A Country Nurse

by Thea Hayes

  It was an inspiring conference, meeting palliative care professionals and learning new skills about the care of the dying. One hospice in Dublin, we heard, allowed their patients to bring their pets into the hospice with them. A young woman was permitted to keep a horse in the grounds, enabling her to see him every day; going out into the yard in her wheelchair to visit. It was an amazing couple of days and while I didn’t win the poster, it was great fun to prepare.

  Before I left, my sons helped me move everything out of my house and into Jason’s shed, so I could rent the property while I was away. And then I was ready to go. I was feeling very excited and proud of myself for making the decision to leave.

  At the end of January 2000 I flew to Bangkok, arriving about 1 a.m. It seemed like miles walking to the departure lounge for the next leg of my flight at 4.30 a.m. Every 100 metres I passed glass enclosures for smokers, holding about ten people whom you could hardly see because of the smoke. Who would want to smoke after experiencing that?

  My two week organised bus tour of Italy was marvellous. Starting in Rome we travelled by bus to Florence, Pisa, Lake Como, Florence, Milan, the Amalfi Coast and Capri. The other tourists were an interesting lot, although in future I would always take a single room. It turned out that my room companion had a habit of snoring. I bought earplugs but they didn’t help much.

  On my return to Rome I enquired whether my Australian/ Italian hotel proprietor could recommend a good hairdresser.

  ‘Sure, just down the road is the salon of Sergio Valente, the most famous hairdresser in Europe, who has dressed the heads of the rich and famous. Jackie Onassis used to fly in from Athens to have a hair appointment with Sergio.’

  That will do me, I thought, so down I went to make an appointment. Sergio was there, an aged but refined Italian gentleman, organising his young hairdressers, giving them the chance and encouragement to express themselves. I requested someone who could speak English.

  Turning up the next day I discovered that my young hairdresser and female assistant spoke no English. I was trying to tell them that I didn’t like the blonde streaks in my dark brunette hair.

  ‘No blonde,’ I was saying, ‘No blonde foils, thank you.’

  They couldn’t understand me. They started applying something from the nape of my neck upwards which I had a funny feeling could be bleach. So once again, out came the Italian/English phrase book, while I tried saying, ‘Not too much blonde,’ in Italian.

  To which they just smiled and the young assistant started giggling. We all started laughing. In the end I gave up, and thought, If I end up with purple hair, what the hell.

  They turned me into a blonde. And my hair and I looked fantastic.

  Three days later, after leaving Italy, I flew to Dublin, as I had a week to fill in before starting work in London. I was met at the airport by the mother of Penny’s friend Marian Traynor, who went to university with her in Sydney. The family were celebrating their son’s birthday and kindly invited me to join them, before I took off to tour ‘The Ring of Kerry’. It was April and extremely cold. I returned by train to Dublin, noting what a rowdy lot the Irish were—they were on the train drinking and playing cards and being very noisy. I spent a few days in Dublin, which is bubbling with literary history, going to a pub with Marian’s parents before I flew to Heathrow, England, with my passport and my precious work permit in my handbag.

  Suddenly I was through customs, with no questions asked. No one had looked at my work permit, or at my passport. I was indignant. I marched back to an airport official sitting behind a desk, telling him, ‘No one has looked at my passport or my work permit.’

  ‘Don’t worry, love,’ the airport official said. ‘You’re through now.’

  After all the trouble I had gone to, to get a permit. It all seemed a waste of time.

  At Heathrow, I caught the Tube to Waterloo Station, where I was told by Sister Theresa that I would find the bus going to Hackney. It was full, with about 80 per cent white people, but by the time we arrived in Hackney, it was down to probably only 20 per cent white. So different to when I was there in 1958, when there were very few different nationalities; most people were very English and upper crust, and the men wore bowler hats and carried brollies.

  St Joseph’s Hospice, Hackney, was in the East End of London. Very dissimilar to Bayswater and Kensington in the West End, where I had lived with my friends Jill, Smiddy, Anne, Yoey and Wylva back in 1958. But it was still exciting. Here I was, alone, looking forward to meeting my work mates and some new friends.

