by Petrea King
When I brought back my booty, the other campers were delighted and enjoyed a mighty barbecue. They too couldn’t understand why I didn’t indulge.
The atmosphere in these campgrounds was full of camaraderie and good cheer; people shared whatever they had as well as tales of their travels. My simple little tent was a nonsense in comparison to some of the converted buses, trucks hauling caravans and camper-vans. Many of the campers lived on the road: they were contractors who travelled the stock routes looking after the windmills that pumped water from artesian bores, or they ensured that the fencing was sound and in good order. I met some tough characters, both men and women, who mostly seemed good-natured and willing to share conversation, experiences or food with me. I would often watch the way a man treated his dog as an indicator of whether I would engage in conversation or give him a wide berth.
After the barbecue, I returned from four days off to find that Mrs Granville had woken. As I greeted her, her eyes lit up and she said, ‘You’re the one! You talked to me.’ She grabbed my hand and didn’t want to let go.
Mrs Granville went on to describe how the doctors often stood around her bed and talked negatively about the likelihood of her recovery. She’d felt trapped inside her body and wanted to scream at them. She also said she’d been roughly treated by many nurses who left her exposed and vulnerable, or spoke about her in uncaring ways as if she was already ‘gone’. She had so appreciated someone who’d treated her respectfully as a human being, and she described my words as her ‘lifeline’.
I realised that I’d played this role years before, without meaning to. When I was about fifteen, a good friend of mine and my brothers had a serious bike accident. Robbie lay unconscious and unresponsive at a hospital near where we lived and little hope was held for his recovery. Instinctively, when I visited him I held his hand and talked about how we all loved him and were wishing him a full and speedy recovery. I asked him to squeeze my hand if he could hear me—and, ever so slightly, he did.
But when I told the nurses about this, they weren’t interested and dismissed my comments as wishful thinking. They scoffed and said that because he was unconscious, he couldn’t have responded. Their certainty didn’t convince me and, as it unfolded, Robbie went on to make a full recovery.
These experiences and many more instilled in me the certainty that we are more than our bodies, and they allowed me to cultivate comfort around the presence of mystery and the world of the invisible.
***
I was naturally drawn to patients who were nearing death or were unconscious. My own experiences gave me a keen sense of what they needed in this difficult time when they couldn’t speak for themselves. I’ve always had an aversion to whispering, as it takes me right back to the murmured conversations of loved ones as I struggled through the haze of anaesthesia, so I neither whispered nor raised my voice as if a patient were deaf.
Often the curtains would be drawn around a patient nearing their death; occasionally a nurse would part them just enough to see if the person was still breathing, and then move on. As often as possible, I’d slip into their cubicle and read or talk to them quietly, or massage their neck, hands or shoulders, hoping I wouldn’t be discovered and subsequently criticised or mocked by the other nurses. They would look askance at me as if it were a waste of time or some silliness.
The first patient whom I had the privilege to be with when he died was Mr Bradley. He had the bluest eyes, and a face crinkled by a lifetime of love and laughter. He had no family or visitors whom I ever saw; perhaps one of the greatest of agonies is to outlive everyone you have ever loved? But I felt guilty when I spent time with him, nervous that I might be found by other nurses.
I knew that Mr Bradley was a Christian because his much-loved and well-thumbed Bible lay on his bedside cabinet. Not long before he died, I quietly read him Psalm 23. A tear of recognition slipped from the corner of his eye. I experienced a deep sense of fulfilment in the simple act of accompanying another human being to the edge of their life. Since then, I’ve been privileged to accompany many people on this precious last journey. The great mystery of death has never perturbed me, and the way that people approach their own—with openness and peace or with trepidation and fear—has always fascinated me. Is a willingness to gently embrace death a sign of having embraced life as well?
An acute care hospital is often not the best place to die, given the busyness of the nurses and the daily rounds of treatments. Oftentimes I would encourage a visitor to massage the hands or feet of a loved one nearing death or suggest that they say whatever lay in their hearts. Although it’s never too late to speak to the dead—sometimes we need to say the words, whether the person needs to hear them uttered or not. It is in the speaking that we find healing.
My being at ease with the sights, sounds and smells that are present at such moments has often helped loved ones to feel comfortable or confident to touch, laugh, speak and weep while not being distressed by the physical process. This enables them to connect with the love that has woven them and the dying person together into one sacred fabric of treasured memories.
I was often distressed by the suffering I witnessed, particularly when so much of it could have been avoided by healthier lifestyle choices. We were so often treating people for diseases that, had they made healthier choices, would have been avoided. I became increasingly interested in what could be done to prevent the disaster and suffering of illness before drastic measures were necessary.
During my training, we were studying the life cycle of bacteria when an epiphany struck me like a lightning bolt: there’s a critical point where natural healing methods and modern medicine diverge in philosophy. In the life cycle of a bacterium, it needs a suitable host to continue its replication. At this point, modern medicine looks for a drug to kill the bacteria without killing the host, while natural medicine looks at strengthening the individual so they are an unsuitable host.
