102-year-old Dr Monica Bullen, AMA’s (NSW)’s oldest member. Right: Newspaper clipping showing Monica (left) with Nancy Bird Walton and Shirley Dawson, under the nose of a DC3, Bankstown Airport. Below: Monica graduating as a Doctor of Pathology. Images: supplied.
A former microbiologist, flight sergeant, tennis player, tai chi master and devout Catholic, at 102 Dr Monica Bullen is AMA (NSW)’s equal oldest member.
MONICA BULLEN WAS a brighteyed, post-war medical student at Sydney University when a senior doctor asked her, “Why do you want to become a doctor Monica? You have beautiful eyes, why don’t you just marry one?”
“This doctor clearly didn’t know Monica, or how determined she was,” Monica’s nephew Bernard Chapman told The NSW Doctor.
Growing up during the Great Depression, Monica was a gifted student, but funds wouldn’t stretch to allow her to finish school. After doing a secretarial course she took up a position at a printer.
Inspired by the exploits of pioneering Australian aviator Nancy Bird Walton, Monica co-founded the Australian Women’s Flying Club in 1938. Fascinated by aviation, with an eye on events in Europe, the women felt it important to learn to fly in order to make themselves available in the event of war.
Throughout her training Monica learnt aircraft operation and maintenance, navigation, meteorology, Morse code, signalling, aircraft recognition, armed and unarmed defence and other battle skills.
In 1941 Monica joined the Royal Air Force in the Women’s Branch known as the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF), serving as a signal operator until the end of the war. Women did not serve on the front line, but
she hoped they could fill roles left absent by men.
“The Minister for Air very early on said that no WAAFs were going to go overseas. So, we knew whatever we did would be at home,” Monica told The NSW Doctor.
Monica used every bit of ingenuity to finish her high school diploma. “She was naturally gifted at maths so didn’t need much help,” her niece Monica Chapman recalls. “A family friend taught her French and for the other subjects my aunt, in her twenties, somehow learned these at a boys’ public school.”
That determination took her through to graduation as a doctor of pathology and an esteemed career as a microbiologist at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital.
“I always wanted to be a pathologist,” Monica said. “I loved the laboratory work.”
“I used to go and visit when I was a kid,” her niece said. “She used to tell me about these discoveries she’d made, and I could see how chuffed she was. I didn’t really understand what she had achieved I just know they made her so proud.”
Faith has always been important to Monica who until a couple of years ago attended mass every day. In later life she kept fit playing tennis, she mastered tai chi and continued Spanish lessons well into her nineties.
Asked on her 100th birthday the secret to a long life, she replied, “If you want a long life it helps to pick your genes well. My mother died at 101.” dr.
Inspired by the exploits of pioneering Australian aviator Nancy Bird Walton, Monica co-founded the Australian Women’s Flying Club in 1938.