Eslyn Wargent

INDUCTED 2009

Aunty Eslyn Wargent (nee Hudson) was born at Mona Mona Mission, North Queensland in 1950. Her mother was a Western Yalanji woman and her father was a Ewamin man from North Queensland. Aunty Eslyn began her nursing career in 1967 when she was accepted into a nurse training course at the Townsville General Hospital. After two years Aunty Eslyn transferred to Inverell District Hospital.

In 1970 she was employed at the Concord Repatriation General Hospital in Sydney, where she worked in the kidney dialysis unit. In 1979, Aunty Eslyn began her work in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community-Controlled Health Sector. Aunty Eslyn, along with Jimmy Savage and Samut Garling completed a door-to-door survey from as far south as the Murray Upper, North West to Georgetown, through the Tablelands up to Mossman and all of Cairns. The survey focused on the needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in North Queensland and where they were accessing health services when they were unwell. This survey played a significant contribution to the establishment of Wuchopperen Health Service, where Aunty Eslyn became one of the first nurses to be employed. Throughout the late 1980s and 1990s Aunty Eslyn made many contributions to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Sector. These included: contributing to the establishment of the

AIWHEP working with Bev O’Hara in setting up the pilot project for Home and Community Care in the seventeen communities of Cape York working with Mookai Rose-Bi-Bayan on the

Doola Chalai project, and co-publishing a book called ‘Aged and Ageing in Kowanyama’. From its inception in 1997, Eslyn worked as a Senior Health Worker at Wuchopperen Health Service and contributed to the growth of the service over the past thirty years. Eslyn retired in 2013.