Road Trip To Tennant Creek

180kg luggage

This last week has been packed with a 4 day trip to Tennant Creek. Tennant Creek is only 1000km south of Darwin but its a pretty hard drive and none of the planes that fly there could take all our equipment. So Plan B was a flight to Alice Springs and a 500km drive north. We take nearly 200kg luggage with us on these trips and yes, checking in 200kg of excess luggage really is as hard as it sounds. With the pick-up from the hospital, getting everything out to the airport and then getting it all onto the plane we had been going for over 2 hours by the time we made it onto the plane.

It didn't stop once we reached Alice - we had to collect all that 200kg luggage again and get it packed into the rental car. And leave room for the four of us to get in as well!! It looked dubious for a while but we managed to get it done and after a quick stop in Alice for food we were on the way...

Trying to get said luggage packed onto the rental ute.

The road from Alice to Tennant is actually 'packed' with interesting places to stop. We drove through Ti Tree (although apparently the mango wine from there is quite good) so our first stop was Barrow Creek Hotel. This is where Joanna Lees was brought back to after her alleged abduction several years ago. Its a tiny gas station with a shop and just open space all the way around (Along with the occasional chick wanting to sell some paintings!). I can imagine how scared she would have been with nowhere to go...

Fiona and the awesome Alien glasses

Another hour down the road is Wycliffe Wells - the UFO capital of Australia. There's a big caravan park there and the owners of the petrol station have really gone out with their decorating. Every surface has been painted and there are alien statues and signs everywhere. They also sell an awesome array of Alien merchandise. We invested in some fantastic alien glasses - cheap and awesome!!!






Next stop: Devil's Marbles. I last stopped there years ago and remember thinking how beautiful all the rocks are. The surrounding area just stretches out into nothing and then there are large heaps of rocks. Like they've just been dumped there. We spent a while just playing around on the rocks and enjoying the breeze that blew through them.

Having managed to stretch a 4 hour trip into well over 6.5 hours we finally arrived late into Tennant Creek....and unloaded all the luggage again.

Although we only had 14 people in our course this time it was a great group and one of the best courses I have taught at. Once again we got to play with the local firemen as well as decorate the local area with our Grey Ladies for Mass Disaster training.


We spent two nights in Tennant Creek and visited both the Memorial Club (great chips!) and the new local Chinese restaurant. We even managed to finish early on Day 2 and get an early start back on the road to Alice.

There will (hopefully at least) be a bit of a break   in courses now but we still have a trip out to Maningrida later in the year....

Gallivanting on Territory Jetplanes yet again

The last few weeks have been interrupted yet again by exams and family commitments down in Sydney. I have however managed to get in a few work trips.

The NCCTRC runs courses year round but it seems to be super busy at the moment so most of them are running back to back. My most recent trip was out at Groote Eylandt.

The Red A marks the spot!

Groote Eylandt is the largest island in the Gulf of Carpentaria and lies about 50km out from the coastline, and about 650km from Darwin. The island has only recently been open to the public and people head out there now to go deep sea fishing, but BHP Biliton has operated a large manganese mine there since the 60s. The island is really quite small (about 50m x 50km) and in our two days there we really only saw the mining areas – the mines themselves and the mining community. There are a whole series of demountables where the guys sleep with a mess, a little shopping arcade and a coffee shop. There are 3 places to eat – only the golf club has recently lost its chef so a little less than that at the moment - and you can only drink in the club if you have filled out a permit and had it approved.

Mr Sim-Man saying HELP in the car!!

The Remote Pre-Hospital Trauma and Disaster Course (RPHTDC) is an extension of the RATE course I have already done a few times with the team however this one runs for two days and centres more on crash scene management and patient extrication. It also incorporates some of the mass casualty courses we run so its pretty jam-packed and involves us taking nearly 200kg of equipment with us (That is a LOT of excess baggage charges which I am very thankful I don’t have to pay!)

Letting the Firemen loose with the power tools!

Tex and Megs supervising the Firemen

 We take one of the firemen from the Centre out with us and most of the second day is out in the field practising extricating patients from vehicles and crash sites. At the end of it the firemen get into it and bring out all their power tools to cut up the cars as fast as possible. I find it quite exciting as its something I never really get to do. Plus there’s the added bonus of looking at firemen all day!

We’ve just repeated the course this week at Darwin – the firemen are still the highlight!

Our next trip is out to Tennant Creek, via Alice Springs, next week. I am quite excited about heading out there particularly as the other doctor on this trip is my friend Fiona. Updates to follow.

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