When I first approached Eva Mikelsons for an interview, the first thing she said was "tell them
how much I hated it.". However, throughout the interview Eva spoke animatedly and even remembered
anecdotes with fondness. Perhaps it is because of her later experiences that she remembers her entire
Eva was born in Latvia but shortly after her birth, her family was evacuated to Australia at the
beginning of WWII. Her family, she says, "treated her the same way as [her] brother" "the only reason
he got special treatment was because he had polio". Her mother and father both worked – a rarity in
postwar Australia – and she attended an all girls school. When questioned, Eva says that she chose
nursing because "I was sick of Uni, sick of being dependant on my family and I wanted to move out.
But I didn't have the money so I went into nursing. In those days, we got room and board as well as a
small wage." In 1963, Eva says that nurses were treated as little more than glorified maids. But unlike
the cleaners she compares herself to, the nurses did not have a union. All the young nurses were "like a
family, like sisters". They worked 6 days a week for 12 hours a shift which left little time for socializing.
They were also united in their hatred for the Ward Sister "She was the RN, she gave us the worst
schedules. She would do it to ruin our plans. Well, we did gang up on her so I suppose she gave us
terrible schedules to get back at us." As for her family, they were mortified when she quit university to
study nursing. "My family was furious. It was beneath us, what did nurses do anyway? They carried
around bedpans. They were very embarrassed." It was years later when nursing became more
acceptable that she was allowed into her mother's sorority that her family finally calmed down.
Sororities and Fraternities were and still are a large part of the Latvian tradition, to be denied en...