Yesterday, 12 years after her death, members and supporters of the ACT Palliative Care Society gathered at Clare Holland House to place a memorial stone and lilac tree in her honour.

The stone and tree had originally been placed at the Canberra Hospital, in an area that has now been taken over by hospital expansion. But the society’s patron, Shirley Sutton, said yesterday that Ms Holland’s memorials were now in their rightful place, at the hospice that bears her name.

Ms Holland was a pioneer in advancing palliative and hospice care in Canberra, where she arrived in 1973 after serving in the Australian Army in Vietnam, work for which she was posthumously awarded a humanitarian overseas service medal.

She worked for several years as a nurse at Woden Valley Hospital, and later in community nursing, until she was appointed the first manager of home-based palliative care in 1988.

Ms Sutton told the gathering yesterday that after Ms Holland’s death from breast cancer at the age of 57, a group of her nursing colleagues formed a committee to achieve three goals. The first was to have the newly relocated hospice, on Lake Burley Griffin, named after her, and the second was to raise funds for an annual nursing scholarship to be awarded to a student with a special interest in oncology, palliative care or community nursing. The third was to plant a double lilac tree – purple was her favourite colour – and place a memorial stone in her honour.

For more on this story, including the comments of Ms Holland’s brother, Paul Holland, see the print edition of today’s Canberra Times.