The 92-year-old was a nurse for 51 years, with nearly 40 of those years spent in Carcoar, but she also boasts a skill-set that hints at her nearly 10 decades-worth of experience.

She and her twin sister Frances were state-level swimmers, breaking records in West Wyalong as teenagers.  

Ms Munro was also a registered pilot, having flown the length of this wide brown land; a potter and craft-maker who ran an antique store in Carcoar for years and is also an accomplished painter, as the walls of her house – which show more paintings than wallpaper – can attest to. 

But it’s her half a century of nursing of which she is most proud, starting in 1942 in Parkes when she was just 18, finishing in Blayney 51 years after she started. 

The Munros had been moved from Sydney to West Wyalong due to fear of the Japanese invasion in World War 2, and grew up there with her sister and two brothers, instilling a love of country living. 

Despite having no knowledge of medicine when the twins were told they would study nursing – “things were a bit different back then, we did what your parents told you,” Ms Munro said – she found it was her passion.

After moving around the state – to Parkes and then to Sydney – she made the move to Carcoar after picking up her major theatre certificate, one of five she would accumulate over her career. 

“[The hospital]  was a place you put up with everything but I got my certificate … but I got sick of Sydney again and came out to Carcoar,” she said. 

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She was the youngest Matron in NSW when she was appointed to the position in Carcoar in 1951, heading to Sunderland Hospital in Sydney for training for a year for parts of 1959-60, gaining one of her major theatre certificates

“I just love caring for people and making people better,” she said. 

She not just cared for patients – reuniting people with their families despite car crashes, accidents and more – but she also cared for the nurses under her watchful eye at Carcoar. 

“I used to lecture the girls every Friday and get them ready for training, they were so good and wanted to train and I gave them books and tested them. They were great to work with,” she said.  

Ms Munro now lives in Orange, but still loves heading back Carcoar.