Joice NanKivell Loch

Joice Mary NanKivell Loch (24 January 1887 Ingham, Queensland – 8 October 1982)cite web|url=http://www.austlit.edu.au/run?ex=ShowAgent&agentId=A(AN|title=Agent Details: Loch, Joice Nankivell|accessdate=2006-07-10|work=author information available for public browsing|publisher=www.AustLit.edu.au|] was an Australian author, journalist and humanitarian worker who worked with refugees in Poland, Greece and Romania after World War I and World War II.Kontominas, B. [http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/the-great-heroine-australia-forgot/2006/07/07/1152240493799.html The great heroine Australia forgot] , "Sydney Morning Herald", July 8, 2006]

Biography

Joice NanKivell was born at Farnham sugar cane plantation in Ingham in far north Queensland in 1887. Her father acted as manager of the plantation for Fanning, NanKivell, a company run by the Fanning brothers and her wealthy grandfather Thomas NanKivell. The family fortune was lost however when Kanaka labour was abolished and Joice and her parents walked off the property virtually penniless. Joice's father George NanKivell took a job as manager on a run-down property in Gippsland where Joice grew up. She had wanted to become a doctor but the family was unable to pay university fees and so she helped on the property until she was twenty-six. After the death of her brother during World War I, her father abandoned the farm and Joice went to Melbourne where she worked for the Professor of Classics at the University of Melbourne and reviewed books for the Melbourne "Sun-Herald".

She met her husband, Gallipoli veteran Sydney Loch when she reviewed his anti-war book "To Hell and Back, the banned story of Gallipoli" which told of the horrors of that campaign. The book had been banned by the military censor fearful that if the truth about the slaughter at Gallipoli were revealed young men would stop enlisting to fight in France. [, Sydney. "To Hell and Back, the banned story of Gallipoli" HarperCollins, Sydney, 2007 and Isis Publishing, London, 2008 ]

Joice and Sydney Lochs went to Poland as aid workers for the Quaker Movement with the aim of writing a book about the damage that Lenin's troops had inflicted on Poland and were awarded medals by the President of Poland for their humanitarian work. In 1922 they went to Greece as aid workers following the burning of Smyrna. The Lochs worked in a Quaker-run refugee camp on the outskirts of Thessaloniki for two years before being given a peppercorn rent on a Byzantine tower by the sea in the refugee village of Ouranoupolis. The tower now houses a small museum honouring the Loch's humanitarian work.

To help the starving villagers, Joice purchased looms so that the women could work as rug weavers; she designed Byzantine rugs, one of which is now on display in the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney. She also acted as a medical orderly and held regular clinics for the villagers. For their work in Greece the couple were awarded medals by the King of the Hellenes. [cite news
author=Maxine McKew
coauthors=Susanna de Vries
url=http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/stories/s229874.htm and Susanna de Vries, Blue Ribbons, Bitter Bread, Pirgos Press/Tower Books, Sydney.
title=Transcript: Australian women of the century remembered in federation book
work=7:30 report
publisher=Australian Broadcasting Corporation
date=2000-12-28
accessdate=2006-08-08]

During World War II Joice was awarded another two medals by the Governments of Romania and Poland for saving a thousand Polish and Jewish children from the Nazis by leading a daring escape known as "Operation Pied Piper" from Romania where they were running a refugee centre for Poles who had escaped from the Nazis and the Russian invasion. Subsequently Joice and Sydney ran a refugee camp for Poles at Haifa. In 1945 they returned to Greece and their tower home and re-established the Pirgos rug industry in Ouranoupolis.

elected bibliography

Fiction

* "The Cobweb Ladder" (1916), poetry and prose for children
* "The Solitary Pedestrian" (1918)
* "The Fourteen Thumbs of st Peter" (1926)

Non-fiction

* "A Fringe of Blue" (1968)

ydney Loch

Sydney Loch, (1888 - 6th February 1955) [de Vries, Susanna "Blue Ribbons Bitter Bread: The Life of Joice NanKivell Loch, Australia's Most Decorated Woman" 2000 Hale & Iremonger, Australia ISBN:0868066915] , was a Gallipoli veteran and a humanitarian worker. He won many medals devoted his life to othersFact|date=September 2008.

Life

Born in London in 1888, Sydney Loch was raised in Scotland [ibid.] . He sailed to Australia in 1905, aged 17, working first as a jackaroo and then as an writer [ibid.] . He married Joice NanKivell in 1919, and together they sailed for England [ibid.] . They secured a contract to write a book on Ireland, which was published as "Ireland in Travail" [ibid.] . He and his wife then volunteered for the Quaker Relief Service [ibid.] going to Poland. He helped to improve a system of loaning horses to farmers for plowing and he was awarded several medals [ibid.] .

After their work in Poland, Sydney and Joice went to Greece to assist with aid work there. They settled in the tiny refugee village of Ouranopolis. Here he helped countless refugees and saved many lives. [ibid.] Sydney died on the 6th February 1955. [ibid.]

Notes

References

*Adelaide, Debra (1988) "Australian women writers: a bibliographic guide", London, Pandora

Further reading

* de Vries, Susanna, "'Blue Ribbons Bitter Bread: the Life of Joice NanKivell Loch" (3rd ed., 2005)