Chapter 34 The Ups and Downs of Paradise

                                          Chapter 34   The Ups and Downs of Paradise

Mum and Dad soon got used to negotiating the causeway under different conditions, but if the tide was on the turn the water was very deep and it was an arduous task to navigate the small, aluminium boat across. When the tide was coming in or running out, and the outboard motor was out of action, you were reduced to rowing, and it was a fight against the pulling current. Eventually, Dad bought a new tinny with an outboard.

    He and Mum returned from a foray into town and Dad was so proud of his new boat. "You'll be right now Mum; You won’t get wet feet now.”

     When he’d manhandled it into the water and got her settled on the seat with all their shopping around her, he assured her,"Now you just sit there and I'll get the motor going."

     The motor sputtered into life but as the little tinny left the shore Mum could feel water on her feet. "Alec, Alec! My feet are getting wet!"

    "Don't be bloody stupid woman -- how can your feet be getting wet?" Dad was insulted
.
    "I tell you my feet are getting wet!" Mum was getting agitated.

     Suddenly Dad saw the water increasing in the floor of the boat. "Jesus Christ!" 

    In a flash, realisation dawned and he started patting his pockets. By now his eyes were wild and sweat was beading on his face. He’d forgotten to replace the stopcock! An urgent scratch around located it -- in his pocket! Mum repeated the yarn over and over, laughing at his madness.

    We arrived again at the island one sunny day when Ashley was eight weeks old.  Cassie had lent me her sand-fly net for the carry basket because the causeway was notorious for swarms of sand flies. Fortunately that day there didn't seem to be any; maybe there was a breeze. We loaded the little tinny with our luggage, ourselves and Ashley in his basket enveloped in the sand-fly net. Oh, the confidence of the young! The mere thought of us loaded up with luggage and baby on that long trip across the choppy water horrifies me now. Stepping out of the boat on the Island side everything then had to be transferred to the waiting vehicle. Dad was there to meet us. He and Mum were overwhelmed that we ventured to bring our baby to such a wild place. Ashley thrived on the activity around him.

     On the far point of the island, the houses overlooked a beautiful, picturesque beach and sand dunes. Like many other visitors, we were always cared for by my mother, who lived in the larger of the two houses. Just like on the farm, my father waved his arms expansively and invited everyone to sit down to be waited on by Mum. It was easy to run down the hill, over the sand dunes, and splash into the water. On long walks along the deserted sand we picked up large bleached but often unbroken shells, and occasionally green or blue glass fishing buoys, sometimes covered in rope netting, which had probably broken away from a trawler's net. Pete and I found Suntory whisky bottles which had floated ashore. They conjured up an image of very merry Japanese fishermen tossing empties overboard and laughing heartily. We made a lamp-base out of a Suntory bottle, which is a great memento of Island days. The environment was a minor consideration in the 70’s.

     On our third visit, Dad decided he'd give me a personal guided tour of the mangroves and navigate the quiet side of the island. I was happy to go for a bit of a cruise, and Larry agreed to row around in the other boat with Pete. They were to follow the creek along the back of the island and meet us. Dad and I were about five minutes from the causeway in deep water when the motor stopped.

     Now I should probably explain that Dad was still wearing his baggy khaki long pants and shirt since moving to the island.They were particularly baggy around the fork. He was a modest man and I guess he liked them that way. Also, he never left the house without wearing his battered old felt hat, and he was rarely without a cigarette between his lips.

    Anyway, the motor had stopped. I was sitting at the front of the boat waiting for action when Dad decided to take the top of the engine off, exposing the motor and spark-plugs. Then he bent over peering in with a frown, trying to see something that might be amiss, something simple that he could fix, anyway. 

    He was standing up bending over the motor, legs spread apart to balance. While the boat was only rocking gently on small ripples, his weight was sinking it deeper into the water. Intent on finding the problem, he bent too low, overbalanced and went in head first--hat, cigarette and all. I was paralysed. All I could see was his two legs sticking straight up. What I didn't realise was that the pants and the sparkplugs had joined forces and Dad was suspended like a carcass from a meat hook. I could see by the way his legs were moving he was trying to get his head up, but having a lot of difficulty.

