her best friend - my godmother - and her husband, Dr Derek Welpley, who was also a close friend of my father.
While the intention was that my mother would become the matron of his private hospital, as events turned out, within 18 months she was to nurse Dr Welpley through the final stages of tuberculosis in the Toowoomba Hospital. His death saw the two friends widowed - both 31 years of age, and one with two small children to support.
My mother took on a number of private nursing cases around Goondiwindi until we children contracted croup and whooping cough. On the advice of Dr Harlin, she took up the position of matron at the Stanthorpe General Hospital which, at that time, contained a sanitorium for returned soldiers from the First World War. As the climate seemed to suit the children, she was persuaded to take up land for an orchard. Trees were felled, and a comfortable house with two fireplaces was built. There were four bedrooms including one for a nursemaid who looked after the children.
Mother undertook all of the difficult work of developing and running the orchard with the help of one outside man. One of the men who filled this position had been a wardsman and an ex-digger who admired mother greatly. As mother had been impressed by the English land army women during the war, she adopted their manner of dress. Their uniform, with leggings around the boots proved far more practical than the more traditional loose smock. She was highly respected in the district, and was assisted both by other orchardists and agricultural inspectors.
While waiting the two years until her fruit trees would bear, she planted vegetables - peas, beans and cabbages.
During this period, she was referred to as "Mrs Wiggs of the cabbage patch". She continued to nurse from time to time and took in paying guests from Brisbane who came up for the milder climate in the summer. One of my earliest recollections was when she was looking forward to picking the first stone fruits, etc., and a hail storm ruined the whole crop. I came out onto the verandah to see the tears streaming down her face - one of the rare times I had seen her cry. If it wasn't hail storms, it was fruit fly or codlin moth which played havoc with the crops.
It was a happy life for we children with our ponies and picnics. We had to do our share of picking peas and beans and picking up apples from the ground and even sorting and packing at times. It was a good healthy life, full of fun, exploring and adventures in Thunderbolt's caves behind us. This part of mother's life was written up in a Melbourne paper on 2/2/1925, "Lady Orchardist - Unique Career - A Fascinating Story" and in "Women's Views and News" under the title "Pioneer Horticulturist". Seven years hard, heartbreaking seasons ended in her having to give the orchard away and walk off without a penny following the failure of the Primary Producers Bank - in which her savings were invested - in 1925.
She took the children to Brisbane and took a job as manageress of the Country Press Restaurant. She also opened guest houses. She had been one of the foundation members of the Country Women's Association. Elsie married again in 1936, to Cyril Smith. My mother lived a full life until her death at the age of 94, having outlived two husbands, a son and a son-in-law. Elsie Beatrice Smith was a real battler and survivor, a woman of grit and determination.
