Flying Nurses

Photograph taken out on a rural air-strip a few years ago, in Western Australia.

I took this picture while waiting on a small dirt runway in South West Australia while our patient waited on a stretcher in a corrugated iron shed. Emergency night transfers at the time required the State Emergency Services to set up runway lights in the dark. Today, many rural air-feilds have runway lights activated from the closest major metropolitan city, which  is  usually a few hundred kilometers away. Small, remote sites do still often rely on a local farmers's paddock (Boyupbrook have a fabulous paddock) for patient evacuations. The Royal Flying Doctor's planes will often land before us and pull up a few feet away from the ambulance. The patient is then transferred onto another trolley out in the open, on the runway, and then we load them up for their flight.

 One winter's afternoon, after a long drive through the Stirling ranges, our ambulance was diverted to an airfield in Albany. Two other ambulances were already waiting. Here, out on an icy tarmac, I met up with Val, a nurse I had worked with 17 years before. Delighted to catch up, we spoke briefly on the runway while a young doctor from Perth climbed into each ambulance to examine two patients destined for ICU and to do a ring block on a young man's badly injured hand. 

*Most of the present  Western Australian health sites are preventing nurses and  doctors from recording their experiences online and recent health department directives have made it an offence to keep online diaries of their unique work practice. 

When Ducks aren't ducks...

Midway through my second year as a fashion student, I found a black and white photograph that I fell in love with. I built concept cards around it; I made theme books to reflect ideas that came from it; I spent many weeks on a small, wonderful journey around it. The picture was of an extremely handsome, bare-chested man, seated with a large, swan across his lap. I had never seen anything so powerful nor so beautiful…it affected me. From that one photograph, which was strikingly not unlike a close friend and flat-mate, I spent hours printing pieces of textile and long pieces of silk. I imagined a world where everyone had gone, leaving behind one man: the "lawn-mower man".  For years, he kept mowing the huge lawns around a grand house, in the hope that one day someone would return.

My flat-mate had mowed the lawn once, so he became "the lawn-mower man". This evolved and by the end of the project, I grandiosely called my collection of final prints and items…"The Man With The Big Duck". I thought it was fabulous at the time and was so excited that I wanted to share it with everyone, including he whose likeness I had embodied into print.

Naively, I typed, "How is your Big Duck?" as a text message event  and sent it, so I could "show and tell" and finally share it with my male muse. Unfortunately, things may be read rather differently when you are not totally and absolutely wrapped into fashion. I think the  "U" may have been read as another letter in the alphabet and I have been deserted by the whipper-snipper person. He never saw the swan, and  I am sure he would have been rather complimented. But…swans are swans and ducks are ducks and now my life is nothing but bird seed.

The Future of Royal Perth Hospital.

The New Fiona Stanley Hospital will be an exciting but modest architectural achievement due to the considerations of the use of natural light and bird-attracting gardens...both condusive to healing and spiritual calmness. Royal Perth Hospital, on the other hand, prides itself on it' s trauma capacity and specialist services. Logistics will be the dilemma. I foresee an imminent and pressing need of planning for a permanent  "fly - in" helicopter - chapter for both facilities. 

Dheborah

You forgot something...

I spent another day doing a C.P.R course before heading home in the rain. Kwinana Freeway is fast becoming a deadly travel option. Two nine a.m smashes were still burning in my memory while travelling home in the afternoon. A half hour drive actually takes two hours on the freeway. Perth drivers often have a road-manners reluctance  so changing lanes often has a horrible sense of Russian Roulette. A hot, purple car dove slightly ahead of me to my left. Although I was in the right lane, my speed was around 45 km an hour most of the time. I glanced at the very cute purple sedan and three minutes later, with a few hundred other vehicles, found myself merging into one lane to drive around a freeway smash. A not so cute but badly crumpled purple vehicle lay adjacent to the concrete barriers, facing the oncoming traffic while a second, terribly mangled  vehicle took up another lane. Trucks with flashing "Slow down" signs with diversion lights  and police vehicles blocked all lanes except one. What could have been a nightmare in logistics became an exercise in courtesy…for a change. Almost miraculously , every driver tonight managed to "slow down" and allow other drivers into their single lane; not a single rude sign was made out of a window; every driver kept their car at a respectful snail's pace and I didn't feel sweaty apprehension moving over to the left.

Keep in mind that this was an opportunity for any doctor or nurse to offer assistance;  families could allow their children to be exposed to the perils of driving while it was an opportunity for roadside volunteers to offer a friendly gesture. Next to the safety cones, in a yellow waterproof suit, a handsome but  obviously annoyed young man stood directing concerned traffic and calling out…"Go Faster" with a touch of sarcasm in his voice. No-one cared that they were driving slowly at that moment…they were just relieved that they were not driving past bodies and carnage. The only thing I saw when I looked at him was not a demi - hero but someone who hadn't seen a  purple car tonight. The drive home is about getting home safely, not about dying to get home.