Personal alarm creator recognised for global impact

PAMELLA Taylor has always been a resourceful woman.

In September 1957 she embarked on the trip of a lifetime, travelling in a Volkswagen Beetle with two girlfriends to Central Australia.

Ms Taylor took a mechanics course before she left to ensure she knew how to change the oil or a flat tyre at a time where women were not expected to travel independently.

On the trip, she met Albert Namatjira and he autographed some prints of his works in exchange for her paying for his taxi fare back to Alice Springs.

“I always wanted to see my own country before I travelled because so many people went rushing off overseas to see other countries,” Ms Taylor said.

“I think my mother was a very adventurous person, she was a country woman … and I think I inherited that sort of adventure from my mother.”

More than 20 years later, in 1980, it was Ms Taylor’s resourcefulness once again that led to the development of the first Safety Link personal alarm.

In her role as director of welfare at Ballarat’s Queen Elizabeth Centre, Ms Taylor decided elderly people who lived at home needed a way to communicate if they got into trouble.

She approached QE engineers, who said there was no such device, and even travelled to visit members of the Royal Australian Air Force, who also said they had no suitable technology.

Working alongside colleagues Margaret Moody and Ethnie Farrell and QE engineers, Ms Taylor developed the Emergency Call System, which was later rebranded as Safety Link.

“It gives me great pleasure to think that someone was able to be saved from disaster,” she said.

“I just thought it was the most wonderful thing that could happen to save people’s lives, and it has many times.”

Ms Taylor’s impact extends beyond Australia to Japan, where she helped Michiko Ishihara, founder of Sun Village Miyaji, to introduce aged care services into Japan in the early 1990s.

Families in Japan were traditionally expected to look after one another in their old age, but after World War Two that was no longer possible as people worked outside the home.

Ms Taylor showed Ms Ishihara the work of the QE and facilitated an exchange program for staff to be trained in aged care.

“They didn’t have any support services in place to take over that part of caring for their family so Michiko – who has great foresight – she owned a hospital … and heard about the Queen Elizabeth Centre and she came,” Ms Taylor said.

“I took her to visit people, to show her what we did, and she was very impressed.”

Ms Taylor was invited to be the keynote speaker at the International Symposium Living in the Aged Society in Osaka with 2000 participants in 1990.

She was invited back in 1993 to speak at a trade fair in Tokyo.

Ms Taylor has also undertaken extensive volunteer work and founded the Ballarat branch of Soroptimist International in 1979.

She is a life governor of the Queen Elizabeth Centre and was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia in 2024.

For her service to the community, Ms Taylor will be inducted into Ballarat’s Great Women Honour Roll by members of the Zonta Club of Ballarat next month.