Outback Heroines

by Sue Williams

  That expedition turned out to be the beginning of the end for Ann and Tim. As well as his gripes about her doubts – later expanded upon in a book he wrote of their journey, Everest: From Sea to Summit – he was becoming more and more involved with an organisation that later became known as the World Transformation Movement, about the biological origins of human nature. ‘Our paths were just going in different directions,’ says Ann. ‘The overriding thing was that he was joining this foundation and cutting himself off. By the end, Tim was away a lot with speaking engagements, I wanted to leave Meekatharra and our marriage was breaking up. I was pretty lost.’

  Ann flew to Sydney in April 1992, and worked as a locum medical officer for three months. While there, she saw an advert for a medical job in Kununurra, in far northern Western Australia in the eastern part of the Kimberley region, close to the Northern Territory border. She tore it from the newspaper, slipped it into her jacket pocket and promptly forgot all about it. On a trip to Lord Howe Island a few weeks later, she lost the jacket. It was found by a group of sailors who, by mistake, took it sailing and then, bizarrely, managed to return it to her. The ad was still in the pocket. It felt as if it were meant to be.

  She applied, and was given a district medical officer job. ‘I’d been feeling pretty lost but I knew I wanted to go geographically as far away from Tim as I could without leaving Australia,’ she says. ‘It was a pretty wild place, a long way from anywhere, and it had lots of good bushwalking. It felt right.’

  Ann had her car shipped to Derby on the west coast of Western Australia, just north of Broome, flew to Nepal to guide a trek for school children, then went to Derby and drove across the Kimberley to Kununurra. She wanted to get the measure of this vast area before she became a part of it, so she drove slowly, stopping and sleeping out in a swag under the stars each night. By the time she finally arrived in Kununurra in September 1992, she felt she at last had a sense of the distance, understood the scale of the area, and could hit the ground running.

  ‘As soon as I arrived here, I felt I’d landed on my feet,’ says Ann, still living right by the Mirima National Park in the area more than 20 years on. ‘I loved it from the start. It’s an extraordinary place. We have a 36-bed district hospital, 800 kilometres away from the nearest major hospital, so you do a bit of everything here: emergency medicine, general practice, theatre, skin cancer surgery, procedural obstetrics, caesarean sections. There are very few places in the world you can do all of that any more! We now have nine doctors at our hospital and if a patient needs intensive care, we can keep them here, stabilise them, then fly them with the RFDS to Broome, Darwin or Perth for further treatment.

  ‘It can be challenging. When there’s a case of major trauma, you’re the one people bring the patient to. So the medicine is extraordinary. We get to see the most unusual infectious diseases and illnesses. People can’t believe the kind of things we deal with. Someone fell through a trencher [a digging machine] and had both his legs ripped off. You have to be able to deal with severe injuries like that, turn your hand to anything and think quickly. But there’s a good team here, and it’s all about teamwork. And the best part is that I am always learning. I learn something new every day.’

  Ann also asked if she could work with the local Aboriginal community at Warmun, 200 kilometres away, and she has been flying in a small RFDS chartered plane and doing weekly clinics ever since. ‘I have spent time in the Warmun community and have felt embraced. I was asked on bush trips, which have taught me things about culture and medicines and the importance of family. It is such a privilege to have this role,’ she says.

  Media and education consultant Rosy Whelan, a friend she’d first met as part of Tim’s Everest group, came to visit and Ann took her out to Warmun. Rosy was taken aback by how warmly Ann was received. ‘She’s so loved and respected by the people there,’ she says. ‘They’ve never had someone so committed to their care, year in, year out. I know they were shy with her at first, but then she gradually won their trust. She has no agenda, except for wanting to help, which was something completely new to them.’

  Ann’s old uni buddy Helen Milroy, who went on to become Australia’s first Indigenous medical psychiatrist and who has now been appointed one of the Commissioners to the Federal Government’s Royal Commission into institutional child sex abuse, says Ann’s secret is the way she treats people. ‘She doesn’t see people as other people,’ she says. ‘She sees them as family, and she’s so tolerant and compassionate, she creates the kind of bond with her patients that makes them realise she really cares. She’s a great listener and is so caring and supportive, and that’s not always the case in a profession that should be known for its empathy!’

