[“The Lock Hospitals”, The Western Mail (Perth, WA), Saturday 08 April 1911, page 43]
LOCK HOSPITALS.
The Colonial Secretary (Mr. J. D. Connolly) stated that a batch of aborigines consisting of seven males and 45 females are about to be discharged from the Lock hospitals at Bernier and Dorre Islands, cured of the disease which necessitated their segregation. They will be sent back to their districts, principally Wyndnam and Derby, by the steamer Koombana this week. The Minister explained that this would be the second lot of cured natives discharged from the hospitals. It had been found that they responded more readily to surgical than medical treatment. The surgical ward at Dorre Island had been completed, and was now in working order, and the surgical ward at Bernier leland was in course of construction Mr. Connolly expressed the opinion that the result was highly satisfactory, and amply justified the belief that the natives could be cured.
AB notes:
It is explicitly stated here that this group of 7 men and 45 women is the second repatriation from the island hospitals. But the first repatriation was in February 1910, and Mjoberg in his Bland Vilda Djur och Folk i Australien claims that a group of cured patients joined Koombana at Carnarvon on his voyage north in September/October 1910. Unlikely to be sorted out.
