Nurses’ reunions.
In December 2020 Lynette Huckstadt posted this photograph to the Facebook page, You know you’re from Maitland when with the caption:
Maitland Hospital graduation in 1970. Lynette Huckstadt (nee Mills) and her sister Helen. Yes, those starched uniforms and strict rules seem like a lifetime ago.
The posting attracted a number of responses: people sharing memories and commenting.
Lynette is also custodian of a number of albums shared and created at reunions of Maitland Hospital nurses. There are photographs of the reunions, photographs of groups of nurses, newspaper clippings and other memorabilia.
Lynette kindly made the albums available for copying so that the Maitland Hospital Collection could include digital copies.
A selection of items from the albums is reproduced here.
A folder with plastic sleeves and copies of photographs of Maitland Hospital nurses at different times. Some of the nurses are identified and occasionally a year is given.
Click on the photographs below to enlarge and view them as a slide show.
A group of photographs including images of the flood and dated 1955.
Top: the 1930s private and intermediate wards building and garden.
Middle: helicopter near the sunken garden, army DUKW near the hospital’s main entrance, view of the flood from the hospital grounds.
Bottom: views of the flood from the hospital.
View 1955 flood for more details about the hospital and the 1955 flood.
Photographs of some of the participants in Maitland Hospital Nurses 60th Anniversary Reunion, 2007.
According to Esme Meehan in her 1996 book The Way We Were, the first reunion was held in 1947.
The collection Lynette Huckstadt is looking after includes other photographs and memorabilia: copies of the Hospital’s 1967 annual report and of the Hospital centenary publication, press clippings, booklets and posters, and more photographs - of other reunions, nurses marching, a Crown Street graduation.