    My dad was in trouble and I had to go to his assistance, but you can picture in your mind the folly of leaving the other end of the boat and going to his aid. I took a few Russian dance steps towards him but the minute I moved forward the boat tipped up further, plunging him further in!

    At last, up came his head, the hat missing but a limp cigarette still clamped between his lips. Needing to get air quickly, he spat the soggy ciggy and took a few gasping breaths. Once again instinct overtook good sense and I made a move to help him.

    Down he went again, this time feet first, "Get back! Get back!" he squeaked In panic as the boat tipped precariously.

    I scrambled, much like a crab clawing its way up a rock, stretching for handholds back  to my perch, helplessly watching him in the water. Strangely, he made no move to get out and back in the boat.

     I started to get worried. "Are you okay Dad? Can you get back in?"

    "Yeah, I'll be all right in a minute. Just let me have a spell."
 
    But this was ridiculous; it had to be five minutes. What was he doing?  I wondered why he wouldn't get back into the boat.

    At last he put a leg up and rolled himself back on board, quickly turning his back to me and holding his fork. He sat up facing the motor, where he stayed for the rest of a subdued trip. Now in a position to fiddle with the motor, he soon got it started and we went on our way.

    We soon met up with Larry and Pete, both panting from a long, hard row, and they chorused, "Where have you been!?"

    Dad seemed to want to tell Larry about it in secret. 'God! Dad can be so strange!' I thought.

    Later, I talked to Mum, "Poor Dad was so embarrassed," she confided quietly.

    "Why?" I asked, puzzled.

    "Because when he fell, his pants ripped apart on the spark plugs and left a big hole in the front. It left everything exposed," she explained.

     I couldn't believe it. "But I wouldn't have worried. I'm a nurse!" I protested.

    "Well, you're also his daughter,” Mum said, "You know how Dad is.”

    Just then Dad came in and I asked sympathetically, "Are you okay, Dad?"

    "Course! It was nothing!" he replied, brushing me off. I went to the bedroom and buried my face in a pillow so that he couldn't hear me laughing.

                                                            --0--

    Larry and Owen outfitted themselves with spear fishing gear and enjoyed a sport they'd never previously had a chance to practise; and on occasions when schools of fish could be seen in the water from the house, they nipped down and threw in a net. Frequent holidaymakers enjoyed tasty treats of succulent mud crab out of the thick mangroves. Wild bush lemons grew near the houses. Pete joined the men on mustering trips to round up cattle, and on fishing trips for deep sea fish and other trips to lift crab pots.

    On the point the wind blew ceaselessly, and they all endured their first cyclone, the terrifying details creating an image my mother will probably never forget. What spooked her  most was the quiet in the eye of the cyclone. The frightening wind blew in from the east, bending trees and hurtling rubbish missiles through the air. Then a deadly quiet descended. Everything was still and ominous.

    Eventually they heard the roar of the wind approaching again, this time from the west. It tore through the air, rattling the house boards and roofing iron for thirty minutes, and sent huge waves crashing against the sand dunes. Somehow both houses stayed intact.

    Unfortunately for Mum, she was the one stuck in the kitchen hammering away at crab shells and preparing meals, often cooking and preparing beds for visitors. She became tired and run down. The constant wind, never something my mother enjoyed, aggravated her health further.

          After 2 1/2 years, though she sensed her health was deteriorating, she had no choice but to focus her attention on Dad, who was becoming chronically depressed. A naturally gregarious nature, he greatly missed the busy life and excitement of the hotel.
   
    On top of everything else, Mum's brother, Bill, who lived in Brisbane, became ill. It was a sudden illness which ended with his death. She was not well enough to travel and was snowed under with work and visitors. Organising herself to go away would have been a nightmarish, logistical exercise, so her only brother was buried without his youngest sister at his graveside. Mum felt hurt and very distressed in her grief. 

