Jenni Armstrong spent about 15 years working in nursing in Saudi Arabia before homesickness lured her back to the shores of Australia.

When she returned last year, she worked as an agency nurse and found her colleagues were unhappy their managers were not listening to their concerns, so she decided to instead pursue a nursing career in aged care.

“I was looking to settle in and feel at home and I couldn’t see that happening in the acute system,” she said.

Jenni applied for several aged care positions but was rejected due to a lack of experience in the sector.

So she jumped in her car and literally knocked on the door at Bupa.

“I was very pleasantly and warmly received when I walked in the door,” she said. “They had a position available at Cardiff, which is the one I have now.”

Seven months later, Jenni loves her new role as care manager at the 67-bed high care Bupa aged care home in Cardiff, New South Wales.

“I am interested in career development and they provide a lot of education,” she said.

Jenni said while it was a fulfilling sector to work in, it was also vital to achieve wage parity between nursing in the acute care and aged care sectors.

“People in aged care do have a lower salary,” she said.

“The people who are in aged care are here because they love working with elderly people and they are passionate about what they do.”

Newcastle born and bred, Jenni ventured overseas and worked in five Saudi Arabian hospitals in a management role, the latest managing a paediatric cardiac surgery unit at the Prince Sultan Cardiac Centre before she returned home.

Jenni has experienced the highs of working abroad, from the challenging work, a high paying tax-free salary and a satisfying social life, to the lows – the beginning of the Gulf War, shortly after her arrival.

“We all had gas masks and we had tanks patrolling up and down the road in front of our accommodation,” she said.

Jenni, who was 23 at the time, remembers the roar of the planes’ engines flying overhead one night during her night shift and one morning she woke to find the apartment building across the road from hers had been hit during the night.

“I was in Riyadh; it had quite a few direct hits. We were called in to tend to the wounded.”

Now a mother of two, Jenni is relishing a new chapter in her nursing career.