District nurse records pioneering days.

Delivering very premature twins by candlelight, stitching up a cow's udder and a pig dog's cheek, gathering a family together to farewell their dying mother and travelling by boat in all weathers are just some of the memories of Carol King-Turner, who worked for seven years as a district nurse at French Pass in the Marlborough Sounds.

Now aged 84, she has just published a book of those years, 1947-1954, called Pioneer Nurse in the Marlborough Sounds. Interest has been high and the book is to be reprinted.

King--Turner still lives in Canoe Bay, adjacent to French Pass, and fondly remembers her time as the pioneering district nurse. Trained at Gisborne and Timaru Hospitals, she did her midwifery at St Helen's in Wellington and aged 26 took on the formidable job, now the subject of the book. As well as nursing and midwifery skills, the district nurse needed to be able to handle a boat alone and to walk the rugged terrain. "I knew I could do all that and the Department of Health offered me the job. I remember two pieces of advice I was given before I started. Someone at the local hospital board said "don't get tricked into doing the housework" and the doctor at Havelock said 'pass the buck".

Her youthful enthusiasm was dinted by the huge responsibility of the job and every month for the first six months, King-Turner thought "I can't do this". But her father and the man who was to become her husband encouraged her to stick at it. later work in hospitals always seemed tame by comparison.

"I remember the District Inspector of Health once saying to me 'I don't know whether you are made for the job or the job is made for you,'"

Family responsibilities brought an end to that phase of her career. But her memories of that time live on in the book, thanks to a cousin who sorted through her diaries and reports and got the material into book-ready form. Is she proud to be a published author in her 80s? "Everybody says I should be."