  In her down time, Ann also met a few fellow bushwalkers and immediately started taking longer and longer treks out into the wilderness. In the early years, when she flew out of Kununurra on medical trips, she’d encourage the new young pilots to fly low so she could map where all the waterholes were to help her plan treks ever further afield. ‘She’d make all these little maps from the air then head out with just her backpack and tent to explore,’ says Rosy. ‘She even took me on a couple of the secret walks she’d found from the air. They were always memorable!’

  In between working in Kununurra as an obstetric procedural rural GP, on call for emergencies for the hospital and attending Warmun, she also travelled widely in order to improve her skills in all forms of medicine. These included stays in Perth, Bunbury, Geelong and Darwin for extra training in skin cancer surgery and burns, regular upskilling in caesarean sections and emergency, and a host of recertifications and further study, before returning to the Kimberley each time re-enthused, and eager to put into practice what she’d been taught.

  There were always unusual situations to deal with, too. One time, she was called to a hospital in the middle of the night when nurses phoned her to say they had an Aboriginal woman who’d been assaulted, and they couldn’t stop the blood pouring from a head wound. Ann arrived bleary-eyed to discover she knew the woman. ‘There was blood everywhere; she’d been hit hard over the head and she could only just see as there was so much blood streaming down her face. But then she looked at me, and smiled. “That’s a nice T-shirt you’ve got, Dr Ann!” she said. I couldn’t stop laughing.’

  The slim, dark-haired woman with the ready smile and a great talent for mimicking her patients quickly became a favourite with all the locals. One young Aboriginal woman called into her clinic at Warmun Community once to discover she wasn’t there; there was a male doctor in her place. ‘Can I help you?’ asked the locum. ‘I’m filling in for Dr Ward.’ The woman regarded him levelly. ‘So when will she be back?’ she asked. The man smiled kindly. ‘I’m afraid she’s away for a year,’ he replied. The woman smiled back, then turned on her heel. ‘Nah,’ she said, ‘I’ll wait!’

  Kununurra is extraordinarily remote and while everyone has their own way of coping with such extreme isolation, Ann quickly worked out a highly unusual strategy of her own. Every so often, she’d take a few months out to work somewhere else in the world, more often than not as a volunteer, or simply to travel. At the end of 1993 she worked as a volunteer doctor for the Himalayan Rescue Association, based in the Annapurna region of Nepal; in 1994 she led a few more treks in Nepal, and the next year in Bhutan; and in 1996 she became the base camp doctor in inland Antarctica at Patriot Hills for a three-month stint for the travel company Adventure Network International. The temperature in Kununurra the day she left was over 40 degrees Celsius. The day she arrived in Patriot Hills, the only private, seasonally occupied camp in Antarctica, nestled among the Ellsworth Mountains, it was minus 40.

  ‘It was the most extraordinary job I’ve ever had,’ says Ann. ‘I had to just set up a tent there and get started. Teamwork was fundamental to survival. I felt so excited every morning. It felt like I’d landed on the moon. It was beautiful. I camped on the snow next to Patriot Hills, where the runway was blue ice. It was just so different t
o anything I’d ever known.’

  It was a year of great excitement in the region: several of the world’s great explorers were each competing to be the first to cross Antarctica solo and unsupported. One, British adventurer Sir Ranulph Fiennes, had been on his way to the South Pole ahead of schedule when he suddenly reported by radio being in agony with kidney stones. He was melting snow for drinking water in the hope they’d pass through his body but, when they still failed to appear, had to pull out of the competition. ‘I was the doctor in the rescue team,’ says Ann. ‘We then had to fly him out and I was interviewed on BBC about his rescue, which some relatives saw in the UK.’ In the end, it was Norwegian polar explorer Borge Ousland, 20 years younger than Fiennes, who took out the title, successfully crossing Antarctica, dragging a sled that weighed 178 kilos at the start, and travelling 2845 kilometres, at times in temperatures as low as minus 56 degrees Celsius.

