A Country Nurse

by Thea Hayes

  The following morning, the poultry had all disappeared. We thought the foxes had killed the lot but found the terrified geese up at the dam. After moving them down to the house, until we sorted out where they would be safest, they took up residence just outside our back door. Nothing would move them. We would chase them away, but back they would come, pooping everywhere. In the end I had to put an advertisement in the local paper—‘Geese for sale’—and sold the lot. It was the only way we could get rid of them from our back door.

  13

  Living on the Downs

  We called our property Murrawah after Ralph’s Aboriginal nanny who looked after him when he was a baby at Waterloo Station in the Northern Territory.

  After settling into Murrawah, seventeen kilometres out of Toowoomba, and finding homes for the geese, our family came home to roost in 1988. It had been a long time since we had all lived together for any length of time. But it wasn’t for long, as Anthony decided living in Toowoomba was more convenient for his work.

  After one year at university, Anthony had taken on an apprenticeship with TR Services, a two-way radio business in Toowoomba. He knew what he wanted to do: to work with two-way radios. When TR Services decided to leave Toowoomba, they offered the business to Anthony. Anthony shared a house with some of his friends, one of whom was Liz Boyce, a nurse, who later became his wife. Anthony eventually bought a block of land in the industrial section of the town with a shed for the business and a three-bedroom house. He called his business Hayes Communications.

  Anthony’s business did very well, Anthony being an expert two-way radio technician. He employed several technicians in the first few years, but then found that they were very few and far between. Not many students were doing the two-way radio course. Liz’s sister Angela was his bookkeeper for some years and when she left to go and study nursing Anthony had to do it himself, plus train the apprentices. One day he ran into a guy he had gone to university with, who was recently divorced and crying poor. Anthony felt sorry for him and gave him the bookkeeper’s job for a few days a week.

  Sometime later, I went in to see my accountant in Dalby, who was also Anthony’s.

  He said, ‘How is that bookkeeper of Anthony’s going?’

  I wondered why he had asked. I told Anthony and he suddenly got worried. That weekend, Anthony, Liz and Angela went through the accounts. Liz rang me first: ‘He’s embezzled $20,000.’ Then it was $40,000 and eventually it turned out to be it over $80,000.

  Of course, the police were called, and the man was charged. He was taking out money supposedly going to Anthony’s house rates and Telstra, and also taking money on BPAY and putting it into his own account.

  If he had gone to gaol, Anthony would not have seen any money, but the man’s father paid it all back. Anthony found out later that the culprit spent the money on jewellery, wine and weekends away, enjoying the good life.

  The whole incident really depressed Anthony. He couldn’t believe that someone whom he had tried to help could treat him that way. Staff were still hard to get, and when Anthony was offered a position with Emergency Services he accepted.

  Emergency Services covers radio commercial networks and VoIP—Voice over Internet Protocol. Anthony and his coworkers are in charge of looking after the communication with QPS (Queensland Police Services), QAS (Queensland Ambulance Services), SES (State Emergency Services), and QFES (Queensland Fire Emergency Services) from Toowoomba to South Burnett, to Talwood, to Moonie and Wandoan. Anthony has said many times that there is a shortage of technicians and when the old ones go there won’t be many trained technicians to replace them. Not good in this vital community service.

  Liz and Anthony had bought a very nice house on the range, so Anthony decided to close the business and sold the property.

  Anthony was the first of my children to get married, in 1990. I had heaps of friends I would have liked to invite, but I learnt that as the mother of the groom you don’t have much say. Most of our closest friends and relatives came, including my dear friend Smiddy, whom Jill Askew and I met on the Orontes on the way to England in 1957. What a fabulous time we all had together, flatting in Bayswater and Kensington in London, with Wylva, Buffy and Yoey, and touring the British Isles and the Continent.

  Jason was in his second year of a surveying course at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) when he went to Katherine with Ralph and me for Lynn’s daughter Simone’s 21st birthday in 1988. His Uncle Lynn found him a job as a surveyor in Katherine.

