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Rainbow: The Story of Rania MacPhillamy by Jennifer Horsfield: book review


Rainbow: The Story of Rania MacPhillamy (2007) is set during World War I during Australia’s involvement in Gallipoli and Syria (1914-1919), and the aftermath when soldiers return home.

In August 1914 Ronald Alexander MacDonald, a country boy from Mudgee, joined the Australian Light Horse to fight in the war. He was dating 25 year-old Verania. They had met at the annual Easter agricultural show in Sydney. By December 1914 Ronnie was in Cairo, Egypt, waiting for deployment to Gallipoli in Turkey.

Ronnie set foot on Gallipoli Cove in May 1915 but his stay was brief. He was shot in the hand and sent back to Cairo. Rania trained as a Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD), the nursing service – a one-month training course and a two-week session in the hospital wards in Sydney. By September 1915 she was in Cairo on overseas service where she reunited with her boyfriend Ronnie.

When all the Allied troops left Gallipoli on 17 December 1915 Ronnie was offered captaincy in the Camel Corps but he declined and was sent to the Sinai in Egypt. He was shot in the head in August 1916, killed in action.

Instead of returning home, Rania went to Port Said in Egypt to help the troops. She met Alice Chisolm, a sixty-year old nurse who established the Empire Soldiers Club in January 1916, a tea and food canteen. Rania joined her and they worked together in Port Said and then in Kantara from January 1917 to January 1918. “In 1917 the daily average number of men visiting the canteen was over 2,500. In September 1917 … the number of daily visits was over 4,500.” They gained a reputation for tracking down large quantities of fresh meat and vegetables, as well as for contributing to the morale of the soldiers. It was more than a canteen, it was more than a “watering hole” – it was an oasis.

Rania visited Ronnie’s grave in October 1917 before the women established a new Empire Club in Jerusalem by July 1918 to again cater for the Australian troops. After Gallipoli Lieutenant Colonel Clive Single took command of the 4th Light Horse Field Ambulance. The “tall and lean” doctor grew up in the same community as Ronnie MacDonald. Clive’s mobile ambulance dealt with 876 patients and over 100 wounded prisoners of war during the advance on Syria in October 1918.

Many men expressed their love for Rania, but as Australian troops were leaving the region she took a ship home in August 1919. On the ship was Clive Single returning to resume life as a civilian doctor. In December he asked her father’s consent to marry her, but Rania was vacillating.

In June 1920 came the awards. Clive was awarded the Distinguished Service Order; Alice was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE); and Rania was invested as a member of the Order of the British Empire (OBE), a great and high honour.

Rania and Clive married in 1920 to live in rural Moree but life on the farm wasn’t easy with four children, drought, and the Great Depression. By 1927 Clive had established a new medical practice in Sydney. He died an early and unexpected death in 1931. He died a poor businessman because he was reluctant to ask his patients to pay for consultations. A year later Rania was in the “deepest trough of the economic depression” without an income. Horsfield doesn’t give the date of Rania’s death, but Alice Chisolm died in 1954, aged 98.


Rainbow (of the title) is the supposed nickname of Verania (Rania), but strangely there is never a mention of the word in the novel. This is an interesting biography with a complex mix of characters with both strengths and weaknesses. Clive and Rania grew up in privileged households with extravagant tastes yet with extraordinary independence of will and medical achievements. There was nothing conventional about Alice and Rania’s actions to help the Australian troops and establish the Empire Soldiers Club. They all provided compassionate service to others in times of both war and peace. But for Rania and Clive “the long married life which both had anticipated was not to be.”


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