JACK Graham's first trip to hospital was when he was five to get his tonsils out. His next trip was due to a common danger in the 1930s - infection of a wound.
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"I'd knocked a tiny bit off my thumb. In those days before penicillin there were no effective antibiotics and infection was a major problem - people could die of them.
"My thumb healed up but then it went red, and l was diagnosed with erysipelas.
"Everything had to be bandaged and I had to stay in bed in hospital. There was no running about the wards as there is now.
"The nurses were all regimented, they worked like clockwork to a routine. Early in the morning while it was still dark they'd bring in a cup of tea and a dish for you to have a wash in. Then later they'd serve breakfast.
"People from the farms would take their own eggs in with them so that they could have an egg for breakfast. We were all very proud of our hospital - the community had built it hardly a generation before.
"The roads were absolutely shocking, yet the doctors travelled miles over them to see patients.
"The Candelo doctor went to Wyndham, Rocky Hall, Bemboka. People had to come into the hospital to have operations, but the doctors would be in and out of the farms.
"As I said, infection was a big killer. In the ward next door a girl had tetanus, and people still died of diphtheria. Doctor Loftus, the Candelo doctor, organised diphtheria injections for the children." Jack remembers receiving one at school.
Joyce Page was the first nurse to begin her training there in 1934.
Joyce's friend Evelyn Bailey began her training just three days after Joyce, and the two completed their training in 1939. The two new trainees were given a tour of the hospital and shown the new very progressive laundry at the rear of the main building.
"They had hot water that was steam treated, with two big tubs. They were very proud of it, but it seemed quite primitive to us."
The trainees were only three or four months into their course when they were doing theatre work "that we should never have done. It was because they were getting rid of the nurses who had been there before us, and they were left without nurses to work in the theatre.
"Before we came as trainees the hospital was staffed by sisters and a matron. Then it was decided that Bega should be a training hospital.
"We started in November, and as we progressed with our training and started lectures they got rid of the nurses who had been there prior to us.
"We lived in the nurses' quarters. We all slept on the back verandah; they had canvas blinds they pulled down at night.
"The first room to one side was the nurses' sitting room, and the sisters and matron had a small room each."