    One day things just got too much for her body to cope with. She ran a high fever and vomited frequently. I was not even accessible by phone to talk to her as there was no phone on the island. Dad took her to the doctor in Gladstone, but of course she had first to endure a tortuous trip, starting with the car ride down to the causeway, then somehow getting into the little tinny with the outboard to cross a running tide. Once Dad got her into the dusty, cobweb covered Ford, she faced the last rough eleven miles before the relative comfort of the bitumen highway.

      An hour later she saw the doctor, who was horrified by her condition. Mum went to hospital with pneumonia where she remained for a week and a half. It left her with a weakened chest and from then on a common cold could often lead to complications, and sometimes even a stay in hospital.

    Mum often said if they had gone to the Island when they were a young couple they would have made a success of it. But going there in their sixties was just too late. One of the worst aspects of living there was the loneliness, isolation and inconvenience. Larry and Cassie felt it too, and their little daughter spent grade one doing correspondence classes. Fortunately, everything went well for Cassie’s third pregnancy and they made it to the hospital on time, though a doctor had to come by launch for her asthma attack.

    After three years they left the island to settle in the town where I’d done my training. Mum finally had the brick home she’d dreamed of all those years. It was a very ordinary three bedroom home but she loved it and found it easy to look after. Whenever we went there it was spotless; she vacuumed three times a week.

Chapter 33 Married Life

                                                           Chapter 33 Married Life
                                                                
Returning from our honeymoon after two weeks, Peter and I settled into our one bedroom flat with $30 in the bank. Rent was $17.00 a week. There was no phone, and we arranged with the neighbours next door to use their phone number in the case of an emergency. They were a lovely old retired couple and I remember their daughter calling her son, John, in their backyard.
   
    After leaving the Army, Peter returned to Malvern Star as an internal auditor. Advancement in the company however, would have required weeks away from home travelling the state, so he secured a clerk’s position at a sand mining company in the city. It  involved a boat trip over to Stradbroke Island once a fortnight to pay the workers at the mining plant. He learned about sand mining and inspected the rehabilitation of the areas where the sand had been mined. He was impressed..

      After work, he continued to devote several evenings a week as an honorary ambulance officer, volunteering at the city centre. When his first-aid exams were completed, and a position became available in 1969, he was appointed full-time as a driver-bearer. Of course no women were employed by the ambulance in those days.

     At that time all officers worked alone on a car, and joined the QATB because they wanted to help people. Poorly paid, they did the job for love, not money .

    One evening Peter was in the city at a lecture and he parked his car in a narrow side street. When he didn't arrive home for hours past the due time, I was beside myself with anxiety, sure he'd had a car accident.

    Eventually he arrived in a taxi “The car’s been stolen..” I felt as if someone had punched me in the chest.

    We were both appalled, felt lost, and personally assaulted. Pete’s mum and dad, worried and distressed, insisted on replacing the leather first-aid kit that was in the boot of the stolen car, as well as bringing over their own car for us to use.

    I got a job at St Luke's District Nursing Service. We worked out of an ancient wooden house with a dreary dark basement where we went only to feed stray cats. When I went down  into that hollow empty place I had a strong sense of yesteryear... of ghosts not anxious to leave.

    I caught the train to work, getting off at the station near the 4X Brewery, two stations on from Central. I breathed in the yeasty, warm odours of hops and beer as I walked down the hill to our office. As luck would have it, the train stopped at Central Station for alighting passengers who worked in the city, and the train from Ferny Grove that Pete's father was on arrived on the next platform at the the same time. As he walked through the carriage to the door with his friends, he and I waved to each other. He’d give me coy grins because his mates teased him about the young girl he was waving to, and he'd be chuckling good-naturedly as he left the train.

     One morning about five a.m, the man from next door arrived in his pyjamas and dressing gown, banging on the door. Pete answered his knock.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       In a few minutes he returned to the bed, looking anxious. His mum had rung from the  Royal Brisbane Hospital where the ambulance and taken his dad.