  Ann returned to Kununurra in January 1997, and was then approached by Tim’s fellow Everest mountaineer Greg Mortimer, who asked her if she’d like to work as the ship’s doctor on his Aurora Expeditions’ voyages to the Antarctic Peninsula for three months the following year. She readily agreed. At the end of 1999, she again took some time out to be the Patriot Hills medical officer, flying with clients to an emperor penguin colony, the South Pole and the Queen Maud Land region. Then, every second year from 2001 to 2008, she worked on Aurora voyages to Antarctica, Papua New Guinea and Svalbard in the Arctic Ocean, halfway between Norway and the North Pole.

  ‘She was wonderful to have aboard,’ says Greg. ‘She’s a gorgeous person – a beautiful woman, tough, but also a softie. She gets on so well with people, and yet she’s also a good medico, which is a wonderful combination. We adore her.

  ‘One time, on our first visit to PNG, which was very exciting for everyone, we stopped off at the island of Lababia, an island in the southern Huon Gulf. We were just waiting for the last Zodiac [rubber dinghy] to come back and then we were moving on, but Ann appeared in it, surrounded by a group of local women. It turned out she’d invited them all to lunch on the ship. It was an amazing encounter. Ann had apparently gone around the village, heard every­one’s life stories and brought some of the most remarkable women back with her. She has such a great personality, people like her on meeting her, and that time was very special for us all.’

  Yet Ann was equally adept at coping with the odd emergency. She arranged emergency airlifts for a couple of people – one who smashed his ankle, and another who had internal bleeding from a stomach ulcer – and nursed another back to health in a place so remote, it was impossible to be rescued. ‘Absolutely nothing ever fazed her,’ says Greg. ‘She was very, very solid.’

  Today, Ann’s gardening at her house out near the mango plantations by Mirima on the outskirts of Kununurra, tending to her latest crop of pawpaw, lemongrass, ginger and various vegetables. In a plain red dress with flat sandals, the slim figure with the olive complexion and dark eyes grins as she stacks her homegrown produce in a wicker basket and balances it on the wide, untidy veranda, set with a big round wooden table and half a dozen chairs, ever ready for friends to drop by. ‘She’s always a great host,’ says her friend Rosy. ‘She has a great, wicked sense of humour that everyone responds to.’

  This morning, it’s only the chickens she has to feed, all pecking around the base, each individually named and known. Ann’s currently engaged in a fierce running battle with the crows for their eggs. A few days before, she carefully broke one, put chilli in it and glued the shell back together. Ever since, the crows have seemed markedly less keen. They know when they’ve been outwitted.

  Ann’s only just back from yet another excellent adventure: two and a half months as the relieving clinic doctor in the Vava’u Islands of northern Tonga, a series of spectacular tropical islands with white sand beaches, turquoise water, stunning coral and blue lagoons. The locals were poor but very happy to have her among them and she willingly tended not only them, but also their animals, operating on one dog that had been cut with a machete for harassing someone’s pig, and on another with an abscess on its neck that was threatening to cut off its airway.

  ‘The local hospital only has two doctors when they’re supposed to have five, and there are no other medical services there,’ says Ann, now 54. ‘There’s no CAT scan, no ultrasound and if there’s a serious diagnosis, like cancer, then it’s so isolated, the only hope is going overseas for treatment. There’s no palliative care service either. But the people there are very hopeful for the future. Their children go to school, and Christianity is very strong. They were very welcoming, and I made some great friends. I’ll probably go back at some point and do another stint there one day.’

  Her friends all laugh when they hear her talk with such enthusiasm about her latest trip. ‘She just loves helping people,’ says Pip Smith. ‘She enjoys going to all these out-of-the-way places and getting down to the nitty gritty of life, whether it’s Aboriginal people in Australia or local people in Nepal, the Arctic or Tonga. She’s very giving and patient, and highly intelligent. Like anyone, she likes luxury, but she’s also very happy living in basic conditions, sleeping under the stars to recharge her batteries. She has such a generous spirit and, in so many ways, embodies the Outback.’