  I loved the work in palliative care, giving holistic care to patients and families, working with a variety of nationalities. It was a very happy place to work while helping the patients to die peacefully. As a registered nurse we were allotted a specified number of patients on a shift to look after, with one or two assistant nurses. Their complete holistic care, from washing, making beds, medication, dressings, syringe drivers and family support, was overseen by us, as well as cultural and spiritual needs when the councillors weren’t available.

  Was the palliative care nursing any different to nursing in Australia? Some of the equipment—the syringe drivers for instance—were different, but the drugs were very similar. One thing I’ll never forget was the morgue. It used to be the old cool room for the kitchen some years before, a large room with about six doors leading into freezers. Behind each door were three shelves, one on top of the other, on which the bodies were laid. We all hated taking the bodies down to the morgue. It wasn’t a very popular task. In Australia, thank goodness, wards men usually take the bodies from the ward to the morgue, but not so in England.

  Most of the staff lived out, with very few living in the nurses’ home. However, there was plenty for me to see in London, which I was quite happy to do on my own. I was told if I worked seven nights in a row I was allowed a week off. Great, I thought, I’ll be able to do a lot of sight-seeing around Britain and the Continent.

  The Sisters of Charity over the years had cared for one of the Kray brother twins Ronald and Reginald, the foremost perpetrators of organised crime in the East End during the 1950s and 60s. The twins were known as ‘The Firm’, and are still remembered as being two of England’s most famous crime bosses.

  Ronnie Kray was in St Joseph’s Hospice suffering from cancer and cared for by the Sisters of Charity, before he died there in1995. In gratitude the Kray brothers donated an unknown amount of money to the Sisters of Charity’s annual fete every year. Another brother, Tony, was terminally ill with bladder cancer and was freed from gaol after thirty-two years, to die with family. His funeral was held in Hackney and I just happened to witness the parade of exotic long limousines following the hearse with huge muscular guards on either side of each vehicle carrying what looked to me like rifles. Everyone watched in silence.

  The year was 2000; the Olympic Games were on in Sydney! After my shift I would watch the Olympics on the television set in the nurses quarters. The only problem was they concentrated on British events. Australian wins were hardly mentioned. Everyone at work told me how they loved the opening ceremony. When Penny sent me the video, I cried; it made me so homesick.

  When Wimbledon started, a nursing friend and I would go to the courts early and queue up to get cheap cancelled tickets. At the men’s finals in 2000 when Pat Rafter played Andre Agassi, I watched the match on the big screen, sitting on the lawn at Wimbledon, surrounded by young English boys and girls. In my arms I had a sign that I had painted.

  C’mon Aussie, C’mon, C’mon, C’mon Aussie, C’mon

  A camera crew from the BBC saw me sitting there with my sign and interviewed me. Anthony, Liz and my grandson Robert, who was twelve at the time, saw me on their TV in Toowoomba. They were amazed, as you can imagine.

  ‘There’s Nana Thea,’ Robert exclaimed.

  An English friend of mine, Annette, introduced me to an organisation called 5W—Women Welcome Women World Wide—where members can stay with or meet other members anywhere in the
world. Annette and I did a tour of Cornwall which we thoroughly enjoyed, meeting and staying with 5W members. I had two weeks holiday due in November and I wanted to see some of the famous Palaeolithic caves in southwestern France. Annette, who knew France very well, helped me organise my trip, finding 5W members in convenient locations.

  First I went by bus and ferry to Bordeaux, then by train to a little town near Toulouse where my first stay was with a lovely French girl, Peta, whose geologist husband was away in Australia. After I arrived we had a typical French meal, a little bit of this, a little bit of that, with homemade wine between the six or so courses, chatting the whole time in English. The next day Peta took me to a French market; one stall was ten-foot long and covered with every imaginable type of garlic. I thought there was only one type of garlic; it’s the same with mushrooms—unbelievable, the number of different shapes and sizes. Peta drove me back to her home on a highway that actually went through a series of caves, half a kilometre long.

