Country living
22 February 2014 | Morawa
Jane
I have always thought of myself as a country girl. I was born in Bristol, a pretty big city in the south west of England but lived on the outskirts as a child, surrounded by fields and open spaces. I then moved into the city for my 20s, misspending my youth and generally behaving badly for a decade. In my 30s, I moved out to Somerset and grew vegetables and went to dances at the village hall and drank in the only pub in the village - well, there were three actually but it sounds more remote to say there was only one.
Then in 2007, we moved to Sydney. Here, we live on the Northern Beaches five minutes from the beach where there are a dozen restaurants and cafes to choose from. There is a bus at the end of the road which, if you go North, takes you to the middle of a National Park or will take you to the steps of the Opera House if you take it the other way into the city. It's actually the perfect distance from everywhere you could wish to be.
So when we were planning this next voyage from the Mediterranean back to Australia, we knew we would have to spend the Northern Hemisphere winter back in Australia working to top up the sailing fund and it would have to be in the country somewhere where we could earn good money and save. We were actually looking forward to it when we were sitting in the cockpit of Matilda in a beautiful Greek anchorage, sipping a cold Mythos. It would be a great opportunity to see a bit of Australia we wouldn't normally get to see. We would immerse ourselves in the country way of life, experiencing a type of life even most Australians don't normally get to do. We would get to know everyone in the town and join in all that it had to offer.
With this optimism, I got a job in a little hospital in Morawa, about four hours north of Perth in what they call the Wheatbelt. This is an area of 150,000 square kilometres, mostly containing - well, wheat. And some iron ore mines, and some sheep. The hospital has 10 beds for elderly residents who can no longer look after themselves at home and 4 beds for acute patients that do not need to be transferred to a bigger hospital but need some medical/nursing care. It also has a small Emergency Department that anybody can walk into. Brilliant. Exactly what I had hoped for and pretty well paid too as it is classed as remote so there are quite a few perks that come with living in the sticks.
It began quite well. Once we were here, Andy quickly got himself a job in the local quarry, driving an excavator and washing 300 tons of blue stone a day. We were quite smug that we had done so well with such apparent ease.
I had been working for a few weeks when I remembered something. I've done this all before! Shift work, nights, lates, earlies, 8 days on then one day off, then straight onto nights again. Incontinence, lifting heavy men who have had strokes, showering people, turning patients every 3 hours to prevent pressure sores, giving enemas (I had really thought my days of doing that were well over!), staff who think they are senior to me so can tell me how to do something, despite having never worked in an Emergency Dept before, managers who have targets to achieve so they think they can bully you into doing something you really don't feel you can do (some of you will be nodding your heads at this point!) and doctors who speak to you as if you came down with the last shower and wouldn't recognise a fractured calcaneum if it stepped on you! Am I sounding bitter??
And when not working, there is nothing to do. Nothing. It's 40 C outside night and day. A nice evening walk is out. The pub, let's say, lacks charm. The people are the same. No one has invited us round for a barbie and, in fairness, we haven't invited anyone round to our house either. Meeting a fellow yachtie and, within minutes, chatting like old mates and joining them for a sundowner seem like a distant memory!
The saving grace is spending time with our lovely friends, Mel and Darren, and their kids who are delightful and hopefully now will know us forever. We have had some lovely times with them and are planning a few more before we head off back to Greece.... in 60 days. Not that we're counting!