Vivian Bullwinkel: An Australian Heroine chronicles the extraordinary life and legacy of the woman who should be known as Australia’s greatest war heroine. Vivian Bullwinkel became famous as the brave Australian nurse who survived one of the worst atrocities committed against women during the second world war. But her story has been forgotten over the years. Today, few people have heard of her. This documentary sets out to rediscover who Vivian Bullwinkel was and learn why she was forgotten.

Films such as Paradise Road and the BBC television series Tenko have attempted to fictionalise the story of the female POWs but have always shied away from depicting the brutality of the Bangka Island massacre. This documentary is the first serious attempt to tell the story of Vivian Bullwinkel and the Australian nurse POWs.

Vivian Bullwinkel: An Australian Heroine uses excerpts from Vivian’s war diaries, interviews with family, friends and colleagues and newly discovered newsreel footage and photos to chronicle her rich and eventful life.

On 15 February 1942 on a beach near Sumatra, a squad of Japanese soldiers order 22 Australian Army nurses to walk into the ocean. When they reach waist depth, the Japanese open fire mowing the women down. One of the nurses is shot through the hip and knocked down. She plays dead in the water knowing it is her only hope of survival, desperately trying to stop herself from retching as she chokes on the seawater. Eventually, the waves wash her up on the shore…

On 15 September 1941, Vivian Bullwinkel, a young Australian Army nurse, arrived in Singapore with the 2/13th Australian General Hospital. The war had not yet begun in the Pacific and Vivian spent three busy and happy months nursing and exploring the city.

On 7 December 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbour and the theatre of war spread to the Pacific. The nurses worked long hours in difficult and dangerous conditions as Singapore was bombarded by the Japanese. By early February 1942, it was obvious that the battle for Singapore was lost. Vivian Bullwinkel and 64 fellow nurses were among the thousands of Europeans evacuated from Singapore just days before the city fell.

On 14 February 1942, Vivian's ship was attacked and sunk by Japanese fighter planes. 12 nurses were drowned when the ship went down and the survivors washed up along the beaches of Bangka Island near Sumatra.

Vivian found herself in a group of over a hundred people. Their attempt to surrender to the occupying Japanese army was ignored. The men were bayoneted and the 22 nurses were ordered to march into the ocean and were shot down. Vivian Bullwinkel was shot through the side and survived by pretending to be dead. She hid in the jungle for 12 days, caring for a soldier who had been bayoneted and was badly wounded.

Eventually starvation forced them to surrender and Vivian spent the next three and a half years as a prisoner of war in the most appalling conditions. A further eight of her nursing colleagues died of starvation and illness in the final months of the war.

After she was liberated, Vivian Bullwinkel returned to Australia. Her story made the front page of every newspaper in the country and the Australian public were outraged by the cold blooded slaughter of defenceless women. In the years following the war, Vivian testified at the war crimes tribunal in Tokyo and worked tirelessly at fundraising for a Nurses Memorial Centre to commemorate her fallen colleagues.

Vivian Bullwinkel went on to have a stellar career as a civilian nurse. She was the beloved matron of Melbourne’s Fairfield Infectious Diseases Hospital for 17 years and as the President of the Royal College of Nursing Australia (1973-1974), she was a key player in the struggle to have nursing education moved to universities.

In 1975, Vivian would experience war again. As matron of Fairfield Hospital, she lead a team to Saigon to evacuate 80 Vietnamese war orphans - just weeks before the city fell to the North Vietnamese army. Vivian grew very attached to the children during the months they stayed at Fairfield under her care and she remained in touch with many of them as they grew up with their adopted Australian families.

In 1977, Vivian announced her retirement from Fairfield Hospital. Then she surprised everyone and announced she was getting married. Vivian had met Frank Statham (a former army engineer and Rat of Tobruk) in 1966 at a veterans function. Frank was happily married at the time but a friendship was formed between the two veterans and over the years they stayed in touch. When Vivian announced her retirement, the now widowed Frank proposed and Vivian accepted.

In March 1993, Vivian returned to Bangka Island with six of her fellow nurse POWs and the families of some of the nurses who had died there. She was there to attend the official opening ceremony of a memorial on Radji beach dedicated to her fallen colleagues.

Vivian Bullwinkel died in Perth on 3 July 2000. She was given a state funeral in both Melbourne and Perth.