    When we got to the hospital, the casualty doctor emerged from a small room with Pete’s distraught mother. His father had passed away from a massive coronary. Being an only child, that left Pete the senior male of his family, having to take care of his mother, which left him little time to grieve himself. It was 1970. Nearly sixty-two when he died, ‘Norm,’ as he was known, never got to see his grandchildren. We moved in with Pete’s mother to help her through the grieving process, as there was only three months to go before the building of our first home was due to be completed,

     During my time at St Luke’s, Neil Armstrong and his co-astronauts landed on the moon, and we all sat around in the dining room watching them on TV. I enjoyed my time district nursing, but most of our clients lived in stilted little wooden houses that clung to the steep hills around Red Hill and Paddington. As I wasn’t a driver, my car sickness kicked in big-time. After five months, the nausea won, and I left.

      I found a job at Rosemount Repatriation Hospital. That meant Peter and I both worked shift work. Sometimes we only passed on the stairs, but there were also times when we were both off at the same time, slept late, or went shopping together. Financially we did well. We lived on Pete's wage and all of mine went into the bank. If I wanted to buy an item of clothing though, I simply skimmed $10 off the top of my wage and bought it. It was a happy time with no money worries.

     We bought our first block of land at Lawnton on the north side of Brisbane, and paid the princely sum of $2600 for the 32 perch block. When it was paid off we went to the Commonwealth bank, where we both banked our money and had done so all our working lives, to apply for a loan to build the house. We were disappointed if we thought we were going to get a hearing there though. 

    “But we’ve paid off a block of land,” I protested   

    "Well you should have put the money in the bank!"

    After a time we approached Sullivan Homes, who drew up plans and arranged an interview for a loan with a Building Society. Maybe the guy from SH was getting a kickback from the BS for his efforts, because he was a slick talker and made all the arrangements. However the young female receptionist at the building society was disgustingly rude and made us feel like begging dogs. We made up our minds we would never accept a loan from that company or do any business with them, ever. And we never have. Later on they became the Metway bank, and our policy held. When we found out through a friend that the building company was shonky, we changed companies.

    Through a young ambulance officer friend, we managed to get a mortgage curtesy of the Bank of New South Wales.

    We built the best home we could afford. It was a third the size of today’s houses, had a brick base and champherboard walls, three bedrooms, and cost $9,000.

    At Rosemount there were five of us, all young married trained nurses working on the staff at the same time, and Julie was the first to get pregnant. It was an unplanned pregnancy but she went on to have a little girl she called Kylie. After that my friend Sue became pregnant and eventually delivered a baby boy she called Peter.

    Then my friend Thelma and I became pregnant at the same time.

     Work friends remarked, "Poor Thelma, she looks so pale and thin, but you look so well!”  Blooming, I think was the expression,

    Meanwhile in 1971,  Mum and Dad sold the hotel and bought Hummock Hill Island, a ten-square mile grazing property south of Gladstone. Larry and his wife and two children settled there as well. It was an idyllic place with seven miles of uninterrupted beach, and  surrounded on two sides by mangroves teaming with mud crabs. But it was a nightmare to access.

    Ironically, Thelma went on to have a lovely baby girl she called Marnie, while I only made it to four months before disaster struck. One night I woke up in the middle of the night haemorrhaging copiously. The ambulance took me to hospital where I miscarried the baby. Pete and I were devastated.

     Despite depression for some weeks, I soon became pregnant again.
   
    On our first trip to the island Peter and I happily tackled the narrow bush road leading off the highway into the box trees, but it soon deteriorated into a dusty track of potholes and deep ruts. I worried for the baby I was carrying; Pete worried for the safety of the car! After eleven bone-rattling miles, we made it to the causeway. Negotiating the crossing depended largely on the tides, and luckily, we arrived at low tide. We found out later that at high tide it was a 200-yard-wide bottleneck of determined, salty sumo strength water. Abandoning our car on the mainland, we walked across the sand and pebbles to where Dad waited on the other side with an old jeep. It would be the first of only a few rare occasions that we found the tide conveniently out.

     Dad was obviously on a high, still buoyed by the novelty of owning the island. He approached the rutted six miles across to the houses with alacrity, defying the potholes as he ducked and dived the jeep, laughing with gusto at every gasp of his passengers. I gritted my teeth, holding my chest with one arm and my stomach with the other. 