  Another stay was with a gay female couple, Adele (French) and Janet (Irish), in Montignac; they were so kind they even gave up their double bed for me, and when I protested they said, ‘We love sleeping on the floor near the TV, as we feel as though we are on holidays.’

  Adele, Janet and I only stayed there one night as we drove down to stay at Adele’s farmhouse the following afternoon. The farmhouse had been left to Adele by her grandparents. It wasn’t far from the Lascaux Caves the girls told me. I remember reading about the prehistoric cave paintings in France at school, and here I was about to be taken there the following day.

  The stone farmhouse was two hundred years old, with a huge wine vat near the kitchen. The fireplace was about three metres wide. We gathered mushrooms of many varieties in the woods surrounding the house. Adele’s grandparents were involved with the Resistance in the Second World War. Their house was used for many Resistance meetings. The girls told me that friends of Adele’s grandparents who were also in the Resistance were caught by the Nazis and burnt to death in their own home in the nearby town, where I took them both to lunch. The burnt ruins were still there, left as a memorial to the Resistance fighters.

  The Lascaux Caves are now a replica of the original, filled with paintings of more than 600 animals but only one man; I loved it all.

  My third hostess, Nadia, was a very attractive young woman, who said, ‘You will know me at “la gare” (railway station). I will be carrying “Parfait”, my poodle.’

  Poor Nadia had recently split up with her partner and needed someone to unload her feelings to. I took Nadia out for dinner; she chose the restaurant, ‘The Cow on the Ceiling’, reminding me of Toowoomba and a popular restaurant there called the ‘Spotted Cow’. Parfait the poodle came too of course; dogs were allowed in restaurants in France then.

  One night I stayed in the youth hostel in Périgueux where they were having a food festival. I shared a room with a very interesting lady and although she couldn’t speak English and my schoolgirl French is appalling, we managed to chat half the night. Her brother was taken away by the Nazis, and she never saw him again.

  Back in England, more shifts; more days off. I was now looking forward to seeing my daughter Penny, who was flying from New York to have a week with me in Prague. I would fly from London to meet her there. The bookings were done, I just needed a visa—which meant travelling to the other side of London. They only gave out a certain number of visas each fortnight and unfortunately, I missed out the first time and had to go back weeks later.

  Penny and I communicated by email; I would go to an Internet café to receive and send emails. Penny had met the man of her dreams in Sydney, Patrick Joyce, who followed her over to Canada where she had planned to work as an environmentalist. Instead, falling in love changed everything. Penny and Patrick went on a cruise to Alaska and then toured America visiting Patrick’s half-brother and two half-sisters, ending up in New York for a week before flying off to join me in Prague. If only I had told Penny about the trouble I’d had getting my visa.

  The evening before I left, I was feeling excited—suitcase packed—and ready to go, when I suddenly had a phone call from my weeping daughter.

  ‘Mum, I’m at the airport in New York with my ticket but I forgot to get a visa.’

  ‘Oh gosh! Don’t worry, we can go somewhere else. Just get a flight to London and I’ll organise another trip.’

  One of my work mates said, ‘Why don’t you go to Paris?’ and so that is what we did. We caught the ferry to Calais, France, and then went up to Paris for a fabulous week, visiting the Louvre, Picasso’s museum, and we even saw the final leg of the Tour de France in the Champs Élysées.

  I told Penny, ‘You owe me a Prague.’ But Paris was just the best.

  For Christmas 2000 I flew to San Francisco and spent a great week with my brother Tim and his family at my nephew Mitchell’s home. Mitchell worked in Silicon Valley.

  When I returned from San Francisco, London was freezing. It had snowed a few days before and the snow was melting. Every time the Underground train doors opened at the stations on the way back from Heathrow, it felt was as if I was sitting in a deep freezer.