Prevention of illness saves an enormous amount of unnecessary suffering, along with a great deal of taxpayers’ money. So little education was provided to help patients make healthier choices, or to inform doctors and nurses about the principles of creating vibrant health—rather, the focus remained firmly on treating disease.
***
I was still a very naive young woman and not educated about many things that other girls seemed to have acquired quite naturally. An embarrassing example of this was my encounter with Mr Conroy, who’d had an unfortunate accident with a blowtorch—it had viciously attacked his penis and accompanying treasures when it blew up. Mr Conroy required daily dressings to his poor scorched bits, but fortunately I wasn’t up to doing dressings so was saved from this dubious pleasure.
During my morning shift, an insistent ringing of his buzzer brought me flying to his side. He grabbed my arm, his eyes watering. ‘Nurse, nurse, I’m having an erection!’
My God, I thought, that sounds serious, having not yet studied this medical catastrophe.
I ran the length of the ward to the senior nurse, who was talking to the sister and on-duty doctor. Junior nurses never addressed the sister directly, let alone the doctor, so I interrupted their conversation and breathlessly said to the senior nurse, ‘Nurse, Mr Conroy is having an erection,’ fully expecting all three of them to rush to his bedside with the necessary equipment.
She turned to the sister and said, with a slight sneer, ‘Oh, Sister, Mr Conroy’s having an erection.’
The sister, smirking all the more, said to the doctor, ‘Oh, Doctor, Mr Conroy’s having an erection.’
I stood there bewildered by what was unfolding.
The doctor turned to the sister and said, ‘Cold spoon, Sister.’
The sister, still sneering, said to the senior nurse, ‘Cold spoon, Nurse,’ and then she told me to take him a cold spoon.
How they laughed as I dutifully went into the kitchen to deliver one cold spoon to poor Mr Conroy. Never was there a longer journey down that miserable corridor to his bedside.
***
While I loved working with patients, nursing wasn’t a sensible career choice after all my surgeries. Just over a year later, I damaged my back when lifting a patient; I couldn’t take the weight in my knees. This landed me in a back brace for some months, so my career came to a halt. I moved from the nurses’ quarters back to my parents’ home in Artarmon while I undertook physiotherapy to regain my flexibility and strength.
I was happy to see that Brenden was in relatively good spirits while he worked at George Patterson’s advertising agency in the city. He was wonderfully creative, clever and artistic, and they were kind and supportive even though he needed time off every now and again when his depression or anxiety flared. They were terrific people who kept the door open to him when many would have lost patience.
I too had a support network outside our family. Some of my most regular visitors when I was in Dalcross had been from our local church, St Stephens in Willoughby. The curate was particularly kind and visited me most weeks during those long years. We would discuss religious principles, both of us baffled by the mysteries of life and death. I found this refreshing after my encounter with the egg-fetish minister.
Not long after he was assigned to St Stephens, the curate had visited us at home. That day we happened to have a very sick rabbit in the lounge room, tucked up in a towel in front of the heater. Rae’s remedy for most animal ills was a generous swig of brandy—and, just when the curate asked us to bow our heads in prayer, the rabbit crawled out of the towel to flip-flop around the room in a haze of brandy fumes, finally collapsing dead at our feet. To his credit, the unfazed curate included the rabbit in his prayers, but then hurriedly left so we could deal with the deceased.
Now that I was living at home again, I regularly attended our church fellowship meetings, which were rotated through parishioners’ homes. It was at one of these meetings that my relationship with the church and the curate came to an abrupt, irrevocable end.
During the meeting, my back was so painful that I had to excuse myself to lie down. I was resting in a bedroom when a man I barely knew walked in and quietly shut the door.
While this man had no gun or knife, he approached me with confidence. After running his hands over the scars on my legs, he moved them up my body and roughly removed enough of my clothing to allow him to penetrate me, even though I was in pain and a body brace enclosed my trunk.
At first I didn’t understand what was happening, as my naivety about human sexual relations was truly profound—but it didn’t take long for the searing pain of rough and unprepared intercourse to reduce me to a traumatised heap.
Afterwards, I blamed myself and felt guilty and ashamed. If I had called out, someone would have come to my rescue, but I had no voice—I was so familiar with splitting off and going ‘elsewhere’ in my mind while people did painful things to my body. I believed it was my fault, not his, that this had happened; my fault that this was my first sexual experience. I gathered myself together and quietly left the house, never telling anyone about this abuse. I berated myself harshly for letting it happen.
This experience deepened my confusion about the motives and actions of other human beings. How could this happen at a church fellowship meeting where people ostensibly met to understand the mysteries of faith? Was there no refuge from pain, from abuse, from fear, from cruelty?
After the sexual attack and once my back recovered, I decided to look for work as far from cities as possible. I’d given up on people—they were much too complex for me to understand—and my long stays with Jean and her family, along with my escapades out to Nyngan, Louth and Bourke, had given me a deep love of the land. The sanity-saving respite of Kilmarnock and my visits with Granny had provided connection with nature and animals. My breaks with them also provided time for reflection and solitude, which was always a wonderful relief from the fears I harboured about Brenden and his—and my—future.
