Sister Barbara King reached a milestone last week when she celebrated her platinum jubilee, marking 70 years of service as a nun with the Sisters of Compassion.
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She said she had enjoyed a lifetime of nursing in many places during her time as a nun.
Now retired, Sister Barbara is a resident of Wagga's Loreto Home of Compassion and is about to celebrate another landmark occasion soon.
"I'll be 90 in November, I was born on Melbourne Cup Day," she said.
"I came to Wagga in 2000 and was involved with a scripture group and at one time I was president of the Probus."
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Growing up on a sheep station near Brewarrina, in northern New South Wales, becoming a nun had never entered Sister Barbara's mind in her teenage years.
However, she responded to her calling after hearing about inspirational French woman Suzanne Aubert who founded the Daughters of Our Lady of Compassion, better known as the Sisters of Compassion, in a Maori village in the late 1800s.
"I only ever wanted to go away and have a cattle station, but then I heard about Suzanne Aubert starting a congregation for the poor and I knew from that moment," Sister Barbara said.
"She went to Wellington and started a soup kitchen and discovered there were many handicapped children that grew up there and founded the Daughters of Our Lady of Compassion, better known as Sisters of Compassion.
"The sisters begged and lived on what came in to them.
"I can't really explain, but I knew right there and then I wanted to be a nun, it just happened and everything fell into place."
Sister Barbara took on many forms of nursing during her long career but she said one aspect of caring for the needy in particular gave her much joy during the time she spent in New Zealand.
"I've had a wonderful life, I've worked in home nursing, I used to be a geriatric nurse and worked in Broken Hill for about 20 years and in Brisbane," she said.
"When I was working in palliative care in Brisbane from 1990 to 1995 it was the most wonderful thing.
"But the nursing I loved most was being a house mother to 30 little boys in Wellington.
"I loved being a house mother with those little boys and did everything for them"
Living through World War II in her younger years and dedicating seven decades of her life serving the congregation has left Sister Barbara with many fond memories.
Reflecting on her past, Sister Barbara said she wouldn't change a thing.
"The world has changed a lot, we were the children of a depression and then a war when everything was rationed and you didn't get news for a long while and travel just didn't really happen," Sister Barbara said.
"Not like nowadays when you can get instant news on an iPad.
"We had lots of migrants in Broken Hill working in four mines going full pelt with 42 different nationalities.
"Once they were fighting each other during the war and then they were all friends, the whole place was alive."
One of Sister Barbara's highlights was when she spent some time at a place regarded as a holy city to Christians, Jews and Muslims.
"I spent nine months in Jerusalem during a scripture year in 1989, it was a dream come true," she said.
She said she was now "getting fairly tired" and welcomed retirement.
"I have no regrets, everyone has bad and good things happen in their life but you don't get more than you can bear," she said.
"Now, I'll just keep going from one thing to the next thing and go to mass once a week when we're not in lockdown."
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