[Plunket - Beginnings, recalled by Kate Challis Hooper]

Kate Challis Hooper, an early Karitane nurse, recalls the beginnings of the Plunket Society founded by Sir Truby King.

She remembers first hearing about Dr King in 1914 when a young cousin of hers was sent to Karitane Hospital for treatment. She visited the hospital herself at Anderson's Bay, Dunedin, and decided this was work she wanted to do. In 1915 she went down to train, which took a year.

The nurses were housed in a building converted from stables, with stalls for the horses. This was located behind an old house which had been turned converted into the hospital - this housed the wards where the babies stayed. She says they had a sense of the 'greatness' of the work they were doing, and their missionary spirit in encouraging breast-feeding to be seen as normal and necessary.

She returned to Karitane after World War I. This was when Dr King and his Director of Nursing, Miss Pattrick, also returned after setting up hospitals in Britain. He brought new equipment to produce their first milk formula mixtures.

She later worked in Wellington when Dr King was living there. She recalls how he came to buy the land at Melrose where the Karitane Hospital and factory were set up. She later became the matron there. She ends by saying she feels it is important for young nurses today to know about the origins of the movement.