I took a job 90 kilometres north-east of Cunnamulla in western Queensland as a companion/helper to the women of the house, a mother and her two adult daughters.
CHAPTER 6
The great outdoors
When the plane banked and came in for landing, I looked out the window and wondered how on earth I’d survive in this barren wasteland. It looked dead, flat and empty—but, of course, I was completely wrong. The land teemed with life, and I grew to love the lazy rivers, the waterholes, the bore drains, the gorgeous river gums, the goannas, lizards and birds, the astonishing night skies and the laid-back people. Although my employers weren’t quite so laid-back.
Indeed, the women of the house were anything but. They didn’t step their high-heeled feet outside the sprawling house unless it was to board the light plane to fly to town, a dinner or a party, often two or three hundred kilometres away. And they always wore stockings, high heels and very formal dress in the house. I never understood the need for such attire—it wasn’t as if people dropped in for social visits. I still limped and preferred riding boots and jeans that covered the long scars travelling from mid-thigh to well below my knees.
The homestead was a strange and lush oasis in the middle of a dusty desert. Maintained by plentiful bore water, the garden sported a bright green lawn and hundreds of roses and other luscious plants, while beyond its perimeter the land was red, parched and unyielding.
The house had been built during the wool boom, when the sheep’s back brought great wealth. Eight bedrooms with ensuites were housed in one wing, and the living and formal dining rooms, kitchen, family room, laundry and cold room were housed in the other wing, connected by a breezeway, though a breeze was a rarity. Windstorms, however, were not so uncommon. Fine red dust from the surrounding landscape, with the consistency of talcum powder, found its way into every crevice and fold—and even inside sealed bottles and jars that were stored in the sealed pantry, within the closed kitchen. I quickly got used to an ever-so-slightly gritty texture to many staples.
Formal ‘drinks’ in the breezeway were a daily ritual, while my preference was to watch the sunset and listen to the earth settling into the stillness of eventide. But given my role was to be a companion and a help to the women of the house, the preparation of snacks to accompany the drinks usually fell to me, so I often missed the setting sun.
My sleeping hut was situated just outside the main house, which allowed me the privacy and solitude I craved. On mild nights, I occasionally slept out in my swag, which my employers found particularly odd, but I never tired of the shifting heavens full of sparkling stars. The skies in these far western areas, so distant from city lights and pollution, are always spectacular. There’s something incredibly special about sleeping on the earth and witnessing the slow rotation of our planet as the heavens discernibly shift. When the generator was shut down around 10 pm each night, the deafening silence of the heavens was all pervading.
I enjoyed being outdoors and would sometimes work alongside the Aboriginal stockmen who were forever laughing at private jokes. They seemed to take to this lily-white girl from the city who walked in a slightly ungainly way and who preferred their company to the confines of the house. They liked that I was always eager for useful physical work, and they readily taught me skills and shared their knowledge.
But while being outside suited me and nourished my spirit, it wasn’t the advertised job, and I could see that my time there would be limited. I wondered whether I would ever find a sense of belonging given that I felt more at home with the Aboriginal stockmen than with the women of the house.
***
I came to love the slow rhythms of this land. And, not long after my arrival, I met a gorgeous man whom I almost married.
John was my first love. He lived 150 kilometres away, on the other side of Cunnamulla near the banks of the Warrego River, and we met at a Bachelor and Spinster Ball. He and I were wonderfully compatible—we had both escaped the hubbub of the ball and were staring at the stars that seemed so close you could reach out and touch them. We struck up a
conversation about our love of the bush, and I found that he too was from the city and had a deep love of the land—and, like me, he felt his destiny lay in its embrace.
Every weekend he travelled to see me, and under the mighty river gums we shared stories and laughter while friendship grew into love. He was gentle and kind, with a quirky and endearing sense of humour. He loved working the land and dreamed of owning his own cattle and sheep station; he was managing one for a distant and disinterested owner.
Keeping secrets in the bush was impossible given the telephone line was a ‘party line’, and other people frequently listened in to conversations with the sole intention of increasing their armament of gossip. A private chat was out of the question unless John and I were together, and our every move was broadcast throughout the district. Word of our romance spread like wildfire.
We spent every spare moment together on weekends, and we did our best to avoid social situations, preferring each other’s company. We often drove to distant towns like Eulo where we met wonderful bush characters like Isabelle, the Eulo Queen. Followed by several scrawny dogs wherever she went and with a shotgun always close at hand, she ruled the roost in Eulo. Many men and quite a few women eked out a living from the elusive opals that flashed rainbow colours in deep caverns, laboriously dug by hand. Simple tin and wattle-daub shacks were scattered around Eulo, each inhabited by a crusty character who fiercely guarded his or her patch of dirt. The surface temperature often reached into the fierce forties, while underground it remained a comfortable twenty or so degrees.
