The Secrets of Anzac Ridge

Patricia Skehan is a founding executive member of Concord Heritage, now City of Canada Bay Heritage Society. She guest-speaks for organisations including Rotary, Probus and VIEW clubs and historical societies, and lectures for U3A. She has presented heritage talks on FM radio and has been published nationally. Patricia conducts tours at Yaralla and Rivendell estates in Concord West. Since 1999, Patricia has travelled across NSW to give over 1000 heritage talks on 16 different subjects. She travelled to Britain in 2001 and 2005, researching the Thomas Walker family’s royal connections at the University of Cambridge.

In 2013, Ethel Turner’s granddaughter asked Patricia to transcribe letters from Jean Curlewis to her famous mother, written while a volunteer nursing aide during the 1919 Spanish Flu epidemic. Sourcing rare archives from Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, the Red Cross, Sydney University, Trove newspaper collections and museum sources, she found clues about Anzac secrets when given the seemingly unrelated diary of a young WW1 soldier.

Patricia was guest speaker at the Cenotaph in Sydney on Armistice Day 2020; her talk on the impact of the Spanish flu epidemic was televised nationally.

Born on Armistice Day, 1946, Patricia is married to a retired police sergeant. They live on the Central Coast.