Nurse’s love of learning inspires

Many 60-year-olds spend their days planning retirement cruises to the Greek Islands or looking to win big at bingo, yet Hedland’s Maggie Galvin had other ideas.

When she turned 66 in 2007, she was busy graduating from university with a degree in nursing.

Her achievement was all the more impressive given she finished school in 1954 as a 13-year-old.

An experienced nurse, Ms Galvin said she didn’t need the degree to further her career but had always loved learning and hoped to be an inspiration for the next generation.

“Getting my degree was an achievement more than anything,” she said.

“These days the kids have got so much help they can go and do whatever they want to, and yet they often don’t grab it.”

“Sometimes I want to tell them ‘you can do so much’.”

Ms Galvin knows about seizing opportunities.

Her parents were famous Hedland characters Matt and Belinda Dann.

Today, the Matt Dann Theatre and Cinema is named after Mr Dann, who played a key role in helping set up St Cecilia’s Catholic Primary School.

However, back in the town’s early days, the Danns’ generation endured 5pm curfews for indigenous people and required permits to drink at the pub.

“I’ve got all their history from the native welfare department and when you read it, it just about makes you cry, all the things they went through,” Ms Galvin said.

Despite the hardships, Ms Galvin said her “quiet achiever” parents had instilled a passion for education in her after they had grown up on a mission at Beagle Bay.

That sense of learning and discovery prompted Ms Galvin to move to Perth in 1960 to study nursing as a 19-year-old, before meeting her husband in Derby and travelling and working around the country.

When she returned to Hedland in 1969, she spent four decades working in four local hospitals ranging from the town’s first (where she was born) to the present-day Hedland Health Campus.

Sometimes she did shifts as a nurse at the town’s old West End hospital, mostly treating Caucasian patients before heading over to help tend Aboriginal people at the Lock Hospital.

During night shifts in the early days, she was the only nurse on duty and had to rely on her own judgment to treat patients.

That self-reliance and confidence helped her decide to go back to university in 2004, almost 50 years after she took up nursing.

Studying part-time while continuing to work to pay her fees, Ms Galvin surprised herself by steadily knocking off study unit after unit. Then tragedy struck.

“My husband died halfway through my studies and it was right when I had an exam and I thought ‘oh my gosh, how can I do this?’.”

Thankfully, her daughter and nieces rallied to her side, not only lending emotional support but helping Ms Galvin study.

Her persistence paid off when in 2007 she graduated.

Now retired from nursing, Ms Galvin hopes her story helps today’s children to realise anything is possible.

“I’d never even been to high school and now I’ve got a degree,” she said.

“It is a proud achievement.”