Complex

So there hasn't been a great deal happening here the last few days. The past weekend I had the opportunity to watch an island style wedding and attend the reception. It was a pretty colourful affair I guess and similar to a standard Western wedding in a lot of ways, just with a heap of flower shirts and island dancing tacked onto the end for good measure.

Church here is a pretty big deal. Such a big deal that the arrival of the first missionaries to the Torres Strait Islands is marked by a local public holiday known as "the coming of the light". Despite this overarching love of all things Jesus, the people don't seem to agree too much on exactly how to love Jesus. Consequently there's a heap of different denominations throughout the islands, at least 4 here as far as I know which for a population of about 800, seems like a bit of overkill.
 
Anyway, the wedding reception was all about the food. I had previously thought I might be interested in trying some dugong or turtle meat but after seeing 4 of the sea turtles being butchered on the beach a day earlier, I suddenly felt a bit sad about the whole thing. Of course it's hypocritical cos I happily ate the beef lasagne on offer but you know... turtles are cool! Right?

One turtle was left tied to a tree overnight to be killed the next day. A nurse who had previously worked here a few years back apparently liberated a turtle in similar circumstances and unsurprisingly, was on the next plane home.

I left the reception around 11 o clock after watching a bit of the dancing. This dancing apparently went on unitl 8 the next morning. Funnily enough, the following Monday we saw three patients who, being in there 70s-80s, were feeling pretty shitty after such a late night. One lady was deep in the clutches of sepsis and had to be airlifted out to Thursday Island for Intensive Care.

What was really sad about this whole incident though was that her family didn't seem to really give a shit. She had apparently been lying in bed for 20 hours or so before we were called to collect her. As soon as we arrived to the scene, her son then took the opportunity to piss off somewhere else; apparently not too concerned that his mother was close to dying. Having already seen a few other situations like this on the island, I wasn't so much shocked as I was disgusted that someone could seemingly not care so little. Ironically, an elderly lady at the clinic had for no particular reason given me a lecture that very day about how selfish mainlanders are and how good islanders are at looking after their family.

The moral of that story is that things here can sometimes be, well... complex and generalisations don't always apply to any group. For every messed up family we see there's a bunch of good families who fortunately, do look after one another and do get concerned when their grannies are on their deathbed.

Welllll, less than a week to go now and this time next week I'll be on Thursday Island checking out the hospital there which I'm looking forward to. More soon

DogMan

A man dropped into the clinic today with a massive army of dogs. I decided to call him "Dogman". Dogman's dogs looked rough, feral and pretty dodgy. There were also about 9 of them cruising the streets with him, taking up the whole road and blocking traffic. By the time I'd returned to the clinic from a home visit, Dogman was inside and the dogs had amassed at the door, looking desperately on as the great man himself, the dog man went inside. A couple were trying to nose the door open. As the dogs blocked the driveway, I beeped the horn a few times and drove right up to them to the point of nearly crushing a couple... but they still didn't budge. A couple even kind of glared at me looking pretty pissed that I'd question their right to block the driveway.

I had to park elsewhere.

I made it inside without letting any through the door somehow and then saw that a few of them had discovered the back door. I got that quickly shut just before they stormed the place but pretty soon, it looked like we were surrounded. A couple eventually got in through the front door. This was both hilarious and a serious community health issue.

Eventually the Dogman himself was called up to pick up his meds for the week. As he walked towards me, for some reason I felt compelled to ask him... "Are they your dogs man?".

"nah mate uhhhh, they're just uhhh, following me".

Sure Dogman, whatever you say.

We all know about the crazy cat ladies living in a house full of cats and catshit. I just had no idea there were crazy dog men too, maybe I just don't watch enough Today Tonight to find this important shit out.


If you're having trouble picturing what a crazy dog man looks like, heres one...

Thursday ISland

Was lucky enough to visit Thursday Island today for a grand total of about 40 minutes.

We took a 6 person fibreglass boat from Badu in the morning that one of the docs from TI had "chartered" for a return journey. $150 worth of fuel definitely beats $350 for a 15 minute plane ride (did I mention flights are really expensive here?), and I decided to tag along.

The ride over is pretty hectic. The crystal turqouise waters of the Straits conceal a maze of shallow lying reefs, sandbars and semi-formed islands that require a lot of twisting and turning to get through safely.

It was a good opportunity to see some local knowledge in action too. These guys have been travelling the waters their whole lives and  know exactly where every potential obstacle will be and how best to avoid it in accordance with the given conditions.

 Rugby teams from all the outer islands travel to TI this way every weekend for their weekly matches. Their day consists of a 2-4 hour boat ride, rugby game, dinner with friends and family, then a two hour return journey in complete darkness which apparently isn't a problem because they "just know where to go". Add to this a stop half way on one of the uninhabited islands to sink some cans (dodging some crocs while they're at it) before a drunken final leg of the journey around midnight.

Given the complexity of navigating through these waters, this all seemed equal parts ridiculous and impressive. Nonetheless, the boys here are all taught to drive a boat from an early age; George's 12 year old nephew navigated our return trip largely on his own, so I guess it just becomes second nature like anything else.

Anyways, TI seemed pretty nice and compared to Badu.... absolutely HUGE, I mean there's at least 3 supermarkets and 4 entire pubs on the island... crazy! I know. I was all set for a chicken schnitzel parmigiana with chips and salad and a pint for lunch (I'd sort of built the idea up in my head a lot the past week), but after dropping off the doc and walking to the shop, George seemed ready to head back already. I was trying to drop hints at sticking around for lunch, saying things like "I've heard the parmy at the hotel grand is GREAT", but he seemed pretty stoked with his two hot dogs from the deli and was already heading back to the wharf.
Dejected, I gave up, shut up and just had to settle for the shitty hot dog.

