I fell in love not long after I’d commenced my nursing training and perhaps the two were somehow connected? In the 1960’s Australian student nurses were required to ‘live in’ in the Nurse’s Home, on the hospital premises, where we were subjected to a host of rules and regulations. Even our social lives were supervised in that we all had to be in the Nurse’s Home by 10.30pm unless we had applied for a ‘late pass’ (to either be in by 11.30pm or 12mn – we were allowed one of each per week)through Matron’s office.
Living away from home, we felt liberated from the parental scrutiny usually imposed on any boy who came to call. Boys had to report to the main switchboard, who then phoned the Nurse’s Home to ask if the respective nurse could come over to meet Joe Blow. Sometimes a ‘date’ was little more than sitting and chatting in his car until 10.30 or going to the local coffee lounge for coffee.
Greg was finishing his surveyor’s degree when we first met at a uni ‘Fresher’s’ Ball (he was at the Ball in a supervisory role) and my rather limited ‘free time’ didn’t bother him as we both had heavy study and work schedules. Once I discovered that he was a keen surfer, we spent much of my ‘time off’ down the coast catching a few waves, often with his best friend, Mick, who started going out my friend Gerri.
Several of my patients noticed that I was in love before I realised it myself and they teased me mercilessly about having my ‘head in the clouds’ or wearing a glowing smile, whatever the circumstance. We were engaged when I was just 18 and he was 21, which at the time seemed perfectly logical to us as the boys had always planned to take a year off and surf their way around the world. I was equally determined to finish my nursing training because Australian qualified nurses were eagerly sought around the world and my passport to world travel was my nursing qualification.
Love was a word that was in every song and movie of the mid ‘60’s and we student nurses all succumbed to its influence, with 9 out of our training group of 12 becoming engaged by the time we’d finished our training. We felt that life was too short not to seize it with both hands and enjoy it. Each day we nursed returned servicemen (and women), ranging from veteran’s of the Boer War to ‘nasho’s’ who’d been injured on active service in Vietnam. Who knew what tomorrow might bring? Love was beckoning with both hands and becoming engaged, when faced with a year’s absence from Greg, was all I wanted.