When Cheryl Brooks started as the first district nurse at the Lakes Entrance Community Health Centre on March 1, 1976, she admits she had no idea what she was walking into.
She would go on to help shape what would eventually become Gippsland Lakes Complete Health (GLCH), which is preparing to celebrate its 50th anniversary on Saturday, October 11.
Now living in Bairnsdale, Cheryl is one of dozens of former staff interviewed for a new history book, Half a Century of Community Health, which will be launched as part of the 50-year celebrations.
“I had absolutely no idea what a district nurse did. None whatsoever,” Cheryl recalled.
“I’d been hospital trained, worked for a local surgeon, done my time on the wards – but community health? That was completely foreign territory.”
What attracted her to apply was simple: “The job advertisement in the Bairnsdale Advertiser read pretty well though: weekends off, car provided. At that stage, John (my husband) and I lived in Laura Street near the Esplanade, and I thought, why not?”
Her interview was with the formidable Sister Muriel McBride.
“I walked in with the newspaper cutting and said, ‘Here’s the ad, I’m trained.’ She asked if I was registered in Victoria. ‘Well, no, but I can be,’ I told her. ‘When can you start?’ she asked. ‘You’ll do.'”
But on Cheryl’s first day, there were no patients. So, she took matters into her own hands.
“I put on the white uniform with my ‘Sister Brooks’ badge, started at Laura Street, and just walked up the street. Anyone that looked old – and at that stage, anyone with grey hair or glasses qualified – I’d stop and say g’day, introduce myself. That’s how I got patients. I walked the streets. And you know what? It worked.”
Within two years, Cheryl was caring for 200 patients across Lakes Entrance, Metung, Swan Reach and Nowa Nowa.
What she found behind closed doors was often shocking.
Cheryl has had a wide variety of experiences working with families in the community, and she remembers well the time she had to get chooks out of the bath before running water.
For Cheryl nursing went far beyond medical care.
She cleaned homes, arranged food, fought for patients’ dignity and, when needed, bent the rules.
“We did what needed doing. And it was accepted because we got results,’ she said.
Looking back, she said those early efforts laid the foundations for community health in East Gippsland and helped connect people to the help and support they needed.
“What we were doing in those early days – walking the streets, finding the patients, building trust, making connections – that’s what built the foundation for what GLCH became. We weren’t just treating symptoms – we were treating people’s whole lives: their living conditions, their isolation, their dignity,” Cheryl said.
GLCH will celebrate 50 years with a Family Fun Fair in the Jemmeson Street carpark in Lakes Entrance on Saturday, October 11.
The history book will be on display, and they’ll be activities like music, craft and exercise classes running from 11.30am – 3pm.