    We found the houses comfortable enough, although they were little more than beachside shacks. Larry and my father revelled in catching the huge mud crabs, which they then presented to my mother to cook and serve.

     Over time, the island proved to be a fishermens’ paradise, and one day Larry and Owen netted a huge catch of deep sea mullet, detected from the houses by the dark shadow of the shoal swimming by. Larry said he ate so much mullet that the oil came out on his skin!

     Despite my introductory road shakeup, I went on to give birth to a healthy baby boy. Pete and I had terrible trouble choosing a name, but at the time Pete was working with a handsome young ambulance officer who had a wonderful personality and whose name was Ashley, and it rather appealed to us for our son. 

Chapter 32 Army Nurse

                                                      
                                                                    Chapter 32 Army Nurse

On the eighth of January I arrived to start work as an Army nurse in the RAANC. Being trained I had the rank of full lieutenant. We wore a grey cotton uniform, with a wide, white stiffly starched collar over a red cape in winter. The collar was held together at the neck with a silver badge. In summer the long sleeves of the starched uniform were rolled neatly to the elbow. We wore a stiff white voile veil.

    We sisters were looked on as poor army stock though, as we were undisciplined and untrained in military drill. One day a female army sergeant took some of us in hand to teach us how to salute properly and how to march. She gave up rather quickly though, and the session wasn’t repeated. If we stayed long enough we were sent to the school of army health at Healesville in Victoria for a short stint to learn army procedure.

    On my first day on the duty roster I was told to wander about the hospital and familiarize myself with the wards and general layout. One ward was not in use and had been closed for some time. A lot of spare furniture was stored there and the place was a bit of an obstacle course. I could hear something of a racket going on in that direction so I walked on up there and found a young man in hospital pyjamas with a bandage over his eyes. He was smacking into furniture with a white cane, obviously hemmed in and turning the air blue with his language.

       I took a deep breath, walked up to him, took him by the arm and introduced myself.

     “Hi, I’m new here and I think I’m lost, and that furniture is in danger of bruising. Should we go back to the ward together?” My action set our friendship in stone. 

    James turned out to be a sad case. Stationed with a northern unit, he had been hitching a ride home to spend his leave with family. He got a ride with a truck driver and went to sleep in the middle of the night. Unfortunately the driver also went to sleep and smashed into a tree. James opened his eyes just as the windscreen shattered. Fine splinters of glass penetrated both eyes, blinding him. He was brought to 1 Mil where a top eye specialist took charge of his case. 

    Each time he faced another surgical attempt to fix his eyes, he told the staff excitedly, "I'll be able to see tomorrow!" He told everybody.

    Despite constant warnings from his eye specialist that he may not get his sight back,  James was always convinced that he would... 'be able to see tomorrow'. I believe he is still  blind today.

    Although I was disappointed about being posted to Brisbane, one thing about the army nursing was that the cases were very different and I learnt a great deal. In 1968, as the Vietnam War was in full swing, 1 Mil in Brisbane was the first hospital they came to after being shipped home. 

    In my first week I was assigned the task of specialing a trainee helicopter pilot, admitted after his helicopter had crashed. I had never seen the under water drainage required by his condition of pleural effusion, or fluid in the chest cavity. His instructor was in the intensive care ward. also with multiple injuries, including compound fractures, and they had both inhaled fumes from the ruptured fuel tanks. Although they both seemed to be responding to treatment, sadly they both died suddenly from fat embolisms and inhaled petrochemical. 

    As they wheeled the body of the instructor pilot out of the intensive care ward, I held his wedding ring in my hand. On the inside of the band was inscribed, 'my love, my life, my husband.' Somewhere a wife was grieving.

 A policeman standing by told me curtly, “I’ll have that thank you, Sister.” I had been studying it so intently, he probably thought I was going to steal it. Mutely, I handed it over.
                                            
                                                                      --0--                   

    I just couldn’t help brushing my hand across the smooth white of a full body plaster on a young pilot one day. The weather was hot and he lay on top of his bed outside the ward on the verandaah where we’d wheeled his bed. He smiled cheerfully.

    “I can’t imagine being encased in this thing for months on end,” I said.

