Staff of the former Seacliff and Cherry Farm psychiatric institutions are gathering today to mark anniversaries this year of them closing.
It is 40 years this year since Seacliff closed and 20 years since Cherry Farm closed.
Reunion organiser Rona Potiki said 135 people had registered, which surprised the group organising the event.
About 30 former staff meet for lunch every six months, and organisers expected about double that number for the reunion.
However it "escalated like Topsy", and a few staff were coming from Australia and many from around New Zealand.
Staff of the two institutions were like family; sometimes several generations of the same family worked for the service. Because of the somewhat isolated nature of the institutions, staff grew especially close, she said.
The earliest anyone attending the reunion started work at Seacliff was 1947. There were about 14 attending who started in the 1950s.
Those gathering included nurses, an engineer, a hairdresser, kitchen staff, a volunteer pianist, a welfare officer, a farm manager, a trust clerk and an official visitor who assisted with legal matters. No doctors had registered.
Mrs Potiki said in the 15 years after she began nursing at Seacliff in 1961, more changed at the hospital than in the previous 50.
This was mainly because of the use of drugs, which gave patients more chance of reintegrating into the community.
The "stigma and horror" associated with the mental health service started to lift.
The reunion was partly a celebration of those changes, she said.
In the early 1990s, when de-institutionalisation became the norm, it was hard for some patients who had known nothing other than an institution for decades, she said.
Most coped well with that "huge change".
Mrs Potiki transferred to Cherry Farm in 1972 when Seacliff closed, but it was the latter she remembered most fondly.
"For those that worked there Seacliff had an atmosphere. The grounds were special.
"I didn't want to move to Cherry Farm. It just didn't have a feeling."
Donations would be collected at the reunion to assist the strengthening work on the remaining buildings at Seacliff.
The Seacliff Lunatic Asylum, between Blueskin Bay and Karitane, opened in 1884.
Cherry Farm Hospital, near Karitane, opened in 1952.
The one-day reunion includes visits to both former institutions and dinner at the Forbury Park Function Centre.
