Vivian Bullwinkel trained as a nurse and midwife at Broken Hill, New South Wales, and began her nursing career in Hamilton, Victoria, before moving to the Jessie McPherson Hospital in Melbourne in 1940. Although her attempt to volunteer as a nurse with the RAAF in 1941 was rejected (she had flat feet), Bullwinkel was able to join the Australian Army Nursing Service. Assigned to the 2/13th Australian General Hospital in September 1941 she sailed for Singapore.
When Singapore was evacuated in February 1942 Bullwinkle and 64 other nurses sailed out of the island but their ship was later sunk by the Japanese. Some of the survivors, including Bullwinkel and 20 other nurses, some civilians and about 100 British soldiers made it to shore on Banka Island. While the civilian women and children left in search of saftey, the soldiers and nurses surrendered to the Japanese occupying the island. In a horrific turn of events Japanese troops bayonetted the surviving soldiers and ordered the nurses back into the water where they machine-gunned them. Miraculously Bullwinkel was the only survivor. Bleeding and in a state of shock, she drifted ashore and hid in the jungle. Discovering a badly wounded British soldier she realised the only chance of survival was to again surrender to the Japanese troops. Bullwinkel spent three and half years in captivity; and was one of just 24 of the 65 nurses who had been on the Vyner Brooke to survive the war.
Bullwinkel retired from the army in 1947 and became Director of Nursing at Melbourne's Fairfield Hospital, in addition to being an associate of the Royal Red Cross. She devoted herself to the nursing profession and to honouring those killed on Banka Island, raising funds for a nurses' memorial and serving on numerous committees, including a period as a member of the Council of the Australian War Memorial, and later president of the Australian College of Nursing. In the decades following the war, Bullwinkel received many honours and awards, including the Florence Nightingale Medal, an MBE and the AM. She married in 1977 and returned to Banka Island in 1992 to unveil a shrine to the nurses who had not survived the war. She died on 3 July 2000.
