Patsy Carlyle spent 37 years saving lives and treating Kiwis as an intensive care paramedic.
On the job, the patient was always top priority but when Patsy got home, it was her impressive collection of 2000 Barbies – one of the largest in the country – she turned to for some light relief.
Over the years, it’s brought her immense joy and with the Barbie movie in cinemas and pink fever sweeping the country, Patsy is delighted to see her passion embraced by so many others.
“I walked the pink carpet for the movie premiere and if you would have told me that 10 years ago, I would have just laughed. Often the news is full of such sadness, and here’s this retired paramedic collecting Barbies and having fun – isn’t that just the greatest?”
Patsy walking the pink carpet at the movie premiere.
Fun has always been at the core of her collection, especially during the pandemic when her job was particularly isolating and intense.
“During Covid, it was a wonderful stress reliever because it was so different from my work,” explains Patsy, 66, who first joined Hato Hone St John at the age of 21 as a volunteer.
At 28, she was the sixth woman in Auckland to be employed full-time and went on to work there for almost 40 years.
“A lot of the collectors within my club are health-care workers. When you’re caring for people, it’s hard work and you want your patients to feel very special. Then you go home to the dolls and they don’t ask you for anything. It’s just a way of switching off.”
The Barbies were the perfect antidote to Patsy’s stressful job.
Talking to the Weekly from her pink West Auckland villa, dubbed The Pink Palace, Patsy excitedly tells how she’s sharing 500 of her dolls and her life story in a new exhibition at the Wellington Museum.
“People are definitely surprised as I’m not your stereotypical Barbie collector,” she says.
“But Barbie appeals to so many different people for different reasons. Barbie has moved with the times – she has a prosthetic leg, hearing aids, a skin disorder, and comes in different sizes and skin tones now.”
The exhibition is proving wildly popular, with 600 people visiting within the first two hours of opening on July 22.
“I was overwhelmed when I first saw it,” she admits. “I’ve always wanted to share my collection and Wellington Museum has really made that dream come true.
“The curator, Megan Dunn, had the most amazing eye of how to put them together and it was such a lovely trip down memory lane.”
‘You go home to the dolls and they don’t ask you for anything’.
Thinking back to her childhood, Patsy always loved dolls but mostly played with Sindy, the cheaper New Zealand-made alternative to Barbie.
It was 1984 when she bought her first Barbie on a trip to Melbourne, when a colleague asked her to buy one for his daughter. Taken by the “Peaches ‘n Cream” model, she decided to get another for herself – and so it slowly began.
In 1998, Patsy spent her first summer in New York working at Camp Loyaltown for adults and children with intellectual disabilities. She loved “focusing on what they could do, not what they couldn’t” and on her days off would visit the classic American chain stores to add to her collection, bringing them home to Aotearoa by the trunk load.
Some of her most memorable additions are a recent gift of two Barbies with Down syndrome sent from a friend in Arkansas, who she met while working at the summer camps.
One is on display in the museum and the other Patsy gave to Tilly, an Auckland child with Down syndrome, who reported on a story for Kea Kids about the unique Barbie’s release this year.
Patsy checks out her collection at the museum, but she’ll have to get in line – it’s popular!
“I don’t really open my Barbies, but it was such a good reason, how could I not? It’s been incredibly special to be part of that.”
With more than 2000 Barbies in her collection and her husband, Scott Osmond, a collector of model trains, Matchbox toys from the sixties and Lego, their five-bedroom villa has often been compared to a toy store.
“I keep thinking I must stop buying them because I am going to run out of space, but it all changes when I see something I like,” laughs Patsy, who struggles to choose favourites but especially enjoys the diversity Barbies.
Smiling, Patsy says the dolls come with so many happy memories of friends or places visited and she doesn’t know if or when she’ll stop collecting.
For now, she’s enjoying every moment of it.
“The people I’ve met because of the collection and exhibition have been amazing. It’s been lovely to share my passion and my professional life, and I feel very lucky how it’s all come together.”