    Armed with a long knitting needle, he’d been trying to scratch his ribs. “It’s not forever; I’m lucky to be alive; the doc says I’ll make a full recovery... be good as new in the end.”

      His sketch pad and pencils lay near his hand, and I picked up some drawings and looked at them. “These are great.You must be an artist!” I said enthusiastically.

    He was a long-term patient and was an old friend by the time he was discharged.

    Young soldiers lying in a ditch in the jungle for days before being found, or brought to a casualty clearing station after stepping on a mine hidden under the leafy soil, presented challenging injuries, and often we discoverd invading bacteria later that had not yet been identified in Australia. Every exotic antibiotics the doctors could find were tried out sometimes in an effort to bring them back to good health.

    It wasn't just war injuries that we had to contend with though. Some of the worst cases were actually from car accidents, similar to the ones in any civvy-street hospital. Young soldiers like to party in their off duty time.

    Soldiers who didn’t want to be there, often suffered depression too, and I specialed one who never recovered from an overdose of prescription drugs. He had driven his car into the bush where he thought no one could find him, before swallowing the bottle full of pills.

      A few weeks after I joined up, one of my friends was posted to Vietnam, and I rang home telling my mother I wanted to go too. I almost caused her a nervous breakdown, I think

    Life in the army is unique, especially for an officer. Every afternoon when we returned from our day shift, we helped ourselves to a drink from the bar of the officers’ mess. One of the other sister's introduced me to tonic water, and that's what I had most afternoons. It was cheap and quenched the thirst. Our drinks were put on a tab and we settled up at the end of the month.

    Officers are not supposed to mix with O.R.s, (other ranks,) but at 1Mil there wasn't much talent amongst the male officers. In fact there were hardly any male officers there.They were either already married, or still-wet-behind-the-ears university students who had been drafted for the war. Consequently the female nursing officers often fraternised with the lower ranks. I had been in the army only a couple of weeks when one of the male medical assistants  asked me out on a date. I surprised myself by accepting.

    Unlike everyone else in the sisters’ quarters, I was in the unique position of having a bedroom with a back entrance which led down into the O.R.'s ranks. The room was at the far end of the wing, and under my window ran the one road through the hospital complex. Peter lived out, and after the first date I continued to date him, and when he arrived to pick me up he parked under my window. I would simply leave the room down the back stairs and step quietly into his car. We went out for months with no one being any wiser, especially the hospital matron and senior staff.

    Like most of the guys around the place, Peter was doing national service. But he was a little older than most of them, and a little more mature, as his call-up had come late, and he was naturally quiet and conservative. His two-year stint was due to finish in the April, 4 months after I started work there. One night we were at the drive-in picture theatre, and I was complaining about the army. Although I liked the work I didn't like the army system of detailed protocol. 
   
    I said with vehemence, "I would do anything to get out of the army!"

    "I know what you could do."

    "What? Whaat?"
   
    "You could marry me."

    Astounded, I drew in my breath sharply and exclaimed, "Are you sure?" (He's never let me forget that statement!)

    I followed Army procedure, announcing my engagement immediately by calling on the matron in her office, so that I didn’t get posted anywhere after that. A sister who had achieved the rank of Captain was relieving the matron of the hospital and she had been the one who had given me several little talks about not fraternising with the O.R.’s on the wards. Hearing my news, she did a bit of a doubletake, but composed herself rapidly. 

    Some weeks later the announcement came out in the army newspaper, referring to Peter as a former staffer, and I drew some flak some weeks later when I invited him, now a civilian, into the officers’ mess for a drink. It was considered poor taste, and no doubt it was, but it gave Peter immense pleasure.

    All the army sisters were great and threw an engagement party for me in the mess. Two of them were my bridesmaids. Peter and I were married in the Mitchelton Heights Methodist Church, but not before I suffered the usual bride's anxieties. Stress  seemed to be at an all-time high over the wedding arrangements and I had ghastly nightmares before the day finally arrived. 

    I designed my own dress and had it made by a dressmaker who was also a nightclub singer. She liked the design so much she told me she would make herself a dress just like it for singing when she had finished mine.

