Footy success for Mortlake team despite Spanish flu pandemic

Just how a quarter of the town's population of 800 came to be infected so quickly is unclear, but the town's football team had just returned from a match in Cobden and many of the players contracted it.

Despite so many in town being struck down with a flu that had killed millions around the world, no one in the town died from it.

Just weeks later, the Mortlake football team went on to win that year's grand final.

Until August 1919, the town had gone six months without a case of the Spanish flu even though it had taken a heavy toll on towns across south-west Victoria.

The worldwide outbreak which killed an estimated 50 million people - 12,000 of them Australians - first reached our shores in January 1919 when soldiers started to return from the battlefields of Europe after the First World War.

It wasn't long before it spread to the south-west, and while it ran rampant across the district, Mortlake managed to escape infection for much longer.

In February, the pandemic arrived in Warrnambool and by that time inoculation was being carried out in Mortlake by Dr Baird and two nurses.

By March about 950 people around Mortlake had been vaccinated.

During the Easter of 1919, which that year fell in April, a motorbike event in Mortlake brought 3000 people to town.

It went ahead despite a Mortlake Shire councillor raising concerns about allowing the event to proceed during a pandemic and, surprisingly, no one came down with flu.

Outdoor sporting events, the councillor had been told, were permitted.

By May, Warrnambool had reached the height of its epidemic when nine people died that month, a number of them young children.

Just how many lives it eventually claimed in the city is unknown.

Mortlake amateur historian and author Florence Charles has researched the town during this time and said there did not appear to be any deaths in the town linked to the Spanish flu.

Despite the large number of cases in Mortlake, the town only had a very small hospital to deal with it.

By August 20, 1919, it was reported that there were about 50 people in the town with the Spanish flu.

Two patients were admitted to the Fever Hospital while several other bad cases had to be treated in their own homes.

Within two weeks, 200 people had come down with the Spanish flu.

As soon as the Spanish flu arrived in town, there were steps to stop meetings and indoor gatherings of any kind.

Businesses suffered as staff numbers were reduced to the bare minimum and even the newspaper had to suspend publication of The Mortlake Dispatch.

The state school had to close because attendance fell, and barely a household escaped from infection.

Mrs Charles said the fever ward was opened in Mortlake because of the many cases of infectious disease which were prevalent in the town in 1890.

There had been epidemics of typhoid fever, scarlet fever and diphtheria, whooping cough and measles.

Foul cesspits, dirty toilets, no proper drainage or rubbish removal made for breeding ground for illness to spread throughout the district.

The tragic story of a young Hexham mother leaving behind eight children aged between one and 13 because of typhoid fever was just one of many sad stories that swept the district.

It was also reported men who spent 16 months building the train line from Terang to Mortlake which opened in 1890 had brought typhoid fever to the region.

When typhoid fever waned in 1891, the locals began to complain the fever ward was a white elephant and probably not worth the money spent on it.

But by 1889 infectious diseases had resurfaced with 26 cases of typhoid and 42 cases of scarlet fever and other cases of measles, so the cry went out for more beds.

In 1911, the fever ward was expanded to four beds, and during World War I the department of defence asked that two more beds be added to cater for wounded soldiers.

Despite the increase in bed numbers, it was not enough to cater for the outbreak of the Spanish flu pandemic in Mortlake.

The Spanish flu outbreak prompted calls months later to extend the fever ward and convert it into a general hospital.

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