Rita Elvie Chisholm: Gold Coast’s last World War I widow dies at age 89

The Gold Coast’s last World War I widow is being remembered as a beloved mother, grandmother and great-grandmother who lived her life to the fullest. READ THE TRIBUTE

The Gold Coast’s last World War I widow is being remembered as a beloved mother, grandmother and great-grandmother who lived her life to the fullest.

Ashmore resident Rita Elvie Chisholm died on November 3 at age 89 after a life of adventure which took her around the world.

She will be laid to rest at Nerang’s Sommerville Funerals Chapel on Wednesday from 1pm.

Ms Chisholm’s grandson Trent Rowe paid tribute to his grandmother, who is survived by three children, five grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.

Mr Rowe recalled her great love of travel and farming on the family’s Beechmont property, Tarlington, which overlooks the Gold Coast.

Mrs Rita Chisholm. 1934-2023 Picture: Jerad Williams

“Rita enjoyed travelling at any opportunity, travelling extensively around Australia and abroad to Indonesia, Africa, Turkey, and New Zealand,” he said.

“Rita moved to Amity Gardens to live out her twilight tears however would often return to her home at Tarlington.”

Mrs Chisholm was born in Maleny on the Sunshine Coast on May 22, 1934 and was the oldest daughter of Viv and Elvie Boland.

Married twice, she met her future husband, light horseman veteran Captain John Mackellar Chisholm, in 1949 when she was just 15.

At age 18 she met her first husband and they shared three children while living in Mackay.

Captain John MacKellar Chisholm Picture: Jerad Williams

Mrs Chisholm returned to her family farm at Beechmont in 1956 when she met the Captain again and they ran a successful Romney sheep stud before falling in love and marrying on April 5, 1962 at St Andrews Church in Brisbane.

The couple lived and worked on their property for five years together before his death in 1967 following a battle with pneumonia.

Captain Chisholm was born in 1888 and was a grazier from a property near Winton before he made the journey to Sydney to join the army in October 1914, just months after the outbreak of World War I.

After being commissioned as a Lieutenant, he embarked as a member of the 6th Light Horse Regiment bound for Egypt where he was stationed, caring for the horses as many of his colleagues advanced to land at Anzac Cove on April 25, 1915.

He soon followed them and served at Gallipoli where he fell ill and returned to Cairo and was hospitalised.

Rita Chisholm is understood to have been the Gold Coast’s last World War I widow. Picture: Jerad Williams

Consistently unwell, he was found to have chronic dyspepsia and was sent home to Australia soon after getting married to a woman he met while in the hospital.

Discharged for health reasons, he would return to his property and work the land until moving to Beechmont on the Gold Coast in the 1940s.

“John never talked about it, most men didn’t at all back then,” she told the Bulletin in a 2018 interview.

“The one thing he told me was that when it came time for him to return to Australia he had to get one of his friends to shoot his horses.

“He knew the people there would be cruel to them and he didn’t want them left behind to that so the only thing he could do was make sure they didn’t suffer.

“It must have been so hard on him. He loved his horses.”

At age 81, Ms Chisholm made her sole overseas trip to a battlefield, an emotional pilgrimage to Gallipoli to attend commemorations marking a century since the landings at Anzac Cove where she met Prince Harry and toured the battle sites.

“It was the experience of a lifetime and something I felt I had to do,” she said in 2018

“It was so hard to imagine it. Especially when you see the cove. You can’t imagine how they survived it. There is just the water, a pebble beach and the mountain which goes straight up.”

Following her husband’s death, Mrs Chisholm continued to farm Hereford cattle on Tarlington and in 1979 built a set of four units there known as Wantalanya Chalets

In September 1994, Rita won the Albert Shire ‘Garden Competition’ award for her garden at Tarlington.