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