User:Alexemable/sandbox

Rosemary Opala

Rosemary Opala née Fielding (1923-2008)was an Australian artist, writer and nurse, and is regarded as an influential Queensland woman environmentalist and community activist.

Born in Palmwoods, in the sunshine coast hinterland of Queensland, she moved to Brisbane in the 1940s to complete an art course at George Street Technical College (later QUT). At the commencement of WWII, Opala began nurses training after leaving art school, in order to 'do something more useful'. During this period, while training at Brisbane General Hospital, she was a freelance writer under pseudonym, writing for New Idea and Australian Women's weekly, as well as sketching and drawing with subjects including patients and staff in the hospital and Brisbane city. While working in Brisbane, Opala met with Hansen's Disease patients from the Peel Island there for tests, and was convinced to transfer to the Lazaret (leper colony or Leprosarium) on the island in the Queensland Moreton Bay area. From the late 1940s until the 1957 when the Island was closed as a Lazaret, Opala worked on the Island with Hansen's disease patients, with intermittent periods of other work in mainland of Queensland. During the 50's and 60's Opala continued to write and sketch, with subjects being experiences of the Island and flora on the island. During a period off Peel Island, Opala and her husband moved to the Redland bay, and later to Coochiemudlo Island, where they built a house