The following extract is from the book ‘The Woodgates of Parramatta – A family history’ by Peter Codd (1999). This publication is housed in the National Library (Npf 929.20994 C669).

James Woodgate (from Thorington in Suffolk), a convict, was transported to the Colony in 1825 on the ‘Norfolk’, along with his brother Israel Woodgate and second cousin George Woodgate. James Woodgate was Kathleen Woodgate’s great grandfather and my fourth great grandfather. 

As we are in the grip of the global pandemic Covid19, this extract is pertinent, as it describes the devastation of the Spanish Flu on families in Australia in 1918-1919 and demonstrates the generosity of the people of Cooma to one of its families, at this dreadful time. It is believed to be one of the only personalised accounts of the Spanish Flu in Australia. Kathleen Woodgate (Peter Codd’s mother) was the youngest of twelve children. In 1919 she was living in the family home in Church Street, Parramatta. 

Trouble at Cooma

Both her (Kathleen’s) mother and father caught the Spanish flu when the epidemic hit Australia in 1918-1919. In the space of a year over 13,000 Australians died from the effects of the virus. Dr Kearney looked after them at home in Parramatta and Ethel (Kathleen’s older sister) nursed them.

Word came from her sister Ann in Cooma that they were in desperate straits. Her husband, Charles Kerin, had died from the flu, she was pregnant and caring for a young baby, Elizabeth (Betty), who was less than a year old. Her four other children Nell (8 years old), Helena (7 years), Patricia (5 years), and Laurence (3 years), were ill with the flu.

Julia Woodgate (her mother) asked Kathleen, aged 21 years at the time, to go to Cooma to help them. As soon as she arrived Ann was taken to hospital with a miscarriage caused from the distress and anguish she had endured. She took her baby, Elizabeth, with her but the baby died. Kathleen and the children could not go to the funeral because they were in quarantine. They could see funerals going along the street from the balcony of their house. The children saw one that they said must have been their baby sister Betty’s. Kathleen never forgot that. 

Kathleen was left to look after four sick young children in a house isolated by quarantine. The tradespeople of the town provided food for them. In the evenings, the matron or nurse from the hospital would come to the house and tell her what to do. For the first five nights she was so busy that she had no time to sleep. 

It was winter and Cooma, on the edge of the Snowy Mountains, can be bitterly cold. Water dripping from the bathroom taps turned to icicles. Kathleen kept a big fire going all the time with wood provided by the townspeople. They also brought hot food which they left on the verandah because they were not permitted to enter the house in quarantine. Kathleen would collect the food and take it in to the children. 

Eventually, Ann was discharged from hospital and Kathleen looked after them until they recovered.

When her mother and father got better, Ethel came to Cooma to help. The house was eventually released from quarantine and Kathleen, Ethel and the four Kerin children were able to go about the town thanking people for their kindness and asking what they owed. They were told nothing. When Ann and her children recovered, Ethel and Kathleen returned home. 

Charles Kerin had worked at the Nimmitabel railway station as a night officer. After he died, the railways offered Ann a position as gate keeper at the town of Orange which she accepted.

(Kathleen Codd (Woodgate) was born in October 1897 and died January 1994 aged 96 years old. She is buried in the North Rocks Cemetery in Sydney)

(ARCHIVE AUDIO RECORDING, KATHLEEN WOODGATE): We kept getting telegrams from Cooma and there was a telegram ‘send help at once Charlie died’. We were horrified. Charlie was my brother in law.

TONY RYAN, GREAT NEPHEW: My great aunt, my mother's aunt, Kathleen Woodgate, left her family in Parramatta, in Sydney. Kathleen was only 21 at that time. It was midwinter, she travelled down to Cooma, arriving into this cold and bleak place.

When I arrived at Cooma and they took me around to my sister’s place and the yellow flag was flying the four children were very ill. Vomiting blood and it was coming out of their nostrils. It was nasty.

TONY RYAN, GREAT NEPHEW: My mother was one of those children and she was aged five. She had suffered lifelong respiratory problems. This must have been an extraordinarily traumatic time.