The Barefoot Healer

flying across the desert Another trip into the unknown...this time another tropical island a bit further east...or is it west? My sense of geography is a bit sketchy at the best of times....Warruwi community on Goulburn island. I got the job offer just last week right in the middle of relationship..well, difficulties is the best way of putting it I guess... New relationships in your mid 40's are challenging it seems. And since I am not at all stubborn, or set in my ways, OR high maintenance thank you very much, and neither is he, a short trip away to work in another remote clinic for a week sounded like a good idea.... So I simply said yes without asking any real details, and here I am. It took 3 days to get here. One to get to Brisbane by car and stay in a hotel overnight and continue the “relationship discussion” while catching up with my old friend Goblin who I hadn't seen in over a year, which was awesome! He agreed that relationships at our ages are compli...

My first impression was of neatness and cleanliness. It's a real contrast to the previous community I was on. The yards aren't full of garbage, and theres even the odd bit of lawn and a decorative shrub or two! The people from the community are clean too, with neat brushed hair and clean clothes. Quite a contrast to the last two communities I've been to. And you get the feeling that people here feel a sense of pride..in themselves and their home. The clinic itself is spotless too. The manager here runs the place with a velvet gloved iron fist. Strong, but very caring. She knows every community member, who's related to who and exactly what’s going on with each and every person. And the community seems to love her back too! There's a driver and a community worker, who both double as cleaners too and mop the floors daily, and a young white receptionist who's pretty makeup and elaborative hairclips brighten the place up no end. The community worker is a...

Well, so far it's just been weird and unpredictable. Which I guess is how adventures are supposed to be. After the fiasco with NT health and the 3 changes to where I was actually going, I finally boarded a plane that they had leased just to fly me up to Lake Nash. I felt really special! Normally you see they only do things like that for doctors...but it seems there simply was no other way to get me there... So instead of the usual large airport with all the security I am used to, I got a taxi to a private hangar with a miniature waiting room and free tea and coffee instead of expensive shops. I was introduced personally to “my” pilot, a sweet young dark haired lad, who looked barely old enough to hold a licence. We clambered aboard the tiny little plane, with just a bit more room than your average landcruiser, and he began to go through the checklist, double checking everything with procedure book and fiddling with his instruments. When he got the green light over ...

Well, leaving behind the dating saga for a bit, i'm back in Central Australia for some more adventures-and a much needed cash injection! This time I'm heading out to Docker River, a small community of around 300 people a few hundred km's west of Uluru. I've spent the last few days in Alice Springs, doing some mandatory and pretty useless "training", which as so often in our modern world, consisted of 2 days of lectures about corporate structures, the endless importance of using the correct paperwork, and the odd useful phone number of who to ring when u are trying to organize a plane evac out of the middle of nowhere... I did learn a bit more about the role and training of Aboriginal health workers... It's an odd job that was created to bridge the divide between the white medical system and the communities... Aboriginal health workers basically do nursing work. But their training is aimed specifically at the kind of things needed in remote communities. An...

Life in the outback.... Tennant Creek Raceday was decidedly amusing. Everyone was dressed in their tarted up best...fascinators and short dressed, the men in suits and bright pink shirts... Everyone one from the white community that is, I only saw 2 or three black people. I should really say non indigenous though, there was a good collection of every other race: Maori, Chinese, Asian, Italian, Celts and every mix in-between. I managed to improvise an outfit out of a nightie, some artificial greenery and some hairclips, but the only shoes i had were my boots....and it was a tad cool and windy, so black leggings went with them, grin! Between us, Sue and i managed to lose $20.... My choices actually managed to come last! The 3 dreadlocked hippies are actually from my old home town, Nimbin! They are traveling around Australia, teaching the local kids circus performance arts! How cool is that! On the way home we stopped and filled the car with firewood, still in our pretty dresses, for ano...

My first day in the clinic.... It's all new and pretty...a lovely open round architectural design, painted white and orange...a friendly sunny waiting room and working BP and blood measuring thingies! All the staff seem friendly and open too... I spend the day working with a lovely midwife called Sue, mainly to help me get a hang of how to use the computer system, which of course is a completely different one to the PCIS system I used on Groote last year... (It sucks big time, the usual committee designed monstrosity with multiple double entries for everything...sigh.) Our first pt is an 18 month old boy...who comes accompanied by his 23 yr old mother and 4 other siblings, including a small baby. They are all filthy. And covered in sores. And dressed in filthy and totally inadequate clothes. The Mum speaks very little english, and most of what Sue is saying to her seems to go straight over her head. We manage to work out that the 18 month old is overdue for his vaccinations, which...

Another Lazy Saturday...not. At 8.30 Im still half asleep and in my nightie, and the on call phone rings. A painter has fallen off his ladder and the ambos are bringing him in in a hard collar.... I wander over to the clinic grabbing a banana on the way thinking this is going to be nothing as usual, going by the things they have brought me in on previous occasions...but when I actually open the collar and have a decent feel myself, sure enough, the poor lad has serious c spine tenderness on C3! So i ring the on call doc and tell him he's gonna miss his early round of golf, and he comes in grumbling...and after checking himself grins, and says "Well I know what You're gonna be doing today!" and he tottles off home for a decent breakfast while I stay behind to watch the patient. 15 mins 2 phone calls and some paperwork later, it's just me and the poor bloke on a hard board strapped into a plastic collar sitting here awaiting the final call back from Care Flig...

On Tuesday I was first on call....which meant that I had a mobile that people could ring to call me in to deal with, well anything really.... Scared as all hell...no idea what to expect...I spent the afternoon rummaging around in the little resus bay trying to work out what where everything was, much to the amusement of the other nursing staff. "Chances are you'll never use that stuff lass, settle down!" As may be, I felt a lot better once I had worked out how to turn on the oxygen cylinder and had located the emergency drug box and the airway stuff....so I calmed down a bit and decided to go out to dinner to the ARC, the local club, with one of the other nurses who had just arrived from another island, and as soon as we had ordered dinner, the phone rang. "sister, my lil girl she got bad tooth spin, can u come? We at the clinic!" So I hopped back in the can and drove back deserting my chops and chips and my dinner companion, to find a whole indigenous family at...

r the journey so far After 7 years of frustration, I decided to escape the insanity of suburbia and accept a one month contract working as a nurse on a remote island up in the Northern Territory of Australia. This is my story. Day One Three days of education and being holed up on my own in a lonely hotel in Darwin...hot and pleasantly muggy outside, and arctic freezing as soon as you enter a building! Every shop seems to be competing to see who can turn their air conditioning up highest...I ended up switching off the one in my hotel room and opening the window so I could listen to the sounds of the evening rain. First day was cultural education....Richard, a seriously interesting bloke with "one little arm and one big one" as he put it... a traditional land owner of the Larrakia people (which has a lot more significance than I realized at first...I had the uneasy feeling all along that I was listening to someone I should really be paying attention to...kept on being caugh...