AT 80 years of age, Batemans Bay registered nurse Margaret Jobson knows she is older than some of her aged care patients, but that’s not a problem.
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“Age is not a barrier, it’s just how your attitude is towards it,” the Opal Denhams Beach employee said.
“A lot of people worry about age, and people at Opal have different attitudes towards it, but I am a positive person; I look at everything in a positive way.”
This is something that has proved valuable for a long time. Margaret was the tenth of 14 children growing up in Goulburn in the Depression years.
“We worked hard but we still had a good life,” she said.
After finishing school, she trained and worked as a nurse at Goulburn Base Hospital.
It was here that she met her Olympic hockey player husband Glen Jobson, whose mother was a patient there.
“It was many years before I went out with Glen,” she said.
But go out they did and were married on April 27, 1957, the year after Glen played at the Olympics.
The Jobsons moved to Canberra where Margaret worked at Royal Canberra Hospital and then Goodwin Retirement Village.
Just how well she did her job became obvious in 1990 when she received an unexpected item in the mail.
“It was a letter to say I was to be awarded the Order of Australia Medal,” she recalled.
“I rang Parliament House and said ‘you sent this to the wrong person, only people who do really good work can win this’.”
She was presented with the medal by then Governor-General Bill Hayden.
Soon after the Jobsons moved to the Eurobodalla, after having had a caravan at Barlings Beach for several years.
Margaret began working at Jennings Health Care, as Opal Denhams Beach was known then, in 1992.
She has no intentions of quitting.
“My daughter wanted me to retire this year, but I want to continue, because I would certainly miss it,” she said.
“I admire and respect the elderly.
“They have a lot of stories and are lovely to listen to.”