01 May 2026

1975 was the year Australia first saw Countdown’s Molly Meldrum in colour, as Sweet’s “Fox on the Run” permeated through the stereos of Holden Gemini’s fresh off the Brisbane production line.

It was also the year a young farm girl from New Zealand would embark on an extraordinary journey to become an ASMIRT Pioneer Radiographer, forever changing the industry and lives of patients and practitioners alike before digitisation ever did do.

Christine Vanderley-Reichner, first graduated from tractors to tomography – kickstarting her career as a Radiographer performing chest X-Rays on prisoners with tuberculosis (TB). Taking a deep breath as she told patients much the same, Christine dived straight in, loving every minute of it.

“It was the first time I had to tell someone to breathe in and hold their breath,”  Christine recounts. “And I thought, I can do this, this is fun!”

Fun it was, though familiar? Far from. It was an era before Google, before smartphones, and before Medicare - where medical imaging was done with film and chemicals, calls to colleagues were made through an operator’s switchboard, and multi-planar tomography was a skillset.

“No digital anything. In fact, I don’t think we even knew what the word digital was – we all thought it was something to do with our fingers.”

However, one night over a pint would start something new and change not only her own, but the entire world of medical imaging. At her local Queenstown pub, her father struck up a life changing conversation with William Hare, the then professor of Radiology at the Royal Melbourne Hospital (RMH), who was said to be searching for talented New Zealand Radiographers, and the rest, as they say, is history.

ASMIRT was delighted to share Christine's full story as part of Spectrum LIVE in our 2026 May Edition of Spectrum magazine.

Download a digital copy online through ASMIRT Membership Portal and discover amazing articles featuring Christine and more!