Lorrae Desmond Turns 90... With Her Castmates!

The national treasure’s big birthday party turned into a beautiful Wandin Valley reunion!

It’s been 25 years since Lorrae Desmond and her much-loved co-stars from A Country Practice said farewell to their lives in Wandin Valley, yet their love and affection for each other continues to shine.

And it was a very special occasion that brought Grant Dodwell, Anne Tenney and husband Shane Withington, Georgie Parker, Shane Porteous, Josephine Mitchell, Kate Raison and Wendy Strehlow back together.

NATIONAL ICON

There were plenty of laughs and love in the room when the A Country Practice gang gathered in Sydney recently to mark Lorrae’s 90th birthday and celebrate her incredible career spanning TV, theatre and music.

Even the famous women she toured Vietnam with from 1967 to 1971 were on hand at the Sydney Rowing Club to honour Lorrae, who played the show’s matriarch, nurse Shirley Gilroy.

“What a fabulous 90th birthday celebration for our national icon,” shared entertainer Sylvia Raye, who together with Little Patti, Dinah Lee, Lynne Fletcher and Jacqui De Paul, helped Lorrae celebrate her big milestone.

Lorrae made history in 1962 becoming the first woman to win a TV WEEK Gold Logie for her work on The Lorrae Desmond Show before receiving an OBE after becoming the “Australian Forces Sweetheart” in Vietnam.

But it was as kind-hearted Shirley that she became one of the country’s most loved actresses. ACP fans were devastated when Shirley was killed in an off-screen plane crash two years before the series ended in 1994.