The Barefoot Healer

flying above the QLD desert After a bare week or so at home, I'm back in the Outback again, this time purely because I need the money. Ongoing renovations in the hope of making my house into something i can either sell or rent out is proving to be more than my basic nurses salary can cover...but this time I am struggling to dig out my happy sense of adventure. There is a deep loneliness in traveling and working as a single woman..esp one in her mid 40's. Wherever you go you are surrounded by married couples and young single people who are the same age as your kids. And it's beginning to get to me. Anyway, back to the journey itself. It all started this time with a night in a hotel in Sydney. You see the nursing agency's travel booking people had decided that a flight to Brisbane at 6 in the morning was a good idea. now add to that needing to be there an hour before take off and a 1.5 hour train journey from home to the airport, and I would have had to get up at ...

view from the skybridge above the rainforest Well, I'm back on the trail again... recently in Dorrigo, in a quiet hospital in this gentile british town up in the mountains above Coffs Harbour. The agency had organized a flight from sydney to Coffs, and then a hire car for me to drive myself from the airport up to Dorrigo... my little chariot! I felt so...special, being handed the keys to an almost brand new car. OK, so it was just a little Toyota hatchback thingy, but I've never owned a new car...and to be honest, I'm still getting used to the lifestyle that is one step above single parents pension and not quite poverty any more...so the whole traveling on planes, staying in hotels and driving new hire cars is a pretty heady experience for this middle aged lass! Anyway, I got into my sparkly white carlet (having taken a few photos so I could prove that the scratches on the door were there before I got in) and drove off into the hills. The road to Dorrigo lead...