Canberra ACT
13 year old great-great granddaughter , E m i l y K n i g h t , a dd r e s s i ng th e gathering at the AWM in Canberra, tells her family’s personal story and the effect the loss of the Centaur had on f a m i l i e s a n d communities. 
Emily spoke for all Centaur families when she quoted her great aunt Ethel Reid who said in her memoirs: “We all worried about Charles (Ethel’s husband) on Kokoda. Nobody worried about Bernie; we thought he was safe”.
Caloundra ,Qld
During the Service at Caloundra fresh flowers are placed by local school children at each plaque on the Memorial Walkway, on behalf of those families who can’t attend personally. 
There are more than 100 individual plaques, with room for more on the Walkway should anyone wish to have their Centaur person remembered in this way.
Family members at the Macksville service, currently living in Macksville, included nieces and nephews who lost their Uncle Bernie.
Macksville, NSW
1 1 y e a r o l d g r e a t – granddaughter, Abigail Knight lays a copy of the Myth of Immunity with a single red rose on the cenotaph in Macksville during the sunset Service. Captain Hindmarsh had been Macksville’s doctor for 18 years. 
The district lent its doctor to the war effort and expected to get him back. His loss devastated the whole community. The suitably inscribed Myth of Immunity was later presented to a captain of Macksville High School for the school library.
Point Danger, Qld
Captain Hindmarsh is remembered at the Centaur Memorial Service at Point Danger each year by the presentation of the Hindmarsh Medal for Courage and Endeavour to students of Centaur Primary School. A very special recipient this year was 10 year old Sam who was in hospital in Brisbane recovering from open heart surgery. 
He received a surprise visit from the Principal, Mr Scott, Vice Principal, Mrs Foster and the six School Captains on their way back from the Cathedral
Bernard Francis Hindmarsh, the youngest of the four children of Kate and Walter Hindmarsh, was born in Sydney in 1898.
He was educated first at Christian Bros College Waverley and transferred to St Aloysius College Milson’s Point to study for an Exhibition to Sydney University to study medicine. He did his internship at St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney, and in 1922 signed on as medical officer with a goldmining company on the Bulolo River in New Guinea.
His military career began with the school cadet corps and later with the 5th Light Horse when a troop was raised in Macksville. He bought a practice in Macksville in 1925 and when he married Alma Morrison he became part of a large local family which gave him many nieces and nephews. Bernie and Alma had three children, Janice, Marlene and Ian. A good townsman, he was twice president of the Show Committee, and patronof the football club and both Surf Life Saving Clubs. He was one of the founders of the Golf Club.
His medical career in Macksville was typical of a country doctor of the times—on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, driving on unsealed roads to all parts of the far-flung district in an un-airconditioned car.
A Grace family member recalls that he was once called out in the early hours to the farmer’s wife, and having attended his patient, he took her place in the kitchen and had the bacon and eggs sizzling ready for the men’s breakfast when they came in from milking—no doubt his own breakfast, too!
When an overseas liner berthed in Sydney he would put on a locum in Macksville and sign on as ‘seaman doctor’ for a cruise while the ship’s medical officer had shore leave. It was not surprising that he later enlisted to serve his country on a hospital ship. He served at 113 AGH Concord, then on NMHS Oranje, and finally, 2/3 AHS Centaur.
Our own Joan Fisher OAM who was a young nurse on the Oranje tells the story of an Emergency Exercise Competition where she was on Captain Hindmarsh’s team. She was playing the part of a casualty who had collapsed in the Pan Room, and, taking her role seriously, she lay on the Pan Room floor. Casualties of other teams stood at the ward door and jumped on the stretcher as it raced past. Needless to say, Captain Hindmarsh’s team did not win the competition, and he said to her: “I could bloody well throttle you!”
When we first mooted the idea of a Centaur Association we approached the Oranje-Centaur Group. The immediate response of their president, the late Peggy Mason, who didn’t know the maiden name of the caller, was: “Our lovely Captain Hindmarsh was on that ship!”
Hindmarsh Garden
Hindmarsh Garden, an initiative of the Historical Society on land donated by the Council in 2002, is a small triangular ‘jungle’ and a welcome patch of greenery in the centre of the old part of town, a part that Dr Hindmarsh knew well. The accompanying storyboard reads:
Dr B. F. (Bernie) Hindmarsh son of North Coast pioneers, practised medicine in the Nambucca District for 18 years from 1925.
For much of that time he was the only doctor in the Macksville area, a hardworking GP and an active participant in the life of the community.
In WW11 he enlisted in the AAMC and died when the Australian Hospital Ship ‘Centaur’ was torpedoed by enemy action in 1943.
Australia lost a patriotic citizen, the community lost a dedicated doctor, and a young family lost a father.
