Eileen Perrottet

Eileen Mary Perrottet (24 December 1917 – 23 November 1973) was an Australian physiotherapist, noted for her contributions to the Australian Paralympic movement as a senior physiotherapist at Mount Wilga Rehabilitation Hospital in the Sydney suburb of Hornsby.

Perrottet's parents, constant visitors and supporters of Our Lady's Home for the sick and poor in the Sydney suburb of Coogee passed on the love of that work to their three children.

Perrottet, the youngest, was educated at Monte Saint Angelo Convent, North Sydney. She graduated from the University of Sydney as a physiotherapist.

Perrottet, who never married, enlisted in the Australian Army on 4 September 1942. She held the rank of Lieutenant, service number NFX 112337, and was a physiotherapist with the Australian Army Medical Core.

After the war, she went to London to further her professional career.George Bedbrook, the Australian orthopaedic surgeon who pioneered the Department of Paraplegia at the Royal Perth Hospital in Western Australia, was also at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, obtaining further knowledge and experience in orthopaedics, under Ludwig Guttmann, neurosurgeon and founder of the Paralympic Movement.

On her return to Australia, Perrottet went to Perth, to assist in establishing the first Paraplegic Centre in Western Australia. at Royal Perth hospital's spinal unit "where sport was seen as having an important role in rehabilitation". From there she was involved in organising Australia's first international disability sports team that attended the Stoke Mandeville Games (the forefather of the Paralympic Games), in London in 1957.

In 1959, Perrottet, senior physiotherapist at Mount Wilga Rehabilitation Centre (now a private hospital) in the Sydney suburb of Hornsby organised the first Paraplegic Games held in New South Wales, at the Mount Wilga Centre, which involved an intensive course of training. The North Shore Times reported that Perrottet worked tirelessly behind the scenes training, fund raising, morale boosting, to help assemble the New South Wales contingent for the first Australian team to compete at the 1960 Rome Paralympics.

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