A Country Nurse: From Wave Hill to rural Queensland and almost everywhere in between

Thea Hayes spent twenty years living and working on Wave Hill Station in the Northern Territory. She arrived as a twenty-two-year-old nurse from Sydney, but when she left in 1979 she was married with four children and eager for her next adventure. And what twists and turns her new life in rural Queensland had in store. From a stint running a corner shop in the small town of Toogoolawah to dairy and cattle farming and working as a nurse in hospitals and nursing homes, Thea’s life was eternally colourful. At the age of sixty-five, after losing her husband Ralph, Thea moved to London to work as a nurse and travel around Europe. Back home in Australia, she found a second chance at love with a country boy from WA, and her new life with Bob began with a caravan, a dangerous farming floodplain and a swag full of laughs. A Country Nurse charts Thea’s rich and inspiring life, from Wave Hill to North Stradbroke Island, London to the Riverina in NSW, and just about everywhere in between. This is the story of an ordinary girl from Wollongong who has lived her extraordinary life to the fullest.