Gwen Fleming

Mary Gwenyth "Gwen" Fleming (née Lusby) (9 June 1916 – 18 January 2011) was an Australian medical doctor who specialised in thoracic medicine and served in the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps during the Second World War.

Early life and education Mary Gwenyth Lusby was born in Taree in 1916, the third of six children of John and Caroline Lusby. Her maternal grandmother, Caroline Fitzhenry, had been a pioneer of health care in the Clarence River district of northern NSW, and founded the Bilongil Private Hospital at Casino, and the St Rock's Hospital at Ballina. Through the Fitzhenrys, Gwen was a cousin of the film star Errol Flynn.

Gwen's father John Lusby was a school principal and classics master in country NSW, and so the family moved around the state until his eventual teaching appointment in Sydney. He insisted on his daughters acquiring a high education.

She graduated as MBBS from the University of Sydney in 1939 and was among the first group of women medical graduates to pass through the University and Sancta Sophia College.

Gwen joined the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps (RAAMC) and, along with Captain Helen Braye, was appointed to the staff of the 113th Australian General Hospital at Concord in Feb 1942, where Captains Margery Scott-Young and Eileen Scott-Young were already serving as the only female doctors. In May 1942, The Daily Telegraph reported that "for the first time in the history of Australia, women doctors have been enlisted in the AIF", and that Gwen was one of six serving at Concord.

Initially a Captain, Gwen was later promoted to the rank of Major. Although she specialised in thoracic medicine, she oversaw all medical procedures at the hospital as Officer Commanding the Medical Company. Sister Judith (Lusby) Follett worked with the WRANS in naval intelligence.

The Flemings returned to Australia in 1950 and settled in Wollstonecraft, a suburb of Sydney. Gwen's career was largely interrupted by caring for their six children - Margaret, Paul, Justin, Judith, James and Peter - but in 1973 she nonetheless appointed Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. Her husband established a career as a pioneer vascular surgeon and founded the Australian Association of Surgeons, but his shock death of a heart attack in 1974 brought Gwen back into medical practice. She took up a post at a cancer clinic on Macquarie Street while also teaching at St Vincent's Hospital.

She retired at 77 years old and died in 2011. After Fleming's death, Marie Bashir, then Governor of New South Wales, described her as "an outstanding Australian woman who was an inspiration to so many who had the privilege of meeting her – both within the medical profession and beyond".