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@ElsevierAUS
JanieDade
Smith
My name’s Janie Dade Smith and I was
born in rural Queensland. I’ve lived in
rural and remote areas most of my life,
in Queensland and in the Northern
Territory for 11 years. I worked as a
clinician over on Bathurst Island which
is a little island north of Darwin. I went
over there as part of a rural placement
actually, just for two weeks, and when I
came back they actually offered me a job.
I thought that I had such wonderful
skills and that’s what they were attracted
to. But, actually I realised that if you
had a pair of shoes and a pulse they
would have taken anybody because
of the recruitment and retention
problems in rural and remote Australia
which I really had very little idea about.
What I found when I was working there
though was there were some fundamental
moments working there with kids who
had all these sores on their legs and they
used to come in and have their dressings
done. I really realised that you could work
clinically with one person at a time but,
with education you could actually have
an impact on 100 people in an hour and
just how incredibly powerful that was.
Then I moved into education and I
worked in high schools teaching sex,
drugs and rock and roll to young people.
I then moved to Queensland and wrote
the Queensland Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander Health Worker Program
which was another really fundamental
turning point in my career, to do
curriculum development but to also work
for a community controlled health
organisation and what that actually