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Yvonne Christian
Yvonne (Dickie) Antoine was born into a French family in Perth, the youngest of seven children of Alice and Edmond Antoine. Yvonne was educated at Loreto Convent in Claremont, and joined WA Newspapers at the age of 17 where she met her future husband, advertising clerk Ron Christian (he called her ‘Tilly’ because of her job as a cashier!). By 1939 she had already been a member of the Dalkeith Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) for some years, having been prevented from becoming a nurse by her family, who considered the profession ‘unsuitable’.
Yvonne (in VAD uniform) and donkey at the Step Pyramid in Egypt.
She and Ron Christian became engaged in 1941 before she embarked on the Queen Mary for the Middle East as a VAD. She and Ron met again in Jerusalem in 1941 before his eventual redeployment to the Pacific War. Yvonne returned to Perth in 1942 (again on the Queen Mary) where she became secretary to Hollywood Hospital’s Commanding Officer. She married Ron (MC & Bar) in Perth in February 1943 and they had five children: Julie (1944), Jan (1946), Bret (1948), Rod (1949) and Greg (1954).
Photos of Yvonne and Ron's wedding at Star of the Sea, Cottesloe, 26 February 1943.
Yvonne standing in the VAD's tent lines at Kilo 89 Camp in Palestine wearing unofficial clothing to keep out the winter cold.
Yvonne in riding gear (left, with Jeannie Robertson), after exercising horses brought to the Middle East by the British.
Ward 1, 7th AGH, Palestine. Yvonne (front right) with staff and patients.
Yvonne was a prolific letter writer and photographer; some of her correspondence is quoted in WAN publications of the time, and many of her wartime photographs are held by the Australian War Memorial. Ron died on Anzac Day in 1989, and in 1994 Yvonne married George Day, also a former employee of WAN. George died in 1999, and Yvonne passed away in September 2021 at Bethanie in Subiaco, having celebrated her 100th birthday in 2018 with family guests from Perth, Canberra, Melbourne, Singapore, London, Wellington and France.
Always interested in family history, Yvonne played a central role in identifying and claiming the nitrate Lumiere film stock discovered in her father’s old Swan Wool Scour building in Fremantle in 1978. The story circulating at the time had failed to identify the family’s ownership of the films, given to her father by her great-uncle Georges Boivin, an associate of the great Lumiere film maker Marius Sestier in 1896-7. As a result of Yvonne’s legal action taken with her siblings, Channel 9 eventually lodged the films with the National Film and Sound Archive where they are now held in Canberra.
Group portrait of the Dalkeith, WA, Division of Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) members with an unidentified Australian officer (seated front. left). WFX17019 Pte Yvonne Marcelline Marie Antoine is standing in the second row, on the right. The VAD movement had its origins as a civilian nursing movement which was widely represented throughout the major towns and cities of Australia. The VAD groups had close links with the Red Cross and the Order of St. John, who provided first aid training. With the outbreak of the Second World War, the VADs, predominantly women, placed a huge pool of labour at the disposal of the government. The VADs were welcome for they provided, at little cost to the government, much needed additional staff for the army and civilian hospitals and convalescent homes. While many would later be integrated with the Australian armed forces, and serve overseas, the VAD organization maintained a strong tradition of service within Australia in large military hospitals and at other civilian establishments. Australian VAD members, and those who also joined the Australian Army Medical Women's Services (AAMWS), made a vital contribution to the defence of Australia during the Second World War. Some 8,485 served in both categories during the war and many VAD members who served on the home front would later receive the Civilian Service Medal in recognition of their wartime service to Australia.
References and Links
Notes and donkey and couple photo courtesy Julie Dyson née Christian. See also Julie Dyson's oral history recording available via Trove.
VAD photo from this page.
Link to the AWM photos from Yvonne Christian's Middle East albums.
This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally created on 18 March, 2022 and hosted at freotopia.org/people/christianyvonne.html (it was last updated on 25 January, 2024), and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.