Inspired by a vis­it to a bush nurs­ing post arranged by her school, San­dra walked into her small local hos­pi­tal on 16 Jan­u­ary, 1963 and inter­viewed suc­cess­ful­ly for a role as a cadet nurse. She was 16.

“We wore a cap that con­fined all your hair,” San­dra remem­bers, ​“The uni­form had short sleeves, navy and white stripes with a large white col­lar and cuffs, black stock­ings and black or brown shoes, of a par­tic­u­lar leather. Around the waist was a very heavy starched belt, held togeth­er with a buck­le of two sil­ver pieces.”

When she turned 17, San­dra com­menced as a trainee nurse. Each year a star was added to your cap, or a but­ton to your uni­form, to mark your progress.

“You went to a Pre­lim­i­nary Train­ing School in six-week blocks and lived in the quar­ters,” San­dra recalls, ​“and every day they taught you things like tem­per­a­tures, puls­es, tak­ing a blood pres­sure, bathing a patient. Then you went back to the ward.”

Dur­ing her fourth year, San­dra gained expe­ri­ence at the ​“Coast Hos­pi­tal” – Prince Hen­ry Hos­pi­tal at Lit­tle Bay, Syd­ney. She recalls the hyper­bar­ic cham­ber for treat­ment of the bends and the lazarette for lep­rosy patients – among oth­er details. 

“All the gar­dens and clean­ing out­side were done by pris­on­ers [from the near­by Long Bay Jail],” she says. ​“They wore white uni­forms with num­bers on their back. All the bread used by the hos­pi­tal was baked at Long Bay Jail.

“I saw two girls who were polio vic­tims on the iron lung. The first kid­ney trans­plant in New South Wales, and I think Aus­tralia, I nursed her…

“You had to [slip her food through the door] under pur­ple light; and gown up and be quite ster­ile to go in.”

Towards the end of her train­ing, San­dra returned to the coun­try and to famil­iar nurs­ing tra­di­tions, includ­ing a reg­i­ment­ed pri­vate life.

“We paid board and got fed, three meals a day,” San­dra recalls.

“The sis­ters had their own table to sit at and so did the matron. When the matron walked into the din­ing room, every­one stood up and put their hands behind the back. When she sat down, you sat back down again.”

San­dra still found the pluck to ask the local hos­pi­tal board whether she could mar­ry the love of her life.

“Because nurs­es couldn’t be mar­ried when I trained,” she explains. ​“You had to get per­mis­sion. You still had to live in the nurs­es’ home, where we all lived, and could only go home to be with your hus­band on your days off.”

As the ring slid onto her fin­ger, her hair unfurled from the veil. The 70s were dawn­ing and the Aus­tralian nurs­ing sec­tor was becom­ing sec­u­lar and centralised.

“Slow­ly, a lot of the hos­pi­tals gave up their nurs­ing train­ing; that was when edu­ca­tion of nurs­es at uni­ver­si­ty start­ed,” San­dra remembers. 

“Lots of the build­ings were con­vert­ed… I went back and did a diplo­ma at what became Charles Sturt Uni­ver­si­ty – and [lat­er] a Bach­e­lor of Health Sci­ence, and one for men­tal health as well.”

She remem­bers the ear­ly days of the ​“milk run” when the state ambu­lance service’s first two planes – ​“Alpha Mike Goff” and ​“Alpha Mike Bra­vo” – start­ed land­ing in Wag­ga Wag­ga every Mon­day and Thurs­day to retrieve patients to Sydney.

These ear­ly signs that tech­nol­o­gy would rev­o­lu­tionise health­care con­tin­ued to ful­fil their promise years lat­er when com­put­ers appeared on the ward. At larg­er hos­pi­tals, San­dra had to adapt to unfa­mil­iar tech, but
it was in the rur­al hos­pi­tals – where admin staff clocked off at 5pm – where the need for com­put­ing skills was greatest.

Then sud­den­ly, for a few wild days, the health­care industry’s grow­ing depen­den­cy on com­put­ers poised to back­fire. Gen Y and Z read­ers may be too young to remem­ber the Y2K scare.

“I was on night shift at the high-depen­den­cy ward with 12 patients when they changed from the 1990s to the 2000s,” San­dra says, ​“Just myself and anoth­er RN. All the exec­u­tives were upstairs. The boss­es, admin staff, IT staff – like buzzy bees.

“We had two large wood­en doors you came through to get to our ward, out of the stair­well or lift. Oh, the antic­i­pa­tion, that some­one would open the door, come rush­ing in and say: ​‘you’ve got to do this, you’ve got to evacuate!’

“But noth­ing hap­pened. The phones nev­er got dis­con­nect­ed; the com­put­ers just rolled over, nev­er shut down. About 4am, every­one packed up and went home. It was the year 2000.”

Through­out her career, San­dra found her pas­sion for aged care grow­ing and of all her career achieve­ments, she’s most proud of her advo­ca­cy in this space.

“Some of the old­er mem­bers of our com­mu­ni­ty had said ​‘every­thing is done for the young – foot­ball, ten­nis, golf – all done for the young peo­ple. Noth­ing here for the oldies. We keep get­ting pushed aside’,” she says.

“Hav­ing a nurs­ing back­ground in a hos­tel and nurs­ing home, and retire­ment vil­lage man­age­ment, I had a bit of an idea about that and thought ​‘let’s go for it, give it our best shot’.

“I got togeth­er with that com­mu­ni­ty of 500 peo­ple and we formed a com­mit­tee to raise mon­ey to build aged care units for the social­ly dis­ad­van­taged in town. With con­tacts I had with an archi­tect, he drew up plans, and we start­ed to fundraise.

“As the mon­ey came in and the momen­tum grew, the sup­port increased. With a grant from the Com­mon­wealth, we built the first two units. Peo­ple of the town and dis­trict could see it was going to happen.

“When I left there, we had built five units, using one and a quar­ter mil­lion dol­lars in grants. I’ve had lots of oppor­tu­ni­ties, being a nurse – and not all of them in hospitals.” 

Reflect­ing on a career that has also includ­ed work­ing in prison health and as a DON, San­dra says there is no secret behind her 60 years of nurs­ing (that or she won’t tell us). She does, how­ev­er, have a few clos­ing reflec­tions as she bids farewell to scrubs.

“Accept every­one you care for,” she advises. 

“There are times when they frus­trate you and are doing the wrong thing and you have to be firm, but you can still treat them as a human being, polite­ly and with empa­thy. If you can treat every­one like you want your moth­er and father treat­ed, then I think you’ve done very well.

“The cama­raderie, the friend­ships, the peo­ple I’ve met, the advances of med­i­cine and surgery – how won­der­ful to have got­ten to now and see what I’ve seen. Will some­one [who is start­ing out now] have that oppor­tu­ni­ty to see as much?”