  Pip’s husband Dick agrees. ‘Ann has devoted herself to people who are less well off, or in communities less developed, whether here or overseas,’ he says. ‘Most doctors like to live a wealthy lifestyle, but she’s very different. She puts back into life, and I admire her tremendously.’

  Ann’s home is a modest bungalow, with a tiled floor, brightly coloured furniture and bookcases overflowing with books. Outside, she also has a lap pool and does regular yoga. Despite doing so much stress-beating exercise she still has her ragged, bitten nails. ‘Yes, I can’t help it,’ she admits, grinning. ‘I’m so intense, probably that’s why.’

  But while she loves the freedom to roam the world, she’s convinced she’ll always return to the Outback. Kununurra is now home, and she doesn’t believe she’ll ever leave it for good. Later that afternoon, out on a three-hour bushwalk at the neighbouring national park, climbing the rocky hills with their boab trees rising out of the rockfaces, she stands on a shard of rock and surveys the wide horizon. ‘I love wilderness, it’s something that draws me,’ she says, smiling gently. ‘The Outback is so wild and untouched. It can be unforgiving and you have to know your place. You can explore places where there are still no paths, and you can be there and have a sense of time that’s much bigger than you.’

  She gestures at the rocky outcrops as far as the eye can see. ‘You can look at these rocks and wonder where they’ve been and realise you just don’t matter that much. These rocks are going to be there forever. We just don’t count. It’s that sense of our lack of importance that’s the bigger picture. I find that knowledge really comforting somehow. That’s the Outback’s gift to us.’

  Ann Ward walking in the ‘mini-Bungles’ of Mirima in the Kimberley. (Photo by Jimmy Thomson)

  8

  CROSSROADS IN THE DESERT

  Jo Fort, Birdsville, Queensland

  There’s a section of the Australian Outback that holds a very special place in Jo Fort’s heart.

  In truth, it’s nothing particularly stunning to look at. It has no towering mountains, gushing waterfalls or rolling green hills. It has no spectacular crags, scenic valleys or picturesque villages. But it’s extraordinary in a quite different way: it’s the driest, emptiest and most isolated region of Australia, steeped in the history of the country’s first pioneers, crossed by two great stock routes, and boasting two of our most iconic Outback hotels.

  Look along the Strzelecki Track and thousands of square kilo­metres of purple gibber plains glitter in the harsh midday light. Up the Birdsville Track, an ocean of blood-red sand stretches as far as the eye can see. But along The Outback Loop, which links the two, the old Innamincka Hotel in the far north-eastern corner of South Australia, close to
the Dig Tree of the fateful Burke and Wills expedition, and the legendary Birdsville Hotel nestling in the far south-western nook of Queensland. Between the pair, massive cattle stations sprawl, small Aboriginal communities survive and thrive, and remote mining camps dot a horizon that’s one of the furthest and widest in the world.

  Jo Fort has travelled these roads on hundreds of occasions, but every time she spies something new. ‘It’s just an amazing part of the country,’ she says, with a happy sigh. ‘There’s so much to see and you really get a great sense of history when you’re out here. You follow the great stock routes of yesteryear, but you also get a fascinating glimpse into how the land is being used, and how the people are living today. It’s quite magical.’

  It’s for exactly this reason that Jo has concentrated all her energies on trying to bring the story of The Outback Loop – the road circuit between Innamincka, Lyndhurst and Marree in South Australia, and dipping into Queensland just over the border at Birdsville – to a wider audience. As a result, more and more Australians venture off the beaten track to travel The Loop every year, and decide to stay longer at both the Innamincka and Birdsville hotels to really get to know some of the intriguing places and colourful local characters who’ve settled there.

  An enterprise that once looked like a mission impossible is now proving one of the greatest success stories of the Outback; along the way, it’s transforming a country-girl-turned-city-slicker into a new wave Outback pioneer.