Way We Were: How deadly pandemic of Spanish flu rocked Brisbane
Carried by troops returning from World War I, the poisonous branches of the Spanish flu twisted around the globe, stretching from Australia to the Arctic. A quarter of the earth’s population were taken ill and as many as 100 million people died.
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It took root in the mud, blood and exhaustion of the trenches on the Western Front and within months it killed more people than the First and Second World Wars combined.
Carried by troops returning from World War I, the poisonous branches of the Spanish flu twisted around the globe, stretching from Australia to the Arctic.
Almost every part of the world suffered, with more than a quarter of the earth’s population taken ill. As many as 100 million people died.
Little wonder that medical teams today are desperately trying to strangle the Coronavirus before it blooms.
While quarantine measures in Pacific outposts such as American Samoa and New Caledonia a century ago made those places free of Spanish flu, the disease hit four out of every 10 Australians and killed almost 15,000 of us.
The indigenous population suffered terribly.
One hundred years ago today The Brisbane Courier reported that on Thursday Island the population was being lashed by the tail end of the pandemic and the death toll had risen there to 27.
In Cairns, the paper said, there were four fresh cases of influenza reported, making a total of 13 in the preceding few days. Ten were in hospital, the majority Japanese.
At Barambah, which later became the town of Cherbourg, 90 people died out of an indigenous population of just 600. Only 10 people there were reported to be free of the illness.
Modern research indicates that while it was called Spanish flu, the outbreak began in 1917 in Étaples, France, where there was an overcrowded military camp and hospital beside a piggery and poultry farm.
The disease came to Australia among the great wave of 150,000 soldiers returning from Europe after the war’s end in November 1918.
From January 1919, doctors began inoculations in Brisbane. The Queensland/NSW border was closed that month, leaving train passengers including returning soldiers stranded.
Quarantine areas were established at Lytton – to handle patients from quarantined ships – and at the Brisbane Exhibition Ground, where the stench of death was ever present among the 400 beds there.
On May 1, 1919, The Courier reported that ``pneumonic influenza’’ claimed its ``first victim in the quarantine area at Lytton yesterday. For a number of days the condition of Jack Fitzpatrick, one of the patients in the isolation hospital, had been giving the staff considerable concern. The deceased, who was 32, was a trimmer on the steamer Gabo and had signed on in Sydney.
``Eight further patients were landed from the Mourilyan yesterday suffering from varying degrees of influenza. The total number of cases removed from this vessel is now 53. [The] chief clerk of the Home Department will leave Brisbane this morning for Wallangarra, to make some inquiries respecting the proposed extension of the quarantine station at that place.’’
New laws were introduced to stop crowding on trams. Many cinemas and the Brisbane Stadium (later Festival Hall) removed their roofs to bring in fresh air and people wore handkerchiefs as masks, soaked in eucalyptus or camphor oil.
The “Ekka” which had run uninterrupted throughout World War I was called off in 1919 as a precaution.
``Inhalatoriums’’ were established for the public to breathe in zinc sulfate, thinking the poisonous gas would kill the flu.
Not realising the true nature of the infections, authorities believed the epidemic was caused by rats, flies or mosquitoes, and Brisbane underwent a huge clean-up project, with city streets and buildings being scrubbed.
Schools closed temporarily.
As always, the brave nurses on the frontline suffered most.
At one point 80 Brisbane nurses were hospitalised. Some never recovered.
Grantlee Kieza’s new biography, Macquarie, is published by HarperCollins/ABC Books
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