Hallelujah

My car decided to stop accelerating under my lead foot the other day.  Despite my best efforts to fix it myself (ie changing the fuel filter), it's now at the mechanic. So I'm feeling a little bored and little stuck in Biloela at the moment.

But I've started somewhere in the middle.  Let's backtrack.  But first, here's this blog's soundtrack.

Bileola asked me if I could come back to cover someone's leave for a few weeks.  Three days later I'm driving up, relishing the fact I hadn't left the day before and had to face half the highway being underwater.

Everyone was so happy to see me, which was such a great warm and fuzzy feel.  Then they worked a shift with me, and they remember how much of a shit magnet I can be.

Anyway the fun stuff:

I spent one of my days off in Rockhampton.  I went to Yeppoon, it was a bit windy, but it wasn't a bad spot.  As I was walking down to the beach, I heard this young boy probably about 10 or 11 years old, saying to his friends "Whoa, there's some really good waves today".  I thought to myself "Aww, he hasn't been south of 1770"

After the morning in Yeppoon.  I went to The Caves north of Rockhampton.  I'd highly recommend it, it was a pretty incredible experience.

The highlight of the tour is visiting "The Cathedral Cave", a huge cave, with no natural light, and incredible acoustics. They have weddings, opera and all kinds of events in this cave.

Everyone takes a seat, while the guide talks about the acoustics and says "Do we have any singers, would anyone like to sing and try it the acoustics?".  This little kid, probably about 6 or 7 says "Yeah I'll sing".  He gets up on stage, he puffs his chest out, ready to sing.  The whole group is on the edge of their seats, waiting with bated breath to see what he comes up with.  Then we hear:

"Up town, funk you up, uptown funk you up"

Hilarious.

After that the guide played "Hallelujah" (The Rufus Wainwright version) and turned the lights out.  You're sitting in the pitch black dark, listening to the sound bounce off the roof.  It was pretty moving.  Had it been the Jeff Buckley version, I would've cried. 


Aside from that adventure, I've mostly just been having picnics out the usual places; Tannum and Callide Dam.  I did venture up to the scenic lookout as well.

It was overlooking the mine, hmm.

That's about it for now.  My car is now fixed, and I'm on Day 2 of 6 before I can take a trip back to the beach.

BUT!

I'm going to end on a more serious note, because I think this needs sharing after a conversation I had with another nurse after a particularly difficult week here in town.

For nurses everywhere, no matter where you nurse, no matter how long you've been nursing, how many qualifications you have, university or hospital trained, this applies to us all:

If you're questioning whether you should still be nursing, because sometimes it's so fucking hard not to be affected by pain and suffering. To carry on, to keep helping and smiling when you're devastated and crying on the inside.  You most certainly should still be nursing.  The day you're NOT affected, is the day to reconsider your career.  Look after yourselves and work buds, talk about how you're feeling, ask "Are you ok?" and remember all the good we do.

Hallelujah comrades - Life and love are precious, enjoy every fucking minute of it.  

There's An Endless Road to Rediscover

This is a pretty retrospective blog.  Being away from home over Christmas may have made me into a little bit of a scrooge as far as blogging was concerned.  Bahh Humbug...  

It may also explain the reason this song was resonating with me quite a bit while I was away, despite my lack of fandom for all things mainstream. 

A belated Merry Christmas everybody. Hug the ones you love :)   

Anyway Biloela is an interesting town...

 The staff at the hospital are an amazing team, I felt instantly welcome and I felt all warm and fuzzy when one of the ENs told me I'd slotted in so well.  More on that later.  

I was share housing with another agency midwife, we worked a lot of shifts together and despite my "shit magnetism" (nurses, y'all know what I'm talking about), we started calling ourselves the A Team - A for Agency, jeez I'm not that full of myself.  

We had a couple of days off together and stayed a couple of nights out at Cania Gorge.  Here's some photos I can't take credit for.  Courtesy of Sue and her incredible photography skills.  

The place we stayed was a lot of fun, the "Kookaburra Cabin was aptly named...

Being the terrible influence that I am, I convinced Sue to have some wine and cheese with me, this was her first alcoholic beverage in over 5 years.

One of the holiday park's free range chooks wanted a piece of wine and cheese action, well mainly the cheese and cracker in my other hand.  

The last day we were there we went out to Cania Dam. I love this one of the gorge and the dam wall.  

The rest of my free time in Bilo was spent split between Callide Dam and Tannum Sands.  

Over Christmas and New Year I was working nights.  And being statistically the worst time of year to be working in an Emergency Department, I had no idea what to expect.  

