Catherine Hamlin, Australia’s most renowned obstetrician and gynaecologist, co-founded Hamlin Fistula Ethiopia with her husband Reginald Hamlin, a healthcare network treating women who suffer from the debilitating effects of obstetric fistula – a horrific childbirth injury. To say Catherine was a remarkable woman is an understatement: she was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace prize, was awarded Australia’s highest honour, was named New South Wales Senior Australian of the Year in 2018, and in 2019 the Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed presented her with the Eminent Citizen award in recognition of her lifetime of service to the women of Ethiopia. Women and girls who suffer from obstetric fistula have been described as our modern-day lepers. Obstetric fistula is a horrific childbirth injury, that leaves women incontinent. It is caused by long, unrelieved obstructed labour. Women with obstetric fistulas live with a constant stream of leaking urine and, in some cases, faeces. They are often ostracised from their communities and rejected by their husbands. Catherine Hamlin lived to give these women their lives back. Elinor Catherine Nicholson was born on 24 January 1924 in Sydney, Australia, one of six children to Elinor and Theodore Nicholson. The family lived in the Sydney suburb of Ryde and Catherine completed her schooling at Frensham School, Mittagong, in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales. Following an innate desire to help women and children, she enrolled in medicine, graduating from the University of Sydney’s medical school in 1946. After completing internships at two Sydney hospitals, Catherine accepted a residency in obstetrics at Sydney’s highly-regarded Crown Street Women’s Hospital. It was at Crown Street that she met and fell in love with Reginald (Reg) Hamlin. They married in 1950 and had a son, Richard, in 1953. In 1958, the Hamlins answered an advertisement in *The Lancet* for gynaecologists to set up a school of midwifery in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Together with their son, they travelled to Ethiopia to take up the contract. What had been intended as a three-year stay in Addis Ababa turned into a lifetime of service to the Ethiopian people. Once Catherine and Reg started work at the Princess Tsehai Memorial Hospital, they found themselves treating women suffering obstetric complications on a scale unimaginable in a Western hospital. Before the Hamlins arrived in Ethiopia, patients with obstetric fistulas were turned away from hospitals as there was no cure for their humiliating condition. Confronted by the tragic plight of women with obstetric fistula, and never having seen this condition in Australia, Catherine and Reg had to draw on medical literature from the 1850s to develop their own surgical procedures. The technique they perfected is still used today. As news of the Hamlins’ work spread, more and more women came to them for help. At first, they built a ten-bed fistula clinic in the grounds of the Princess Tsehai Memorial Hospital. Then, amidst the communist revolution, they built their Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital, which opened on 24 May 1975. There are now six Hamlin fistula hospitals across Ethiopia. Over the past 61 years, more than 60,000 Ethiopian women suffering with an obstetric fistula have received life-changing reconstructive surgery and care, thanks to the Hamlins’ vision. Catherine’s initial goal of training midwives became a reality in 2007 when she founded the Hamlin College of Midwives. High school graduates are trained in a four-year degree, then deployed to rural midwifery clinics, breaking the cycle of unrelieved obstructed labour and thereby preventing obstetric fistula from occurring in the first place. In 1983, Catherine was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia and in 1995 appointed to the higher rank in the Order, a Companion, for ‘service to gynaecology in developing countries particularly in the field of fistula surgery and for humanitarian service … improving the health, dignity and self-esteem of women in Ethiopia’. In 2001, the Australian Government recognised Catherine’s ‘long and outstanding service to international development in Africa’ by awarding her the Australian Centenary medal. In recognition of her humanitarian work in Ethiopia she was included on the Australian Living Legends list in 2004. In 2009, Catherine was awarded the Right Livelihood award, sometimes referred to as the alternative Nobel prize. In 2015, she received the Australian Medical Association’s President’s award. In 2017, a Sydney Ferries Emerald-class ferry was named the ‘Catherine Hamlin’ after thousands of Australian supporters voted for her. Catherine was most proud of the Hamlin Model of Care – holistic healing that is part of every patient’s treatment: ‘We don’t just treat the hole in the bladder, we treat the whole patient with love and tender care, literacy and numeracy classes, a brand-new dress and money to travel home.’ In her 2001 autobiography, co-written with Australian journalist John Little, *The hospital by the river: a story of hope* (Sydney, Macmillan), Catherine makes clear that she and Reg saw their work as one of Christian compassion for the suffering. Today, Hamlin Fistula Ethiopia is a healthcare network of over 550 Ethiopian staff – many trained by Catherine – servicing six hospitals, Desta Mender rehabilitation centre, the Hamlin College of Midwives and 80 Hamlin-supported midwifery clinics. Hamlin is the reference organisation and leader in the fight to eradicate obstetric fistula around the world, blazing a trail for holistic treatment and care that empowers women to reassert their humanity, secure their health and well-being, and regain their roles in their families and communities. Catherine died on 18 March 2020 aged 96 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, her home for 61 years and is buried alongside Reg in the British War Graves Cemetery. At the 60th anniversary celebrations in 2019, Catherine said ‘I love Ethiopia and I have loved every day here. Ethiopia is my home.’ She was survived by Richard and his four children, Sarah, Paul, Catherine and Stephanie, her sister Ailsa Pottie and brothers Donald and Jock Nicholson.