I went to Melbourne on Saturday and had the absolute pleasure of catching up with these ladies. They are colleagues from my student nurse training and we were barely 20 years old when we last saw each other.

Our lives have taken remarkably divergent paths yet we are bound by a common thread from all those years ago.

This connection occurred because one of our former colleagues took the time to reach out on what was the 50th anniversary of the commencement of our student nurse training. The wonders of social media has meant that some of us have managed to arrange a reunion next month. I am really looking forward to that but in the meantime it was a happy coincidence that we were able to meet up briefly the other day.

Friendships are made through all sorts of encounters during our lives. Some endure and others fade. Some are rekindled in new circumstances, others not so much.

50 years is a long time and we have all matured, changed and been shaped by our experiences and the world around us.