  Jason unfortunately lost his licence for drink driving and had no alternative but to come home. He was lucky to have a friend in the building industry who offered him a job and so he shifted into town too.

  David was the only one who stayed with us, besides Penny. David was into triathlons and marathons. He hadn’t been a dedicated sportsman when he was at school; Anthony was the sportsman, good at tennis, cricket and rugby, but now it was David’s turn to shine as the athlete in the family.

  The older men at Wave Hill would say, ‘Ah yes, that Anthony is going to be another Don Bradman.’

  As for David, they would say, ‘David will be either Prime Minister of Australia or King of the Underworld.’

  After working for two years in the Territory at Muckaty Station as a jackeroo, David came home to Bidgi Park and helped on the farm. He started going to rodeos around South-East Queensland, riding bulls and bareback broncs. His first rodeo was at Kilcoy. He wanted Penny and me to come and take his photo as he came out of the crush. I was so nervous seeing him on a huge bucking bull, his first ride, that I didn’t manage a good photo at all. I was too busy watching nervously to see if he was okay.

  David also grew very religious, becoming a Revivalist—a religion I had never heard of. His Catholic religion was bypassed completely and so too the rodeos, as his new church didn’t approve. However, David was a very good marksman with a bow and arrow, so he would still go hunting deer or pigs, and his favourite place was Girraween National Park, near Stanthorpe, where he would spend up to four days by himself, much to our concern. When he married Sharon, a lovely girl who he met at the Revival Church, and who is also a nurse, they flew by helicopter to Mount Cook and camped in a tent, high up in the snow, while David hunted deer.

  He was also an avid bicycle rider. He rode his bicycle to and from work thirty-five kilometres away from Toowoomba. One evening quite a few years later when he was cycling to his home in Toowoomba, he was hit by a car and suffered a compound fracture of his femur.

  How shocking it is when you are told as a mother that your son is in Emergency after being involved in a motor vehicle accident. They don’t tell you anything on the phone. I didn’t know whether David was alive or dead. It wasn’t until I arrived at the hospital that I found out he was still alive. He had lost a lot of blood. It was a very bad compound fracture. After surgery and having it pinned, he was there for twenty-one days until he was allowed to leave. I wanted to pick him up and take him to Murrawah and look after him, but when I arrived, he had left the hospital on his bicycle, which someone had taken in to him. He rode home and then down the Toowoomba Range and back again. David, as you can see, is an incredibly fit, independent person.

  When David married Sharon, in 1998, they had a beautiful wedding at the Ravensbourne National Park, with our family, Sharon’s family and many of the parishioners from the Revivalist Church. Later on, they sold their house and moved to Darwin, where David studied at Darwin University to also become a registered nurse. They now have a beautiful son, Nathanial, who has striking red hair.

  Penny had been a boarder at St Ursula’s Convent in Toowoomba, but after we moved to Oakey, Penny became a day pupil, with Ralph and I taking her to and from school each day. I booked her into a ballet school, but Penny wasn’t interested; her academic education was more important.

  The following year Penny started school at Downlands College. It was hard for Penny living so far out of town. I know she wanted to be in town close to her friends, but i
t paid off very well, enabling her to get good marks and entrance to USQ. Penny always came to help lead the cattle at the agricultural shows, the Oakey Murray Grey sales and the Murray Grey heifer shows.

  We continued showing our cattle at local shows and Farmfest, which was just down the road. There was always cattle work to be done; cows to be artificially inseminated or branded. We occasionally had our own killer and I remember one of Anthony’s apprentices from England coming out to visit us at Murrawah. He was interested in the cattle, having never been on a property before, especially a steer we called ‘Jackeroo’. The second time he came out he asked, ‘Where’s Jackeroo?’

  We had Jackeroo in the laundry, all cut up and ready to put in the freezer. The poor English fellow got quite a shock.

  Anthony asked me to be his secretary. I had studied Bookkeeping and Business Principles at school and run a corner store, but I wasn’t a very good secretary, as whenever book club was on or friends asked me to join them for coffee, I would be off.