All the same, a great experience and a great way to see a different angle on one of the mose beautiful and unique places in Australia.

This turtle is probably here to symbolise how much the locals love hunting and eating turtles. They're meant to taste pretty good.

KOMMunity

So doing a community nursing job means, working in the community... as in, going to peoples houses. This becomes all the more necessary when the patients are schizophrenic, have a pretty  loose grip on the concept of time and need a shot of antipsychotic juice in the arse to stop them from hurting themselves.

I spent part of yesterday arvo crusing the streets (all 5 of them) of the community looking for the two patients in question. First to their home, a logical starting point. They're not in though so we try their parents, girlfriend, friends, the shop... eventually we just find this guy walking around with a big silly grin on his face.

As pointless as that all seemed for a while, I actually ended up really liking the guy. He was super friendly; not to mention really open and welcoming and I was glad we could help him get through another week without doing whatever shit he pulls without his meds.

So the truck pulls over and he hops in the back, where we mixed up the meds and jabbed the needle into his backside on the side of the dirt road, with the engine still running.  It felt like the super shadiest drug deal. If you're having trouble imagining it, it probably looked a lot like this picture...

Face full of Coco

Indigenous Affairs minister JEnny Macklin unveiling the boat and getting a face full of coco

Ranger Boat

The Rangers with Minister

Today I had a great opportunity to witness the unveiling and blessing of a new boat for the Torres Strait Island Ranger Service. The ranger service consists of a bunch of locals working throughout the straits to enforce environmental protection laws, keep communities clean and work with schools to pass on knowledge regarding hunting and fishing and more good vibe community stuff like that. Each island has their own ranger team and all the teams had come to Badu today for the special event. They also got official ranger badges that looked pretty rad.

The flags

The boat itself was pretty impressive and the Rangers are planning to use it to better enforce fishing laws in the waters surrounding the islands. The locals here are allowed to catch turtle and dugong and dive for crayfish in accordance with traditional practices andstrict sustainability measures but of course, if this is going to work, those measures need to be enforced... hence the sweet boat.

Anyway some politicians from “down south” (as the locals here call the rest of Australia) came with bloated entourages and gave a few dull speeches.  Later, members of the Torres Strait regional council spoke, the local priest gave a blessing, and Jenny Macklin, Minister for Indigenous Affairs, smashed a coconut on the boat to christen it, giving herself a face full of coco juice in the process.

Music and dancing followed which was of course, what everyone was really there for. Personally I wanted to see the boat in action but this didn’t happen. Overall it was great to see the locals getting excited about their achievements and taking so much pride in their community. Given that Indigenous communities tend to cop so much shit in Australia, it’s nice to witness something really positive happening. Enjoy the videos.

Badu so far

So I've been on Badu for 5 days now and I guess I've settled in pretty well. I'm working as a student RN up here in the Health centre with two RNs, Indigenous health workers and the one medical officer who services 3 different communities over two different islands (Badu and Moa).

Jetty, Badu Island

For  the uninitiated, the Torres Strait islands are a group of, well... islands forming the most northerly part of Queensland and Australian territory. Fitting snugly between the tip of Cape York on the Oz mainland and PNG, 15 of the islands are inhabited with around 8000 people between them. With the exception of Thursday Island (the unofficial 'capital' of the region), the islands are lmost entirely populated by their Indigenous inhabitants and the odd few migrants down from PNG.

The island I'm working on: 'Badu Island' is geographically one of the largest in the Torres Strait, but its population hovers between 800 and 900, thus making it a pretty small and isolated community overall. Understandably, the health centre is also small, isolated and consequently, slightly underresourced. Fortunately though, the staff there are some of the most caring, knowledgable and compassionate health professionals I've ever worked with and I'm certainly learning a lot from them. The pictures below show the pretty dull looking building we're working in... luckily the interior is well looked after with a fair bit of decent equipment to help keep the people healthy.

Badu Island Health Centre

Nonetheless, keeping people healthy here seems to be a bit of a challenge. Anyone with half a brain would be aware of the heap of health issues affecting Indigenous people here, across Australia and indeed, the whole world really. Although the alcohol abuse and domestic violence endemic of some rural communities is fortunately less of an issue here, there's a truckload of more sinster afflictions hard at work: diabetes, kidney failure, heart failure, obesisty...  While the sugary foods and drinks we pack the supermarkets with here are tolerated well (in moderation) by many Australians, out  in these communities sugary foods are slowly ripping these people to shreds. Nowhere is this more apparent than the health centre where seemingly every 4 in 5 patients coming in has diabetes, is overweight and is losing kidney function and effectively dieing.

But what can you do? Alcohol prohibition is accepted and enforced in some communities, why not sugar??? Queensland health seem happy to spend millions of coin on funding free medication for diabetes patients out here, but very little money on heath prevention programs i.e. stopping people from drinking coke and eating shit food all the time. More to come soon.

Mortuary in the background, with space for TWO WHOLE CORPSES!!!

Preparation

So 5 days to go till I touch down on Badu Island in the Torres Strait. I 'm making this little blog thing here to keep track of anything and everything that might happen while I'm away and for anyone else to read if interested.

Overall I guess you could say I'm pretty excited. I'm a little bit worried  about food because I generally eat a LOT and there might not be too much of it around up there. Well... there's one expensive shop and everyone goes fishing apparently so I'm gonna have to adapt to that, i.e. learn how to fish. I also picked up a truckload of freeze dried rice and pasta meals so no risk of running out of tasty tasty carbs at this stage.

I've packed a lot of shorts too. I like wearing shorts. Its 31 degrees up there right now in the middle of winter and I can't wait to get amongst it.

Luke