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@ElsevierAUS
What have you experienced
in remote Australia that
has changed your world
view?
I think one of the experiences that
changed my life path and the way I
viewed the world was when I was working
in Bathurst Island which is a little island
north of Darwin in the Northern Territory.
I was working there with 10 Aboriginal
Health Workers and a nun who was
working there as a nurse at the time.
I used to say to the Health Workers, it was
very important to fill in the pink form in
the chart because that helped with the
discharge summaries, and to me that was
very important, what was written down
etc. Then one day the health worker said
to me ‘would you like to go hunting,
Janie?’ and I had my little daughter who
was about four or five at the time. We all
jumped inmy car with buckets and things,
there were 10 of us in a two wheel Suzuki.
Off we all went, I had my white shorts
on. Going hunting in the mud for crabs
out at the beach and as we were walking
behind them they were running over
these mangroves and they turned around
and said to me ‘too slow, go back’, and
they made two of the children, the seven
and eight year old come back with us.
They made us damper, sitting there in
the sun. They were very reluctant about
actually doing it because they wanted to
be out there with their parents, catching
crabs, and they saw these people who had
no ideahowto survive in this environment.
It gave me a moment to reflect, to actually
think, we could sit here with our white
skin burning forever and never find our
way back and it made me realise just how
unimportant the pink form actually was.