  So, when I was offered a job with St Vincent de Paul Nursing Services, Anthony didn’t mind at all.

  14

  Home nursing

  I had only been working for Anthony in his business Hayes Communications for a few months when nurses from St Vincent de Paul Nursing Services brought their cars in to have their two-way radios checked.

  I asked them, ‘What sort of nursing do you girls do?’

  They replied, ‘Home nursing in Toowoomba and Oakey.’

  They explained that two nurses look after Oakey, and four nurses do Toowoomba, which is divided into four areas. They visit their patients several times a week, giving showers, doing dressings, checking medication, refilling syringe drivers, checking blood sugar levels and giving insulin, but mainly giving support to the sick and aged in their own homes.

  ‘That sounds great,’ I said. ‘If you ever need another registered nurse give me a ring.’

  And they did, offering me a home nursing position in Oakey, only five kilometres from Murrawah, every second weekend. The position involved relieving the two Oakey nurses, Kaye and Glenda, who usually took it in turns to do the weekend, as well as working every day of the week. I was there to work every second weekend. I soon learnt the ropes.

  Some months later, the St Vincent de Paul Nursing Services in Toowoomba was looking for a full-time registered nurse. I applied and was thrilled to be offered the position. We worked from St Vincent’s Hospital, but after a couple of years, St Vincent de Paul bought a cottage on Bridge Street, near the Wilsonton Shopping Centre in Toowoomba.

  I worked in Toowoomba five days a week, was on call one night, and allowed to take the work car home. I loved my work. We each had an area in Toowoomba for three months, and in that time, one became extremely attached to one’s patients. There were a lot of cancer patients, who gradually became reliant on a syringe driver for their pain control. A syringe driver is a small infusion pump used to gradually administer small amounts of medication to a patient with a needle under the skin, connected by a tube to the syringe. Some syringe drivers run for twenty-four hours, some for forty-eight hours.

  When our patient’s condition started to deteriorate, and they were transferred to hospital, we continued to visit as we were a friendly face they knew. We always attended our patients’ funerals. One week three of my patients died: a very sad week with lots of tears.

  We continued showing our Murray Grey cattle, selling our bulls and heifers at the Oakey Murray Grey sale each year. Attending the Murray Grey heifer show, which was held in January each year for all the young people to do the leading, Penny excelled at cattle handling.

  In 1988, when we moved to Oakey, we thought we had left drought conditions behind, but it was the opposite. Toogoolawah had a flood and we went into drought mode. Hardly any rain for two years. There was very little feed around for our cattle, so we started buying hay, which we fed to them every morning before I went to work. They would put their heads over the fence, look at me and moo! All my wages were going to provide cattle feed, and it wasn’t enough.

  At our last bull sale in Oakey our cattle were in such poor condition they didn’t sell. The time had come to sell the lot. In 1992 we had a complete dispersal sale of our beautiful Murray Grey cattle, with Ralph assisting the auctioneer with comments on the breeding of each animal while I led them around the ring with tears streaming down my cheeks.

  Back in 1988 Ralph and I had purchased a house at Straddie, with our very good Territory friends Jocelyn and Tim Doran. Desperately needing a restful break from our farms and jobs, the four of us decided to go over to North Stradbroke Island or Straddie, as it is more frequently called, for a weekend. We were amazed at what we found on this beautiful island: the second largest sand island in the world, with beautiful beaches, several lakes, a spectacular gorge walk—and it was only forty-five minutes in the barge from Cleveland, Brisbane.

  Loving our holiday at Straddie so much, and having investments with financial advisers we weren’t happy with, we decided to look for a cheap holiday house to buy and share at Point Lookout while we were there. We found the perfect place. A well-built, solid house in the best street, five minutes walking distance to three beaches, plus an ocean view from the veranda upstairs. The house consisted of two flats, one upstairs and one down. They were both completely furnished. We rented the downstairs flat out to a permanent tenant to pay the rates. The upstairs unit was a holiday let and when not occupied we used it ourselves, going down together or with family. Some years later, when Tim and Jocelyn wanted to sell, Ralph and I bought them out.

