“Nursing training went from the hospitals to the university in 1988, so Ballarat Base Hospital trainee nurses are a dying race … the last time anyone trained fully in a hospital was 30 years ago,” she said.

Mrs Jones will be among more than 130 former nurses expected to attend the 90^th annual reunion of the Ballarat Base Hospital Nurses League.

The guest speaker will be the president of the Returned and Services Nurses Club of Victoria Sub Branch RSL, retired Colonel Jan McCarthy, ARRC, who will speak about nursing during World War 1.

Rita Perkins, 91, who started her nursing training in October 1945, may well be the oldest attendee but she also found time to bake the special 90^th reunion cake.  

Alma Egan (class of 1948) and sisters Nancy Oates and Josephine Walsh, who came from Hopetoun in the Mallee in 1949, will all attend the reunion.

Mrs Trina Jones is treasurer of the Ballarat Base Hospital Nurses League and started as a nursing trainee in January 1968 at the Ballarat Base Hospital.

“It’s 50 years since our year started, we were 17 … the minimum qualification then was the Leaving Certificate. There’s been a lot of water under the bridge.”

“Conditions have changed since then,” Ms Jones said. “In my day it was more military style, with the discipline and the hierarchy.”

Mrs Jones said the era of women having to resign when they married had begun to change when she started.

“I think when you were training you couldn’t marry, but then we had a married woman come in as a trainee, so it changed.”

She said the records show there were male trainee nurses at Ballarat Base men were training as nurses as early as the 1950s, including George Domotor who started in July 1954, Arthuss Skuja (1956), Andrew Tang (1959), Kevin Blackburn (1962) and Edward Talbot (1963).

“I think we’ve lost a lot of the respect, and the capacity to think about others and that sort of thing,” she said.

“Sitting in the classroom doing lectures is all well and good but what often happens is people think they want to be a nurse, but then when they finally get to hands-on, they realise ‘No, this is not for me.’’ 

“These days when you walk into a hospital it is so informal you don’t really know who’s who … you are not too sure if you are talking to a registered nurse, or even a doctor.”

“We wore the full uniform with the cap and the cuffs and the starched apron. The different caps distinguished which year you were in, the level of seniority,” she said.

Mrs Jones said the doctors were the absolute authority in her day.

“We wouldn’t look sideways at them,” she said. “And you only spoke to them if, and when, they needed to speak to you.”

Asked what were the best and worst things about her nursing days, Mrs Jones said the best thing was being able to help people in need, and the worst aspect was the hours, the shift work.”

Some of the less desirable jobs included cleaning the pan room,”That probably wasn’t a good job, or having to cut people’s toenails,” Mrs Jones said.

She said the eight weeks in theatre during their training was an interesting experience. 

“My first call out when I was a junior was for a caesarian, and to go to theatre in the middle of the night and then see a little baby … that was pretty neat.”

“The nurses home was a big thing. It was good fun and it was the base for great friendships and lifelong  friends.

“We were young girls then and we had lots of highs and lows and the work was fairly intense so when you first start and you are confronted with difficult situations, it was good to have your classmates there to talk to – sort like counselling really. We were there for each other and that made things a lot easier.” 

“A lot of the time if you can talk about something it makes it easier to deal with, and if you can actually talk face to face and not via messages,” she said.

“There will be people at the reunion who haven’t seen each other for years, but they can still walk up and talk and it will be just like they saw each other yesterday.”

History of the League

In 1928 the founders of the Ballarat Base Trained Nurses League, motivated by a spirit of loyalty and comradeship, banded together to establish an association of past trainees, principally for the purpose of reuniting once a year.

This was to renew friendships and manifest a pride in the nursing profession, symbolized by the familiar Red Cross.

The League has held an annual reunion every year since 1928 and quarterly meetings are also held in March, June, September and December.

The League now also provides an Associate Membership for those nurses who work at the Ballarat Base Hospital but did not train at the hospital.

The League honours the wartime service of nurses, at the wreath laying ceremonies on Remembrance Day, Anzac Day and at the Nurses Memorial Centre, Melbourne.

The League continues to support the Hospital in community service, with donations to the BHS Foundation and Good Samaritan Fund each year.

The League also offers two scholarships to further the training of nurses – the Jean Finlayson Scholarship for General Nursing and the Joanne Gilbert Scholarship for Maternal & Child Health.

The League is currently active cataloguing all items pertaining to the League online at: http://victoriancollections.net.au or https://trove.nla.gov.au 

The AGM will start at 2.15pm in the Gardiner Pittard Foyer, main Drummond St entrance, Ballarat Base Hospital, followed by the dinner at the Ballarat Golf Club from 6.30pm.

Further information: (0438) 396 180