  One Sunday I decided to walk from the hospital to visit a friend about a kilometre away. By the time I arrived, wearing a normal amount of winter clothing, I felt my bones had frozen. We hardly saw the sun in London—it would set at four o’clock in the afternoon and didn’t rise until eight in the morning. People got depressed from the lack of sunlight.

  I was making such good money and still had a year and a half to go, so decided I’d take a return flight home to see my children and grandchildren for a few weeks and then return.

  Well, that was the plan.

  When I arrived at Brisbane airport after flying from Heathrow at the end of January, descending from the plane into beautiful sunny, heavenly warm weather, I thought: There is no way I’m going back.

  They could bribe me with thousands of dollars and I still wouldn’t go.

  I’m home; thank goodness I’m home in wonderful Australia.

  19

  Happenings in St Lucia

  Having decided not to return to London I now had to decide where I was going to work. I had planned to get a position at the new Toowoomba Hospice, but unfortunately the building was only half finished, and wouldn’t be completed for months. I was staying with my son Jason and his wife Trina, as my property Murrawah was being rented out to a chook farmer who regrettably had no interest in my garden of ‘permaculture’. Anthony had a friend who was very much into permaculture, which is a way of growing plants with minimum energy, combining shrubs and plants using lots of mulch and lucerne hay to produce quick growing vegetation. I had employed Anthony’s friend to help me set up my back garden, and I was praying it survived the chook farmer’s tenure.

  I made the decision to move to Brisbane to get into palliative care at Mt Olivet Hospice, in the suburb of Kangaroo Point. Was I being selfish, not staying to help with my grandchildren? I hoped my family understood.

  Anthony helped me find a unit in Brisbane. A friend of his had a two-bedroom unit for sale in St Lucia, an ideal location, not far from Mt Olivet, where I hoped to work, close to Toowong shopping centre, and a ferry ride to the city. I bought it.

  When my furniture arrived from Jason’s in Toowoomba, the removalists couldn’t get the sofa through the door of my unit. It had to be stored in the garage downstairs. Wondering what to do, I rang Norm Bourguignon, who suggested having a luncheon, inviting all the book club girls and their husbands, and asking the guys to bring their ropes. To much cheering and hilarity from us girls, the men lifted the sofa straight up and over the balcony of my first-floor unit without any problems.

  Still having one unit of my palliative care course to do, I went back to ACU, the Catholic University in Brisbane, for the final unit in my palliative care course—‘Spiritual and Psychosocial Care Issues in Palliative Care’. I found it much more difficult than the other units, but as I was the only
student I was able to receive lots of help from my tutor. The results were very pleasing, and I was thrilled to receive my Certificate in Palliative Care from the Australian Catholic University, presented to me by John Eales, the former captain of the Australian Wallabies rugby union team, at the Performing Arts Centre in Brisbane in 2002.

  I found at times I got very lonely living in Brisbane by myself. I tried a dating agency. The agency would organise a seemingly compatible date; usually for coffee. I went out several times and met a few different guys. One date was a very insistent fellow who never stopped talking—a condition I’m allergic to. None of them appealed to me, so I gave up.

  But thankfully, my good friend Susie lived in St Lucia too. Susie had met and married Ulf Sundhausen, an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Queensland. They had their wedding on the Kookaburra Queen, a wooden paddle wheeler showboat, and lived in a unit on the river not far from me. I spent many interesting evenings with Susie and Ulf discussing politics, religion, and a great range of topics.

  Other friends Cate and Mark Gardner moved from Toogoolawah to Brisbane. Cate organised a crew of kayakers to go in the Hawkesbury Canoe Classic, a fun overnight paddle to raise money for the Arrow Bone Marrow Transplant Foundation. We had three pairs of kayakers and one single. I wasn’t able to kayak because of a shoulder injury I received after a bad lifting incident, so I became part of the land crew. The girls started training. Every week they kayaked up the Brisbane River, one time as far as the bridge at Jindalee about four kilometres up the river. They were so exhausted that day they wanted to come back in the dinghy with our coach Mark Gardner and me.