    Mum took care of all the wedding reception details and it went without saying that Dad, being a publican at the time, was amply placed to supply the alcohol. Pete’s parents were teetotalers and probably would have preferred a dry wedding, but I knew that was never going to happen. After Peter and I decided on the Pasadena Reception Lounge at Alderly, Mum and I had an interview with the manager, choosing the menu and color of the candles for the tables etc. Having worked on many wedding receptions while at Rowes Cafe, Mum revelled in that environment, and was adamant she wanted a hostess with a microphone during the speeches. She got one.

    My dress and long wedding veil billowed in the wind at two pm on 16th November. Contrary to popular belief that the bride is always late, I arrived at the church on time to be waved on around the block because my mother had not yet arrived. Bayside relatives had been engaged to escort her and they had got lost, being unfamiliar with the northern suburbs of Brisbane. After a circuit, our driver was waved to the curbside. My father and I heaved a big sigh of relief. Mum had arrived.

     After the ceremony Dad enjoyed himself and had nearly as much fun as Pete and I. Mum had arranged roasted ham, chicken and beef, and roast vegetables. Pete chose the sweets, collected the moulded ice cream fruit and flow from the factory, and the waitress brought the first two to Peter and I--four-leaf clovers for good luck. My godmother made the wedding cake and gave it to me as a gift, Peter had a close friend from the Army as best man and my younger brother Owen, as groomsman. Two of the sisters from the Army were my attendants.

    Laughing and deliriously happy, Peter and I left the reception at about 8 p.m. amid waves, shouts from the guests, and stones rattling in the hub caps. Confetti was still falling out of our hair when we arrived at the Sands Motel at the Gold Coast. It was the most luxurious weekend we had ever had and a wonderful start to the honeymoon.

    Money wasn't available for a long stay on the coast, so we headed south for Port Macquarie. I was an uncomfortable, whining newlywed as we travelled down through a New South Wales heat wave. The stifling, oppressive air was smoky from bushfires. Back then, few cars had air-conditioniing.  Finally we settled at the Mid-Pacific Motel, and nestled in for a week’s honeymoon.

Chapter 31 Returning Home

                                            Chapter 31   Returning Home

Before the plane landed in Assville, Mum commented to my dad, "I'll bet she's wearing a dress up to her thighs." 

    As I emerged from the plane at the airport she made another comment, "Yes, she is." 

    Miniskirts were in fashion, and in Victoria they were a little shorter than in Queensland. The heat in Assville was a shock when we emerged from the interior of the plane, and I was wearing a navy woollen military-style suit with dusky pink stockings and navy high heels. I’d purchased the suit in an exclusive boutique in Melbourne's Block Arcade and it cost me a packet; but how quickly after arriving back on home turf my fashion details became irrelevant!

    As a student nurse in my fourth year of training I had earned about $50 a fortnight, but as soon as I started midwifery in Melbourne my wage packet doubled to $100 a fortnight. I couldn't believe I had so much money to spend and I regret to say I saved very little.

     Two Melbourne students from our class came with me for a short holiday in Queensland.

     I told Mum on the phone before I left Melbourne, “Meredith’s parents are both doctors, Mum”

     “Oh my God, no!!” Mum nearly flipped.

     Ironically, Meredith was the one who stayed on while the other girl returned to Victoria on schedule. After some weeks, I took her to the Assville hospital to show her where I’d started my training. It was a case of déjà vu, and when we walked out that day we both had jobs.

     We worked there for about three months as double certificated trained nurses, but Meredith had worked extensively at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, and had a hard time assimilating to the scale of things in the small country hospital.

     Neither of us had enjoyed midwifery, but again ironically, she came in for a lot of  deliveries in the labour ward when she worked night duty.

    One day she burst out in frustration, "Why do I get all the stupid births!” (I was just relieved I only came in for two during the whole three months we worked there.)

