A full life and a peaceful ending
Yvonne ‘Bonnie’ Roberts lived the fullest possible life, making significant contributions to her community in Tasmania during her 97 years.
Mentally sharp, she wanted to be in control until the end. That's what Voluntary Assisted Dying (VAD) gave her.
Among her accomplishments, which are too numerous to list in full, she advocated for domestic violence victims, helped found a home for drug and alcohol-dependent women, lobbied to save the Female Factory from demolition in Hobart and was a life member of Tasmania’s National Council of Women.
She received an OAM for her service to the community in 2002, and was still supporting fundraising events into her nineties.
By all accounts, she had a wonderful personality, with a trademark “fabulous laugh”.
“She was a ‘can do’ person and if she saw a need, she just got on and did it,’’ says her daughter Julie.
“But when it became too challenging to manage what was happening to her, and she was ready to go, she simply said ‘it’s time’.
“Bonnie had been aware of [VAD] and was a firm believer in it.”
Born in 1927, Bonnie proved to be resilient from childhood, surviving a car accident at age four when the family’s A Model Ford was forced into a ditch.
A badly bruised leg caused osteomyelitis, and she suffered post-surgery infections. However she went on to play tennis, bowls and badminton and work tirelessly in her community, including being on the committee which set up Hobart’s Salamanca market in 1971.
Bonnie was diagnosed with a rare form of melanoma at age 84, and had to have one eye removed.
She regularly travelled to Melbourne for treatment and moved into aged care in Sandringham in 2014. In November 2023, she lost sight in the second eye.
Suffering intractable pain and a number of other associated health problems, Bonnie decided she was ready to go.
“It wasn’t that she was trying to opt out of life,’’ Julie says.
“For her, what was important was being in control of her faculties until the end. She had always been mentally sharp. She didn’t want to be on drugs and not knowing what was going on around her. She always said she never wanted to be ‘ga-ga’.”
However Julie had trouble finding out about VAD, which was not helped by Victoria’s so-called ‘gag clause’ where doctors are prohibited from raising VAD with their patients.
Finally “a friend of a friend” with cancer told her about Victoria’s VAD care navigator service at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre.
Bonnie was deemed eligible for VAD in June 2024.
The next month, she passed away in her own bed at her aged care home, surrounded by four of her dearest friends.
Julie had brought her a bunch of violets beforehand, which Bonnie held as she died, along with her great-granddaughter Gia’s beautifully decorated silver cards.
Julie felt she could not be there, and Bonnie understood that.
“She passed very quickly. It was very calm and peaceful,” Julie says.
After Bonnie died, her friends gathered at Julie’s home for lunch by an open fire and enjoyed Bonnie’s signature passionfruit cream sponge “in memory”. There was a toast to Bonnie with Bollinger champagne.
Julie is grateful that her mother had the option of VAD at the end of a long and productive life.
“I don’t know what the alternative would have been. She probably would have been desperate enough to stop eating,’’ she says.
Bonnie was someone who was passionate about the protection of women, social justice, aged care, and helping people on the margins of society.
She was someone who gave so much during her lifetime. At the end, she received the gift of a peaceful death.
