ADVENTURE-LOVING Joyce Ebdon passed away peacefully at the Retired Nurses’ National Home in Riverside Avenue, Bournemouth, at the age of 96.

Born in Bradford-on-Avon, Wilts, her family moved to Weston-Super-Mare and she won a scholarship to Sunny Hill School, Burton.

Joyce worked in an accountants’ office from 1934 until 1945 and joined the St John Ambulance Brigade in 1938.

During the Second World War she was a member of a St John/Red Cross mobile unit and a part-time member of the Civil Nursing Reserve.

In 1942 her home and father’s business were destroyed by fire and three years later Joyce joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD), serving in India for ten months where she contracted malaria twice.

On her return to England she worked as a house mother in children’s homes in Hampshire and Sussex before embarking on nurse training.

From 1956 until 1959 Joyce was employed in Bermuda as a district nurse and midwife, taking holidays in Canada and the USA as well as the Caribbean.

Later she worked for the Kenya Police as a nursing sister and midwife before being employed as a midwife at St Michael’s Mission Hospital in South Africa, helping start up a midwifery training school.

Joyce returned to Bermuda for two years and worked for a year at an Australian Medical Mission hospital near the west coast of Fiji. Her travels and work later took her to New Zealand, Australia and Tasmania.

At 59, Joyce returned to England and found work in a small community hospital near Oxford before working in Israel.

In October 1980 she bought a flat in Bournemouth and explored Dorset and the New Forest as well as further afield, holidaying all over Europe as well as in Jordan and Nepal.

Joyce, who is survived by two nephews and three nieces, died on November 3 last year. Her funeral service was held at Bournemouth Crematorium on November 21.