  15

  Ralph

  Ralph had recovered well from his lung operation. He started helping Anthony in his business, Hayes Communications; looked after our cattle; did a few odd jobs for people around Oakey; went out to Ooratippra, Northern Territory, to give Graham and Robyn Fulcher a hand, and to Katherine to help his brother Lynn, when he had the contract to supply gravel for the new Tindal RAAF Base, in the Northern Territory near Katherine.

  But Ralph was secretly smoking again, hiding his cigarettes in the bathroom next to the garage. He had tried hypnosis, which worked for a short period, but he just found it impossible to give up.

  In 1994 the cancer returned, six years after his operation. I nursed him at home at Murrawah. During the course of his illness, he was on medication only, which controlled his pain.

  He wanted to see all his mates before he died. We went to his nephew Michael’s wedding in Toowoomba, and another wedding in Sydney. He bemoaned the fact that he wouldn’t see his grandchildren, but he did meet Robert, his first grandchild. Ralph used to go to Anthony’s place and spend the day there when I was working. One day, he saw an emerald green Jaguar XJ convertible in a second-hand car sale yard across the road. Ralph loved vintage cars; the last antique model had been his Humber Super Snipe, which we had bought in Grafton NSW when on holidays before heading back to Gordon Downs Station in Western Australia, which he was managing at the time. Sadly, the Humber Super Snipe came to a fiery end when Ralph was returning from Darwin after dropping me off to fly to Sydney to have my third child. How lucky it wasn’t on the way to Darwin.

  The Jaguar was very old, but Ralph wanted it by hook or by crook. The boys tried to talk him out of it, but we decided why not, if it brings him some pleasure? He bought it, and proudly drove it to Michael and Beckie’s wedding.

  We would often reminisce about our wonderful years in the Outback and the great friends we had made. He loved getting phone calls from his mates. He talked often in those last few weeks about his mother Cudge, Auntie Eanie and Grandma Taylor who had all passed on.

  After we were married, Ralph’s grandmother and mother gave us their collection of doilies, dressing table sets, small and large tablecloths, all embroidered, and with lace around the edges. They were lovely but I didn’t use them, they didn’t suit our lifestyle or the furnishings, so I had packed them away in a large box in the linen cupboard.

  One day
a few weeks before he died, I had gone shopping and arrived home to find that Ralph was ironing, and what was he ironing—all the embroidery, forty-odd lovingly made pieces, that had belonged to his mum and grandmother.

  I think he was getting his things in order.

  When he started coughing up blood, the doctor suggested a visit to St Vincent’s Hospital for intravenous antibiotics. It was his birthday, 2 February 1994, and he had just turned fifty-nine. The whole family had gathered in his hospital room, including Madeline and Milton, Ralph’s brother and sister-in-law, when he had a breathless attack and suddenly became unconscious. He died at two o’clock the following morning, without regaining consciousness, but very peacefully.

  During the course of his illness, he had been on medication which controlled his pain. He really had just slowly become weaker and weaker. The end of a wonderful husband, father, cattle man, and loving friend to many, especially the Gurindji people, whom he worked with and understood so well.

  It was a beautiful funeral. John Kirsh, who was at Balgo, Western Australia when we were at Gordon Downs, told the story of Murrawah. Ralph had asked John, on his last visit before he died, to speak at his funeral and to tell the Murrawah story.

  In the mid-1930s Ralph’s parents Dick and Mary Hayes had a farm at Pretty Bend in Queensland. In 1936 they accepted a management position with the Vesteys at Waterloo Station in the Northern Territory. Mary and Dick brought with them their first-born son Ralph, who was a tiny baby having been born prematurely in Brisbane on 2 February 1936.

  The move must have been very hard for Mary who, although a champion lady horse rider, was brought up in Brisbane. Her new life on an Outback property with a baby was isolating, especially when her loving husband had to spend a lot of the time in the stock camp, mustering cattle and fencing.