For those of you without a health care background - know this, if it has happened on Scrubs, you can be pretty sure it's based on reality.  

It didn't help that this is what I saw during my 30 second commute from the quarters. 

And to take the superstitious ridiculousness a little further.  I was convinced that the thousands, literally thousands, of bats we saw in the middle of the day on the way to Callide Dam was another bad omen.  

Because really, if the zombie apocolypse ever happens you can be damn sure it'll be caused by a frickin bat!

Despite all this, Christmas and New Years was incredibly quiet.  Just the one intoxicated person and a man worried his penis would drop off.  #nurselife

We even had a visit from Mr and Mrs Claus, who were BIBA

(BIBA = Brought In By Ambulance)

Long blog I know, but my final outing in Bilo was their scenic lookout...

 

 ...of the mine.

This was incredible. No, not the mine, but the fact there was a perfectly good view of the dam 10m in the other direction.  I'm still baffled.  

That's it for now, second Bilo installment to come soon!

Love to all xx

I'll be coming home next year...

I'm back from hi-at us and leaving on my next adventure to Biloela, in Central Queensland.

What a month it's been, my time in Eidsvold finished up without any drama.  And by drama I mean no babies needing delivering! This time around, there's a whole roster of midwives to deal with all that awfulness. 

Agnes Water was absolute paradise, I would love to share photos but my phone gave up the will to live, before I had a chance to transfer them, so you'll just have to take my word for it.  But it also means I've narrowly avoided sharing pictures of the ludicrous sunburn and subsequent tan lines I'm STILL trying to even out. It's become clear to me that I should not be allowed near a bottle of sunscreen without strict supervision. So any volunteers to be my beach buddy next time, let me know.

That's about all there is to catch up on so.. new stuff!

Last week I said au revoir to old friends and some new ones I've met along the way.  So I figured this was an appropriate soundtrack:

I've nearly sweated it through my first week, and MY GOD it's hot out here! Why oh why did I, not only, pack skinny jeans, but DECIDE TO WEAR THEM???!!!

I now know how Ace Ventura felt when he was trying to get out of that rhino, the process of removing skinny jeans in this sweltering heat is remarkably similar.  For those of you who can't (or rather, don't want to) remember the 90s here's that particular blast from the past.  Enjoy the imagery...

I've done a little exploring so far. Lake Callide isn't far out of town, and not a bad spot to set up camp for a couple of hours.

 As far as swimming goes however, (an absolute essential given the current climate) it looks like I'll be splitting my time between Tannum Sands and the local pool, for the following reasons:

• Directly to the left of this photo is the Callide Power Station 
• I'm slightly concerned about running into a three-eyed fish, if I go for a dip.  
• I'm surprisingly less concerned by crocodiles and jellyfish at Tannum Sands - figure that one.

That's about all I have for now, more to come soon.  Love to all xx

Back to Eidsvold

The perfect description for my
shift in Caboolture ED

So before I left they asked if I could extend my contract by 3 weeks, my lease finished the day I got back home, so I offered to do one week off 2 weeks back, which they were ok with.  So after a great week at home catching up with friends, one ridiculously busy shift at Caboolture ED (which made me grateful to be working in a small country town), and one very hungover 4 hour drive, I'm back in Eidsvold and still loving it. 
 
My second night back in Eidsvold I had to transfer a patient having runs of VT to the air strip, essentially a paddock with a bumpy dirt track.  And I have decided that I absolutely have the coolest job ever, not only because I got to ride in the ambulance for the transfer, but because it was dark, we had to drive around on the runway with the sirens on to scare all the roos and wallabies away before the plane landed and took off again.  It...was...brilliant.  I felt like Goose.  


On a completely unrelated note, I'm in love with this song again.  Mainly because I've only just realised that the lyrics are "Your menstruating heart" and not (as I originally thought) "You're menstruating hard"...

<End Tangent>

I spent my day off in Bundy, and did some shopping.  And I think I'm covered for doing good deeds for a month now.  I stopped at the IGA on the way home, on my way out a lady stopped me:
"Excuse me darling, do you have any jumper leads"
I didn't, so I offered to drive her up to the Service Station on my way out of town.  

This turned into driving her to her sister's house to borrow money to hire the jumper leads.
Which then turned into driving her brother-in-law, Bruce, to the other side of Bundy, to her nephew's house to borrow his set of jumper leads.

