A photograph of Drouin nurse Kate Ethel Hearn standing outside her home "Thorney" at 144 Princes Way in the early 1900s.
Kate opened "Thorney" - located opposite the primary school site - as a private hospital.
Kate was born in St Arnaud in 1878 to parents James and Annie Hearn. She was one of seven children; two girls and five boys.
Her parents lived in St Arnaud for 14 years before deciding on a move to Drouin around 1887. James purchased a grocery business and ran the "City Cash Store" for almost 20 years.
Buln Buln Shire rates show Catherine (Kate) paying rates on the property - allotment 26, section seven - from 1907 until 1910, although her father owned the land for many years before and after. Newspaper advertisements for Nurse Hearn's Private Hospital also coincide with these dates.
An advertisement appeared in the West Gippsland Gazette on September 24, 1907. It read: "The Health Department has approved Nurse Hearn's house as a Private Hospital except for dangerous infections or contagious diseases".
By 1914, Kate Hearn was living in Kew where she worked as a nurse and shared a house with her brother Ralph, a civil servant. Ralph enlisted in the Australian Imperial Forces (AIF) on February 17, 1915, which was the same day that Kate's future husband Benjamin Bevan enlisted.
Benjamin was born in Wales and migrated to Australia, arriving in Melbourne on August 20, 1914. He would have been onboard a ship when Great Britain declared war with Germany on August 4.
Around 1915, Kate's parents moved to Kew. Kate lived with her parents until she sailed to London in around 1919.
Benjamin Bevan arrived back in Australia in March 1919 after being discharged from the AIF. He had been wounded twice while serving in France; once with a fractured femur and the second time with a gunshot wound to his hip and abdomen.
In June 1919, he sailed back to Britain. Kate and Benjamin married at the home of his parents "Dean Villa" in Clyne near Neath in Glamorgan, Wales. They both appear in the 1921 UK census; Benjamin is living at his parent's farm and Kate is a visitor in a women's only boarding house in Southampton. Her home address is given as Clyne, Wales.
In July 1921, Benjamin departed for Australia, followed by Kate in October.
Kate didn't appear to go back to nursing until 1925 when she started working at the Memorial Hospital in Seymour.
Kate retired from nursing in about 1936 and died in July 1952.
Information courtesy Stories of Drouin, a cooperative oral history project between The Committee for Drouin, the Drouin History Group and 3BBR FM to preserve local stories.