Ruth Heathcock

Ruth Sabina Heathcock BEM (née Rayney) (11 January 1901 – 7 May 1995) was an award-winning remote area nurse in the Northern Territory of Australia who specialised in the treatment of leprosy. She received an Order of the British Empire for rowing 145 kilometres to save a man who accidentally shot himself.

Early life

Heathcock was born in Murray Bridge in South Australia in 1901, one of seven children of railway engineer Frederick John Rayney and his wife Emily Melissa (née Soar). She was interested in Aboriginal culture from childhood, where she befriended many Aboriginal people in the region. After she recovered she went to work at Point McLeay Mission. Heathcock began treating Aboriginal people with leprosy. She lobbied to treat people on their land, despite policy at the time that required lepers to be moved to an isolated facility on Channel Island in Darwin Harbour. She developed close relationships to Alawar people, who took her to remote areas to treat lepers who were hiding to avoid relocation. Ted eventually wrote to the League of Nations in Geneva outlining a case for people to be treated on their land. It was eventually adopted by the Administration. and Jupiter and their wives Bessie and Maggie down the McArthur River into the open sea to the mouth of the Wearyan River in a dugout canoe, a three-day journey.

During World War II, Heathcock and her husband were evacuated, Ted to Alice Springs where he died in 1943, while Ruth took a group of lepers to South Australia. She was named 'citizen of the year' in 1988 by the Marion Council. She returned to the Territory in 1984 for the filming of a documentary about her life by Karen Hughes called Pitjiri: the snake that will not sink. She was named Pitjiri in 1936 by a group of Aboriginal people from Arnhem Land, meaning 'a snake that floats on water and cannot sink'.

Heathcock died on 7 May 1995 at the age of 94.