Family is pivotal in these lives of senior Victorians living in aged care. From the ones they were born into, to the ones they created themselves.
As a young nurse on her first overnight shift at the Royal Children’s Hospital during an outbreak of pneumonia in the 1940s, Barbara had to comfort grieving mothers as well as tend to sick children.
Gwenda and her twin brother never really knew their father. They were only two-and-a-half when he passed away from wounds sustained during World War I.
One of four children, it was the height of the Depression when she finished school at 14 but because of her ‘weak heart’, Glad was told she was not fit enough to take on paid work.
Fifteen-year-old Guenter was terrified when American troops invaded his hometown of Augsburg at the tail end of World War II.
When Margaret was young, she wanted to make up for her lack of experience with children by training as a mothercraft nurse, however World War II disrupted her plans.
As the oldest girl of a farming family with ten children, Irene Macwhirter was in charge of her siblings when her mother was in hospital having babies.
Going to school in Ballarat during World War II, Dawn Parish clearly remembers having to take shelter during air raid practices and worrying about her father, who was serving overseas.
Sandy McIntosh was watching the telly in her Glasgow home when she saw an advertisement for cheap flights to Australia.
Margaret fell in love with painting at age seven. Eighty-eight years on, she loves spending up to five hours each day creating stunning watercolors, only now she uses an iPad.
The nuns who tore their hair out attempting to teach Maggie Smith would no doubt be surprised at how far she progressed in her career.
Dorothy Shield was only a baby when her dad left to fight in World War II, but she clearly remembers the day her dad returned from Germany.
Elaine clearly remembers the night in 1942 when Japanese submarines entered Sydney Harbour, firing torpedoes and sinking a ferry.
After 90 years and two happy marriages, Maurice Tobias is well qualified to pass on his secret to a marvellous life: ‘Take notice of what people say to you. Don't carry on so much about yourself.
Not many people will have heard of the small town where Lorraine Cottrell was born in 1943.
Elizabeth Webster enjoyed her nurse training at the Alfred Hospital, but she loved catching glimpses of a certain boy on her train even more.
Brian Jones father had moved to the small Victorian town of Casterton at the height of the Depression when work was scarce.
Looking back, it’s clear that Margaret Wall had polio as a child but back then all she knew was that she was bedridden and had to spend several years in plaster ‘from neck to knee’.
Reviewed 22 November 2022
