The two nurses who have provided medical care to Aotea/Great Barrier Island for almost 40 years are retiring.
Despite that, Adele Robertson and Leonie Howie feel comfortable that they're leaving their patients in safe hands, after hand-picking their replacement from Rēkohu/Wharekauri/Chatham Islands.
The nurses' cottage at Port Fitzroy is a simple building, but the nursing careers that have spanned the last few decades there have been anything but.
"I would write a letter - 'child health nurse', I'd write another letter to somebody else 'palliative', then another one, 'midwife'. Any they're all interchangeable!" said Adele Robertson, who's been nursing on Aotea/Great Barrier for 39 years.
"When I first came here a lot of women were doing nappies in the creek, washing outside, some were cooking outside," she told Newshub.
The remoteness often meant she was on her own in emergencies, including the time a teenage girl rolled a car down a bank, entrapping herself as the tide came in - all while a Christmas' Eve party was happening just up the hill.
"I knew that just about everybody was drunk, so I didn't quite know who to call," Robertson said.
She ended up calling the two people on the island she knew didn't drink, as well as a few fishermen.
"So we went one, two, three… and everybody lifted. I pulled, she screamed, I nearly fainted, but her leg came free."
Though Robertson was a little unimpressed at the stinginess of the local health board after her new Swannie got covered in engine oil.
"I rang them up and said: 'my brand new Swanndri got ruined. Can I claim a new one?' And they said no!"
In 1994, Robertson teamed up with fellow nurse Leonie Howie and her late husband Ivan to form Aotea Health - combining public health and the GP practice.
Howie recalls a funny moment at the petrol pump.
"We had this very enthusiastic patient who'd just come back from Auckland and had a hernia operation in his groin. And he just wanted to show me and the kids as well as Ivan, just how wonderful his scar was looking," she told Newshub.
The nurses have helped women give birth in all manner of places on the island. A bus, sheds, and houses far from road access - even one in a sailboat tied to the jetty.
"Because you're on an island, what you've got is what you've got. And you actually have to be prepared to deal with whatever happens," said Robertson.
Now they're handing over the reins to a rural nurse and her husband.
Tania Kemp not only grew up on Pitt Island, but worked on the Chathams too.
"We feel that we have got the perfect people, the best that we possibly could have done. Very like-minded, very community-orientated," Howie said.
"This is a modern island, in one way. But in terms of healthcare you are still a helicopter ride from that hospital when things go wrong," Kemp told Newshub.
Despite the challenges there's nowhere she'd rather be.
"I'm just loving it. I could pinch myself every day."
Leaving the island nurses satisfied they've left their community in a safe pair of hands, as they prepare to leave the nurse's cottage for the last time.
