Academia has got lost within it's own inflated views of it's own special purpose. An expert on semiotic analysis informed me that the Sponge Bob Sam and vegetable-cartoon tattoos on a greased up man, languishing on a bed of crinkled tin foil, were "cool". He drew a simile of a Christmas cracker. "Christmas cracker?" I said, looking at a rather large gold perfume bottle. I responded in disbelief, "I can't quite see it." My personal view was that the Sponge Bob Sam tattoo was a sign of someone irresponsible and reckless: I paid for it in marks. The greased up figure put photographs of his own hairy, bare bum on his personal twitter account a few months later and I then had solid proof that logic will always prevail over magnified ego.
I will tell you what "cool" is...the volunteer ambulance crews in the Wheatbelt are "cool"; policemen are "cool". You may ask who the man in the photograph is, while we are talking about "cool". This is a highly experienced pilot, the guy you never see...he has just helped secure a patient who has suffered a massive heart attack onto a flight trolley, in a tin shed, on the side of a runway, in the middle of absolutely no-where. He's then loaded the trolley onto the aircraft's hydraulic lift, raised it up to the level of the flight deck, and transferred the critically ill patient on board for the emergency flight. When the volunteer ambulance crew have cleared the dark runway of kangaroos, the flight checks are done and the RFDS crew cruise down a pitch black runway and do a u-turn. Like a supernatural power, they lift off, sending off fine pieces of gravel in the wind they create. This is "cool"...the epitome of "cool".
This is the guy that mows the lawn at the local school in one of the small Wheatbelt towns (Malcolm). He has saved more than a few lives in his time and he doesn't even know he is doing it. He drives the ambulances to one of the rural airports for Royal Flying Doctor evacuations, regularly drives a few hundred kilometres to Perth (sometimes more than once a day), as well as bringing in doctors or paramedics from the chopper when an emergency is really facing a crisis. Some of the runways are sealed but in towns like Boyupbrook, in the Southwest, the RFDS still land in a farmer's paddock with lanterns. RFDS have an arrangement with local primary schools and the helicopter evacuations use the school football fields (we call this the school oval) to land on. Malcolm is one of many and one in a million.
This is one of the canola and barley farmers, Yvonne (I think barley is used to make beer). She is also one of the Enrolled nurses at Corrigin Hospital - she gets paid. Her grandson has one of the first electronic cochlea implants done in Australia.
This is Tammy, one of the Wheatbelt nurses. She organsised expired hospital stock which I took to Kanyana Wildlife Hospital for injured marsupials and wild birds. She also gets paid.
This is the guy that mows the lawn at the local school in one of the small Wheatbelt towns (Malcolm). He has saved more than a few lives in his time and he doesn't even know he is doing it. He drives the ambulances to one of the rural airports for Royal Flying Doctor evacuations, regularly drives a few hundred kilometres to Perth (sometimes more than once a day), as well as bringing in doctors or paramedics from the chopper when an emergency is really facing a crisis. Some of the runways are sealed but in towns like Boyupbrook, in the Southwest, the RFDS still land in a farmer's paddock with lanterns. RFDS have an arrangement with local primary schools and the helicopter evacuations use the school football fields (we call this the school oval) to land on. Malcolm is one of many and one in a million.
This is one of the canola and barley farmers, Yvonne (I think barley is used to make beer). She is also one of the Enrolled nurses at Corrigin Hospital - she gets paid. Her grandson has one of the first electronic cochlea implants done in Australia.
This is one of Saint John's Ambulance volunteers from Gnowangerup, in the Greater Southern, at midnight, one normal night. He is in his jeans and got dragged out the Ongerup pub to give a hand.
I did this plaster backslab with a guy called Steven, when he had just got back from an expedition in Antarctica. Last time I saw him was at Hollywood Hospital in the Intensive Care Unit, looking after a ventillated patient. He hasn't done any more slabs but I have done a few when there have been no doctors on site, before the patients are transferred to a larger hospital for x-rays.
This is Tammy, one of the Wheatbelt nurses. She organsised expired hospital stock which I took to Kanyana Wildlife Hospital for injured marsupials and wild birds. She also gets paid.
