Colonial Secretary Henry Parkes was among those who warmly welcomed Osburn and her nurses on their arrival in Sydney on the 5 March 1868. Parkes had written the letter to Florence Nightingale asking for nurses to come to Sydney. ^[5] He had recently borne the brunt of church opposition to his 1866 Public Schools Act and had been especially vilified as an enemy of Irish Catholics. ^[6] He may have hoped that the introduction of Nightingale nurses would reinforce, without controversy, an image of statesmanlike concern for social welfare. If so, his political judgment erred.

At first, Osburn and her nurses were a political triumph. Osburn was befriended by the colonial elite but the real public relations coup occurred a week after the nurses’ arrival. At a dusty, overcrowded picnic in his honour, Australia’s first British royal visitor, Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, was shot in an assassination attempt. He was taken to Government House where the royal naval surgeon extracted the bullet, and two of Osburn’s nurses successfully nursed him back to health. The influential surgeon Alfred Roberts, who had attached a detailed memo in support of Parkes’s proposal in that first letter to Florence Nightingale, was therefore denied a role in the drama. He somewhat sourly wrote to Nightingale about the resultant publicity for the nurses: ‘our Sisters nursed him [the Prince], he was pleased and therefore our Sisters are fashionable folk’. ^[7] Even the irreverent newspaper, the Sydney Punch , which was later to vehemently oppose Osburn, extended a public welcome to Osburn and her five nurses, hailing them as ‘fair sisters of charity’. ^[8] Such phraseology should have served as a warning.

The public relations honeymoon lasted little more than a year. Soon Osburn was the focus of enormous opposition. A range of difficulties, including badly built, vermin-infested hospital buildings, chronic ill health, social isolation and loneliness, exacerbated her position. By the end of her first three-year term, Osburn had aroused a sadly impressive number of opponents. She had alienated all but one of the five nurses who had come out from Britain with her. She had aroused the enmity of Alfred Roberts, a major problem as he was a dominating force in Sydney medical circles and also corresponded with Florence Nightingale. Many members of the Infirmary’s Board also regarded her with hostility. Finally, Osburn had the added problem of the withdrawal of support by Florence Nightingale and members of her circle. It is one of history’s ironies that while historians have agreed that Osburn succeeded in founding Nightingale nursing in Sydney during her sixteen and a half year term, Nightingale did not think so. ^[9] The religious conflict examined below was just one aspect of the conflict over nursing at Sydney Infirmary.