This programme consists of narration by an unidentified female broadcaster and excerpts of an interview with Dr. Bennett, who was in her eighties at the time of the programme.
She talks about her love of reading, and her other hobbies and interests. She was sent to England as a child and educated at Cheltenham College. She then moved to Sydney where she got a scholarship to Sydney University and took her degree in science. She passed well, but there was no research work for a woman. Teaching in rural New South Wales was the only option, which she did for a year. She decided to go to Edinburgh with a friend and study medicine. After getting her degree, it was still hard to get a job. She practiced in Sydney briefly and then moved to take over a friend's practice in Wellington in 1904.
She used a horse-drawn hansom cab to make house calls at first, but got a car as soon a they came in and she was the first woman to drive a car in Wellington. There were only a dozen or so cars in Wellington and they often got punctures which you had to mend yourself on the side of the road.There was great demand for her in obstetric work because she was a woman, and she became Medical Superintendant of St Helen's Hospital.
In 1914 when World War I broke out she was anxious to serve and wrote to the French Red Cross, who said they would take her on if she made her own way to Europe. As they were going through the Suez Canal she heard about the Gallipoli landings and the high number of casualties, so she decided to go to Cairo and see what was happening about the sons and brothers of her friends in New Zealand. She met Dr Homes [?] the director of medical services with the New Zealand Army, and he asked her to stay and work.
She thinks she was the first woman to be attested to the British Army.
A temporary New Zealand Hospital was set up until Dr Park [?] arrived with a permanent New Zealand Hospital, but they were still short of doctors and the British asked if she would work for them at an infectious diseases hospital in Cairo. She worked there for a while and then continued her journey to England. She met up with Dr Elsie Inglis who was running the Scottish Women's Hospitals and asked her to join them. She was sent with a hospital run by women, to the Balkans but she contracted malaria and came back to New Zealand. Her brother was killed in the war.
She was asked to be a ship's medical officer on a ship heading back to England, a role she went on to take up six further times. She believes she was much more popular with ship-board patients because she was a woman.
At the Glasgow Royal Infirmary she worked through the influenza epidemic and at one point she was the sole doctor. She went to Netley [Royal Victoria Hospital] and finished up the war working there, before returning to Wellington and her practice and obstetrics.
She moved to Lowry Bay and built a large house called 'Honda', which she gifted to the Women's Division of Federated Farmers after World War II.
She retired in 1936 and went to help with the Flying Doctor Service in North Queensland. As war appeared imminent, she went back to New Zealand and once war broke out she realised a women's army was necessary. She helped form the Women's War Service Auxiliary, despite government officials not supporting the idea. Mr. Semple did back them however, and got them an office in Woodward Street. They asked women who were ready to do any kind of work, including farming, to report to them. Eventually the government decided it would take over the role, so she went off to England again and offered her service to the Women's Volunteer Services, helping bombed-out families in London.
Back in New Zealand she was asked to lecture to the women's forces on hygiene and flew around the country in a small airplane. She acted as relief doctor in the Chatham Islands for a month, when the resident doctor fell ill. She tended to some bad accidents and had to ride to see patients by horseback.