english, my love.

Biggenden, Gayndah, Mundubbera, Eidsvold, Monto. Read them – like a list of dead and dying Queensland country towns clinging to life at the edge of an enlarging man-made desert, in marginal farmland whose rape should have been abandoned whilst it was still a twinkle in a colonist’s eye, and whose under-resourced medical minefield has been exploding with education and confidence building opportunities with each asymmetric footfall.

It’s the worst drought in a century, but during my rounds we’ve had the biggest downpour in over a year. I would join in the celebrations were it not for the increased risk of motor vehicle accidents, inability for rescue aircraft to land, and the fact that I’m the only doctor in town. But that’s exactly what I’ve come out here for, so when they snap their arms, shove sticks into their eyes, stroke out, arrest or just die for no other reason than the lack of other diversions, it’s been your friendly local doctor and correspondent on the other end of the defib paddles, the internet searches, or the harassed telephone calls to evacuation services.

At the end of each week there is a 60 minute period that I have come to call ‘the golden hour’. It’s the one-hour drive between towns. In that one hour – unlike the other 167 hours in that week – I am completely uncontactable, completely responsibility-free and completely weightless. I could stand on a set of electric scales and they wouldn’t even activate. I could throw myself from the roof of the hospital and float down so gently that I would be sleeping like a baby that has overdosed on phenergan by the time I touched the ground. Then I arrive in town ‘X’ and it’s time to get back into it again, and my brain reassumes its usual Orwellian double-think of hoping for the quiet best on the surface, but further down craving the absolute worst – the bus crash, the intra-cranial bleed, the massive MI. For though I don’t want these things to happen to anyone – no no – I realise that misfortune is one of the staples of any human life, and I want the privilege of learning from it. I want practical skills and knowledge born of experience. I want to look at myself as I stand alone and think without reservation: ‘you are a competent doctor’.

Where I am now is cattle-country. When asking patients whether they have any meat-free days a week I have on more than one occasion been met with the response ‘yes of course – on such-and-such a day I only eat chicken’, and my requests for a vegetarian diet from the hospital kitchen are not so much met with suspicion as they are with fear. It’s like being back in China, though in China I at least sometimes felt like I was speaking the same language as the locals ;) People are as friendly and open as the stories and stereotypes suggest, and though I love working and being here, I love working and being here on a temporary basis. Don't think i could do the long haul. anywhere.

And so I’ll be popping back to Melbourne in a couple of weeks, and I can’t wait. I hope to see all of yous (sic) at the BBQ in Albert Park on Saturday 25th November. My phone has no reception until I fly out on the night before, so please email me if you have any queries and have been battling unsuccessfully with my answering machine over the last 3 weeks. Otherwise, gather your vegetable paddies and sausages and breads and drinks and games and friends, and I’ll see you then!

pic one - the big mandarin in Mundubbera

pics two to five - scenes of north burnett

'a good man is hard to find; a hard man is good to find'. Mae West