A FIESTY community volunteer has been remembered for her relentless determination and gifts to others.
Thelma Bryan OAM died just before Christmas 2022, aged 92 and has been fondly remembered by many loving friends and volunteer colleagues.
Born in 1930 in London, she first swam for her school and this became a constant passion in her life. Thelma first married Jimmy Crossley, a keen cyclist in 1952, but he was killed while riding his bike only a few weeks after their wedding. She met her second husband, Michael Bryan during a scuba-diving Club Med holiday and they were happily married for 58 years until his death in 2017.
Michael was working in the tin mines of northern Nigeria and she was a teacher there until 1971 when they decided to find somewhere warm to live, and settled in Cairns. She taught at Cairns High School for the next 15 or so years, focussing particularly on indigenous students. She and Michael loved the outdoors, and enjoyed camping all around Australia, as well as sailing, and were members of Cairns Yacht Club for many years. They also shared a love for the environment, and Thelma was supportive of Michael’s volunteering with CAFNEC (Cairns and Far North Queensland Environment Centre).
Her fame as a record-breaking Masters swimmer, right up to the 85-89 year age group, in all strokes, was well-known. After five hip replacements, she was more comfortable in the water, as one leg was shorter than the other, which made walking more di?cult, even with a built-up shoe. (The swimming was also excellent post-op therapy). She was an inaugural member of Cairns Mudcrabs, and was awarded life membership. As well as swimming in carnivals, she would aim to do 2 km three times a week, mostly at Tobruk or Gordonvale pools. She also entered many triathlons, to do the swimming leg. But her favourites were the open water swims.
Thelma was known as one of the original fundraising volunteers of the Far North Queensland Hospital Foundation, having joined in 1991. During her time, she donated her skills as a yoga teacher once a week at the Cairns Hospital mental health unit, to help patients.
Several years ago, Cairns Hospital Mental Health Unit therapy assistant Jo Abbatangelo said Thelma had the gift of encouraging patients to believe in themselves.
“We have had many patients give us feedback over the years on how invaluable their experience of yoga was while at the hospital. Thelma works tirelessly each week to bring a sense of deep relaxation and wellbeing to patients on the wards,” Ms Abbatangelo said.
“I just do it because it’s so rewarding,” Mrs Bryan said during an interview in 2017. “They know that I have some health issues but they just accept me as I am. People tell me, or give me cards telling me that I’ve helped them relax when they were at a time in their life that they were experiencing grief and stress, so it’s wonderful to know that I’ve helped someone,” Mrs Bryan said.
The pair had no children by choice, and chose to support young people through donations to the Far North Queensland Youth Assistance Fund, Far North Queensland Hospital Foundation, as well as the Arthritis Foundation for their research into Juvenile Arthritis. These formed part of her nomination for an OAM which was awarded in 2019, of which she was justifiably proud. Other notable awards were Cairns Post Sportstar of the Year in 1995, and she was bearer of the baton for the 2018 Commonwealth Games (ably pushed in her wheelchair by one of the sta? at Mercy Place).
She also was involved in swims to raise funds to support others with health conditions.
Mrs Bryan was one of those super-inspiring people with their own issues in life to contend with, but she insisted on getting on with the job.
In her latter years volunteering with the Foundation, she was well known for getting around on her battery-operated tricycle.
“We didn’t have any children so we just look after each other,” she said.
After an orthopaedic procedure, Mrs Bryan was recuperating at Gordonvale Hospital. But as Michael became terminally ill, she was brought to Cairns Hospital to have a bed beside him in his last days, and she was able to hold his hand in his last days and hours.
She had a pacemaker, emphysema, osteoporosis and macular degeneration and she was Michael’s carer, as he had a neurological condition.
She laughed when she recalled talking to her cardiologist just before her pacemaker was installed.
“Here I was, this little old lady with white hair peering at him from beneath the sheet and I asked him if I’d still be able to do butterfly after the surgery – that was what was important to me.”
Thelma spent her last 5+ years at Mercy Place Cairns (Bethlehem), and especially enjoyed the quizzes, word games (with spelling corrections – ever the schoolteacher!), and Happy Hour, when she was able.