Return to the Top End

It has been quite a while since my last post – the curse of study, exams and then holidays has meant that I have not been spending much time in Darwin itself. But I am now back, enjoying the dry season and ready to live it up! Its still over 30 degrees here most days but the humidity has dropped down and dare I say it, its almost cool in the mornings!

Michael and Father Christmas

It appears that even though it is still June, Christmas in July is nearly here and thus the Christmas photo-shoot must be done. Father Christmas visited theatres during the week and one of our lovely anaesthetic nurses got to sit on his lap and make some early present requests. I later saw Father Christmas in a patient bed being fed a can of Coke and Snickers – clearly not a practise we should be encouraging pre-op!

I noticed this morning that a small tragedy has hit Darwin while I’ve been away. Lucky we have the NT news here to report.

Despite only getting off a plane on Monday I was back at the airport yesterday getting on another plane. Our trauma team runs a series of RATE courses which aim to educate remote health workers around the territory about pre-hospital trauma treatment for patients. These health workers are more often than not the first on the scene to some terrible road accidents and, with an average pickup time of 6 hours in the Territory, they often have to look after the patient for much more than the ‘golden hour’. It can be scary and stressful for these workers who have limited training.

This week our course was down at Timber Creek and I was lucky enough to go along. Rhiannon and Henry, two of my trauma nurses came along, with Malcolm, our St Johns Ambulance guy completing the team. Timber Creek is a small community of 150 people in the southwest of the territory, about 3 hours drive from Katherine and 3 hours from the WA border. They have four nurses, a small health centre and a police station. My boss tells me that it is also the place to get a husband. I’m still unclear as to what he is basing this on given the population and disappointingly I did not get an proposals the whole day!

Timber Creek Airport

Timber Creek from the air

Our day did not get off to a great start when the airline sent someone else off in our plane. We take quite a lot of equipment with us, which seemed to completely overwhelm the check-in guy so we sat around for over an hour before they found a second plane to take our equipment. Unfortunately because our equipment was much heavier than the four of us the second plane also had a longer flight time, arriving nearly 45 minutes after us! After getting in nearly an hour late to the health centre, without our equipment, we then discovered that we didn’t have any of our presentations loaded onto our computer. We had to make a few phone calls and emails back to Darwin and get them sent over – lucky the Internet connection was working!

After the rough start the rest of the day went smoothly and was a lot of fun. We had a great team of workers from around the region who were enthusiastic and had such interesting stories to tell. They really enjoyed sticking chest drains in, binding up patients and sticking needles into arms. We were also extra spoiled with some great food!

Push-starting the plane

Our late start meant a late finish but luckily the airline sorted out a bigger plane and we had a great flight home with a wonderful sunset over the city as we landed. It was a long day but I must admit I really enjoyed myself. We have our next course in the Tiwi Islands in a few weeks time and I am sure we will have an equally great time out there!

Our pilot, Scott, looking down the runway

Loading up the plane

Rhiannon, Henry and me in the air