Hospital makes a gala of itself with first float entry

Andrew Mathieson
WHEN nurse Jenny Bryce first marched in Geelong’s Gala Day celebrations, toilet humour was on parade.
Student nurses would hold out bedpans on the street, all for a good cause to raise money for Geelong Hospital’s annual appeal.
More than two decades later, children’s unit staff will return to Geelong’s parade on wheels.
After 93 years of cashing in on the generosity of the community, the hospital is entering a float to raise a few smiles in the crowd.
Ms Bryce suspected that entering a float in Gala Day was a first for the hospital.
“We just thought it was time because it hasn’t been done probably forever,” she said.
The “very colourful” Christmas-theme float would be decorated in pink puddings, hay bales dressed up as presents and reindeers plonked on top of a ute tray.
Ms Bryce said nurses and some patients had worked on the float for weeks in the lead-up to this Saturday’s Gala Day parade.
“It could be a little bit of an engineering miracle,” she said.
“We’re staging a finely tuned project.”
Ms Bryce said the hospital’s float would promote the importance of the children’s ward to Geelong, she said.
“That is why most of the nursing staff will wear their scrubs, which is the bright colour scrubs worn in the kids’ ward.
“The outfits will say paediatric unit and stethoscopes will be around their necks.”
Ms Bryce said patients and other children with chronic health problems would leave their beds for the float while wearing white T-shirts with their own hand-painted designs.