Everyone has a story to tell, so the saying goes. But Claude Tranchant’s life journey from birth in a post-war ravaged France in 1946, to the ‘privileged position’ of palliative care companion at St Vincent’s Private Hospital, Brisbane is remarkable and truly unique.

And in between, there have been many rich life experiences, countless hills and valleys that she’s traversed (literally and figuratively) and a lot of love – both given and received.

The Brisbane grandmother, aged 78, has been a volunteer with St Vincent’s Private Hospital Brisbane since 2005 – offering her compassion and wisdom one day a week as a palliative care companion at the Kangaroo Point hospital.

Claude is one of over 100 volunteers at St Vincent’s Private Hospitals Brisbane and Northside who are a vital part of the everyday work and operations at the hospitals and who last year contributed over 15,000 hours of work to supporting patients, their families and staff.

They perform a range of invaluable roles every day of the week from greeting confused and concerned patients when they arrive at the hospital, to escorting patients to appointments, through to selling raffle tickets for fundraising and working as patient companions either at a patient’s bedside or on the ward, as well as the small team that takes the Happy Hour drinks trolley around the palliative care ward at Kangaroo Point around dinner time each evening.

Born in war-ravaged France, Tranchant's life has been anything but traditional or ordinary,
 leaving France for England, at the age of 21, to study English where she met her future husband and stayed several years, before returning to France with her family. She worked at an airline company, Air Alpes, for many years and later took the plunge and a long heap of faith by emigrating to Australia in 1979 with her husband and their daughter, Sabine. After a few years in Australia, a son was born, David.

Her early years were marked by hardship, though she speaks of these challenges with the wisdom of someone who has learned to transform pain into purpose.

"My parents had to start from nothing after the war, so survival was as simple as selling fruit and vegetables at a local market in our home town of Savoie, Aix-les-Bains- and eventually in other towns,” says Claude.

“I had an older sister and a younger brother and we were taught  the foundation of life was hard work. Later my father opened a café but again, there was only one way to succeed or to stay in business and that was to work hard.

Indeed, Claude worked hard in high school and thrived in learning English which she later used to her advantage when she moved to the UK - first,  working as an ‘au pair’ and later teaching French in primary schools and at an adult education centre.

Her strong work ethic served her well later in life when her marriage broke up and she found herself having to start over and sustain herself by working “as a checkout chick" at a New Farm fruit shop.   

It was there that a random conversation with a customer would plant the seed for an adventure she never imagined taking – walking the famous Camino de Santiago from France to Spain, which she undertook at the ripe age of 64.

For a variety of reasons, her preparation for the epic walk was minimal, to say the least with the pilgrimage beginning on Easter Sunday 2010,  at the abbey of Saint-Mary Magdalena, in Vezelay,  North-Central French region of Bourgogne - Franche-Comté.

The physical demands of the trek tested her in ways she never expected. It took three weeks just for her body to adjust to the daily walking.

At 64, most people are settling into retirement. But Claude Tranchant was lacing up her hiking boots for the 2,400 kilometre pilgrimage that would change her life forever.

She channelled her experiences into writing two books about walking the Camino and her other great walk adventures through Nepal, Portugal, Spain and Central Australia – a best-seller titled Boots to Bliss as well as a later book, Boots to Freedom. She was also one of the subjects of a documentary about Camino walkers called Camino Skies.

Her achievements haven't gone unnoticed. In 2021, at the age of 75, she received the "French Person of the Year in Australia - Sports and Culture" award. She has become a sought-after speaker, presenting at Q&As and launching various films about the Camino walk around Australia.

While she most loves to spend time with her four grandchildren, her other most meaningful work continues in the palliative care ward at St Vincent’s Brisbane (and previously the cancer ward at the Wesley Hospital) of Brisbane, where she has volunteered for two decades.

As part of International Volunteer’s Day, St Vincent’s Private Hospitals around Australia will honour and recognise its volunteers, ever grateful of the fact they choose to serve others in the community and that they’re woven into the fabric of the hospitals and are an integral component of the hospitals’ culture and care.

St Vincent's Private Hospital Brisbane and Northside CEO Oli Steele says volunteers are part of the lifeblood of the everyday work and operations at St Vincent's hospitals and last year contributed over 15,000 hours of work to supporting patients, their families and staff.

"It's getting more challenging each year to maintain and recruit a full team of volunteers, which was the experience across the state for all organisations according to a recent survey of Volunteering Queensland," said Mr Steele. 

"But we're blessed at St Vincent's to have a fantastic team of over 100 dedicated volunteers and when you have evergreen and passionate volunteers such as Claude who help out with some of our most vulnerable patients, the impact on the care and experience for those patients and their loved ones is significant." 

St Vincent’s Private Hospital Volunteers Coordinator Sharyn Smith says she is forever struck by how incredibly humble and selfless the volunteers are with all of the work that they do.

“When people are in hospital, especially when they’ve been really unwell or have been in the hospital for a significant period, they want the companionship and sometimes they just want to talk about whatever is on their mind or what’s troubling them at the time,” says Sharyn.