Bruce had no teeth, and gets in the car with a XXXX Gold Tally in a paper bag and he spent the first 5 minutes of the drive saying "Ahhh Friday". So I asked him what he did for work. (Oops).

He replied after some contemplation "I'm 100% committed to my cultural heritage."
"Oh ok, that's pretty cool" I replied.
This prompted him to spend the next 20 minutes free-styling slam poetry and saying "how was that one, sister? Not bad eh?" and "BOOM" ... a lot.  

Some of it was pretty good.  

So we get to the nephew's place, Bruce comes back out after a minute.
"How'd you go?"
"Yeah, he's going to drop them around."
I drove Bruce back home, without any jumper leads.  

The naive optimist in me says they did just need jumper leads and appreciated my help.  The cynic in me says I may have unsuspectingly and unwillingly provided the transport for a drug run.  Oh well, it takes all sorts. 

So a couple more shifts and I'm heading to Agnes Water for a few days by the beach.  I can't wait to tell you all about it!

Love to all xx

Nearly home

My last days off before I head home.

One of the other agency nurses recommended I have a look around Cania Gorge, near Monto. So I drove up there and it was spectacular.

Words can't describe it, so this blog will mostly be lots of pictures and captions. And I really feel that this is the most appropriate song to listen to whilst reading...

Greatest...Movie...Ever...

At the start of the walk through Cania Gorge

I'm in a cave!!!

Sandstone wall in the Dragon Cave

Black Boys at the top of the gorge

The aptly named Dripping Rock -
that's what it does

Off to the overhang... This looks promising...

The Overhang, my photos don't do it justice,
but the creek has eroded the rock away,
the gap under the overhanging rock is tall enough
to stand in

Under The Overhang

Token Selfie

Rock Wallaby!

I had a ball wandering around the forest looking at rocks. Yes, there really is not that much to do out here, so you find that little things excite you... or big things, depending on the size of the rocks I guess.

So now it's 2 more shifts to go before I go home... And no babies delivered yet!

See you all soon. Much love xx

Halfway there...

A little over a week to go and I'm spending my day off in Bundy and Bargara.

My internet USB gave up the will to live the other day, following a crush injury from my laptop... after I dropped it.  So I had to buy another one in Bundaberg while I was there on my day off.  (Partly the reason this blog is so overdue).

Anyway no road trip to the beach compilation is complete without the following:

So with the Chili Peppers blaring I drove 2 and half hours to Bundy.  I saw this sign on the way, so of course I had to stop and pay $9.50 to see what the hell a Mystery Crater was.
 

I asked the lady at the counter, but she was giving up any info until I coughed up the cash.  Then she gave me 'directions' around this park, pointing out the fairy garden... the viewing platform... and the antique machinery shed (by far my favourite!)









I was initially disappointed... But then thoroughly amused.

After walking "all the way around the craters" which took all of 5 minutes, I was determined to get my money's worth.  So I went to the viewing platform listened to the spiel... twice.





Off to the antique machinery shed then.  Passing this on the way...

Why do they always have a plastic dinosaur at these things?

The reason the machinery shed was by far the best reason for visiting this place, was this:
They had a couple of old ploughs fenced off outside the shed, proper antiques, so you're expecting to walk into this shed and see something slightly similar; old farming equipment you can read plaques about what it was used for, marvelling at how they did things in "them olden days"... No... this was a shed full of rusty lawnmowers and cement mixers from the last 20 years, all neatly arranged side by side on shelves (no plaques to my disappointment!).  I left giggling and thinking this is absolute gold and totally worth $9.50!

So after that I was off to Bargara for lunch on the beach.  I found THE BEST SUSHI EVERRRRR! at Bargara.  So it was a welcome break in the endless roast meat and veg dinners cooked by the hospital.  Don't get me wrong, I'm so grateful that they have the option of buying meals from the hospital kitchen, it's just been 2 weeks straight of roast something or other, so my excitement over 3 sushi rolls is completely understandable.

Not a bad spot for lunch

Also NEW HAIR! I get the feeling I won't be able to replicate the style as well as the hairdresser...

So after all the excitement of the Mystery Craters, sushi on the gorgeous beach and a new do, I decide to head back to Eidsvold, before it gets dark and I have to worry about the roos, or as one of the girls here calls them "spring loaded car fuckers."

Then this happens, and if I had any doubt I was in the country - I don't anymore:

Twenty doughy eyes boring into my soul as I drive passed.  No casualties!!

So back to Eidsvold, some more night shifts and keeping my fingers crossed that no soon-to-be-mothers go into labour on my shift.

Love to all, see you soon!