Kathleen Patricia (Kath) Bonnin

Kathleen Patricia (Kath) Bonnin (17 March 1911 – 14 September 1985) was an Australian army nurse. Captain Kath Bonnin was awarded an Associate Royal Red Cross and she was mentioned in despatches.

Life Bonnin was born in 1911 in the Adelaide suburb of Hindmarsh. Her whole family was involved in medicine. Her father, James Atkinson Bonnin, practised medicine as, in time, did four of her five surviving brothers – one who became a lawyer. She, like her sister Win, and Winifred Turpin, her mother, were nurses. She qualified in Adelaide and, as a midwife, in the UK in 1936. She took a long holiday out travelling in Europe and in 1938 she became an air-hostess. She joined the Australian Army Nursing Service as a sister. She was in Adelaide until 1941 when she as part of the 2/7th Australian General Hospital went to the middle east on RMS Aquitania.

In 1946 she was sent to London as part of the victory contingent on board HMAS Shropshire.

After the war she worked at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, specialising in looking at electrocardiograms, until 1964. Bonnin died in 1985 in North Adelaide.