Anne Brown, 85, Grace Milburn, 84 and Ruth Rivett-Cuthbert and Ngaire Lawrence, both 83, originally met when studying to become nurses at Dunedin in 1960.
Mrs Rivett-Cuthbert said they were all ‘‘getting on a bit’’ and had to take the opportunities to meet up whenever they could.
‘‘So while we’ve all still got our marbles, we should meet up again,’’ she said.
Soon after graduation, life pulled them in different directions.
Mrs Rivett-Cuthbert headed off to Frankton to be a nurse for one year until she married a farmer and gave up the profession.
‘‘I loved it at Frankton because the matron was Canadian and she didn’t know New Zealand nursing at all and so I was more or less in charge ... it was wonderful.’’
Mrs Lawrence stayed in Dunedin and nursed in the hospital until she married and also gave up nursing.
‘‘In those days if you were married you didn’t nurse,’’ she said.
However, later on she rejoined the profession and spent about 20 years working in Dunedin Hospital’s surgical theatre.
About 15 years ago she made the move to Blenheim to enjoy retirement.
Mrs Milburn did things a bit differently — she worked in Dunedin Hospital as a nurse after she was married, becoming one of the first staff nurses in the city to do so.
After graduation, Mrs Brown jumped the Ditch and began her nursing career in Australia.
She was there for one year before she moved to Wellington to study midwifery, which she said was ‘‘very fun’’.
After her stint as a midwife, she travelled the world before going to England where she started work as a typist for a London law firm.
‘‘I thought if I go nursing I’d be working all funny hours, and so an employment office placed me in a law office just off Fleet St ... that was interesting.’’
When she returned to Dunedin, her father had been getting her to ‘‘do this and that and the next thing,’’ so she went to the health department and asked them to get her a job ‘‘anywhere but Dunedin’’.
They sent her to Gore where she worked in public health, nursing and ‘‘chasing venereal disease’’.
She married a farmer, moved to Garston, and lived happily ever after.
