The Barefoot Healer

Well, I'm in Alice again, looking out at one of the Sleeping Caterpillars of the McDonnell Ranges. Last night was open mike and art show night at Ningke Nungue in Tennant Creek...with a whole host of women showing and selling their paintings from neighboring communities, and a concert of yukeleles of all things, which are suffering from a strange revival in The middle of the Red Centre... Today a 5 hour drive, broken up by a delightful breakfast in the pub in Wauchope, which has the most delightful garden full of gnomes and rustic wooden tables hidden behind it's typical outback colourbond fence. Peta, one of the other RAHC nurses and I took it in turns driving along the pretty close to dead straight Stuart Highway, past the one and only Mango and Vege farm back to Alice Springs. It was quieter here this afternoon than on my way up....its cold and windy, so there wee only a few locals out sitting on the grass of the Todd Mall, and much less of an underlying feeling of agro and...

My last weekend in Tennant.... Yesterday we went for a drive to the lookout next to the watertank...wow, you forget how vast this land is when you hang around town all the time... One photo shows a dirt track stretching off into the distance...the next city from here is Alice Springs...which is 5 hours drive away, grin! The other photo is of a lone cloud on the horizon seen from up there...took me a while to realize it was smoke from a bushfire...no wind, not even a breeze, which is why it was it was just collecting there in one huge smoke cloud low on the horizon. Today, after a long lazy breakfast checking my emails, i wandered down the main street to see if any shops were open...past the serpent winding along the wall of the emporium sports store, where the local kids all buy their baggy shirts and shorts...and found a little Aboriginal art gallery called "Desert Rose 21". It's run by a delightful woman called Jenny, who works in the local schools during the week, and...

Wow, the last two days have totally changed my view of Tennant Creek. After 4 weeks of living amongst drunks and street people, and seeing filthy starving clinic in the streets, i finally got to see the strong, powerful side of the place! The Karriji-Kari women's conference was hosted by "Stronger Families" a local organization that functions as a support service for women and children, offering counseling, running a variety of groups such as traditional teaching outings into the bush, healthy cooking... The idea behind the conference was to get all the local organizations together to show the local women what is actually available in the way of services. I originally got in touch with Pamela, the head organizer, because as a short contract nurse here i was feeling pretty frustrated, not knowing who i could refer the people to who needed different help than i could offer them in a short consult in the clinic, and i wanted to know who else was offering what here.... Pamel...

We went camping out at Longreach waterhole, about 270 km's further north this weekend... The two Alan's, nurses from rural and remote, a sort of community nursing team that travels out to the surrounding camps, picked us up at 6.30, way to early for this night owl. They turned up in 2 lge 4 wheel drives, with a large cage trailer which has Alans portable camper tent thing installed on top of it. The sun was just rising in the most ridiculously picturesque manner as we drove up the Stewart highway, and I almost forgave them the uncivilized hour. There was 6 of us all up, me and my housemate fellow nurses Sue and Peta, the 2 Alan's and Emily, a young doctor from Taiwan, who alone out of all of us, had never been camping, let alone in the Ozzie Outback! After about 2 hours we turned off the highway and headed out towards the lake over dusty red dirt roads through the scrub....and numerous confusing turns onto various tracks later, arrived at Alan and Alans favorite camping sp...

What a day...or better two days. It all started when this blond fair skinned woman came into the clinic with her 6 yr old pale, blonde, blue eyed daughter and wanted her to get a flu shot. She had a funny accent and i assumed she was South African, as id seen a few families from there this week... We don't normally give flu shots to kids, so i rang the vaccine centre to double check, and they said that we could give a 6 yr old a flu shot, but that Mum would have to pay for it unless her daughter was aboriginal or had a chronic disease.... I got half way through saying this to Mum, when she went off her nut, screaming at me and calling me a racist white bitch, and how "you white bitches from down South know nothing about being Aboriginal" yadda yadda yadda.... I tried to point out to her that i was part aboriginal myself, and that that no-one would ever suspect that since i am equally pale...but she just went on yelling.... She then went out to the waiting room and ranted...

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...

Well, I've moved into "Town" with two of the other nurses.. The delightful Peta, who has years of experience as an ED nurse and out bush, and Sue, who is a midwife with a lifetime of stories... I'm learning so much just from listening to the two of them...and it's also good for me to finally have some great older role models. Intelligent, active, interesting women as housemates... We're living in "the manor", a somewhat ramshackle older house up on stilts which overlooks the carpark behind the supermarket. Which is also it seems a central meeting place for the locals. Our "manor" is the only high building, and is surrounded by a nice sturdy colourbond fence, closed with a chain and padlock. so we glide through the crowd in our work vehicle, to the waves and greetings of the locals, and then close the fence and padlock behind us, leaving them sitting out on the curb in front, shouting, gossiping, drinking wine, and generally behaving exactl...