    About that time Mum and Dad had decided on selling the farm and buying a hotel. At the house in Green Springs Dad arranged an auction sale. It was a huge success, probably because of the keg he laid on! The morning after the sale we discovered that some of the things that had been sold, like tins of nuts and bolts etc, were still there on the ground! The auction sale had been such a merry party, men didn’t care about the goods they’d bought; they just wanted to join in and have a bit of fun. Mum and Dad  made quite a handsome return.

     Mum had told the auctioneer, "That bed is for sale, but not the quilt." 

    Later in the day after the bed was sold, she saw a utility truck leaving Green Springs.
“There goes my bed on the back of a truck, Alec.” As it rounded the corner on its way out, Mum's quilt flapped in the breeze!

     One of the Brisbane girls from midwifery training had got herself a job at an aboriginal mission settlement, and after our Assville stint, Meredith left to go there too.
  
    The Vietnam war had started in the early 60s, but really ramped up after National  Service was introduced in 1965. Injured Australian soldiers were being shipped back in numbers, and Brisbane was the first big army hospital they were brought to.

    Seeing an advertisement in a magazine for the Army Nursing Corps, I decided to apply. Most of all I wanted to see the country and have some adventure. I’d been hankering to join one of the Defence Forces since I was 14, but the length of the initial commitment was six and four years for the Navy and Air Force respectively.

Nursing staff was needed, and I only had to commit for two years if I joined the regular Army. When I had the interview with the nursing director at Army headquarters towards the end of 1967, she asked me, "What do you know about the Army?"
   
    “Aah...not very much, really,” I confessed.

    “It seems very strange to want to join something you knew nothing about,” she commented tartly. Could I say the uniform looked supercool? Perhaps not.

     I waited anxiously for call up, hoping to be posted to Perth or somewhere else equally as exotic-- somewhere I hadn’t been before. Then it came... posted to Brisbane! No further to go than 1 Mil Hospital, in Yeronga. So much for planning to see more of Australia on the cheap!

    In the meantime, Mum and Dad had bought their country hotel, and we all moved 150 miles away in December 1967, leaving the farm forever. The previous manager had given all the staff Christmas off. That meant that it was all hands to the grindstone, as Christmas is a busy period in a country hotel. Mum cooked, we all leant a hand with the beds, and I became a temporary barmaid! I found it nerve racking and I was uncomfortable in the bar in front of all the drinkers. I lost all appetite for food. 

    I did learn to pull a beer though, after some embarrassment. Amid comments about too much or too little head on their glass, I found out beer drinkers are rather a fussy lot.

Chapter 30 New Places, New Cultures.

 Chapter 30   New Places, New Cultures.

My parents drove me to Brisbane to catch the coach at 6 p.m. on a Friday evening. I was so nervous about going away to a strange place, that I developed a rash on my arm just above the elbow, which was diagnosed by a chemist in Brisbane as ringworm. He  suggested I apply an antifungal cream.
 
     At the coach terminal in the city I got into trouble from the driver for having too much luggage. I tried to explain that I was going away for a whole year, but he wasn't impressed. I guess he had no idea what a big deal this was for a little quiet country girl. Apart from my four cases in the luggage compartment, I had a small white case and a blanket inside the bus with me.

    I waved my parents off. ‘Well, here goes!’

    I don't remember ever sleeping on a bus before, but I must have just dozed off when I was woken by an inspector at the tick gates. In those days the tick gates on the border between Queensland and New South Wales were strictly patrolled, and no foodstuffs or plant material was allowed over. I hadn’t crossed the border before, and the first thing I knew a man was shaking my shoulder.

    “Have you got any food, Madam?” Half asleep, I handed over peanuts, biscuits and grapes.

    The night turned colder as we drove south. I was carrying a blanket and I sure needed it that night. To make matters worse, the driver confessed that the heating on the bus was broken, and before we got to Sydney the gear stick fell off as well! Apart from comfort stops and meals it was an express trip. The next place I remember was Yass, in the heart of the Australian Capital Territory, a place well known for having the most extreme temperatures in the nation. Peering through the window at 1a.m, I could make out only that it was foggy in the freezing, dreary darkness.

    The only other stopping place of note that I remember was Sydney’s famous Kings Cross on Saturday afternoon. Some of the passengers terminated when the bus pulled in at the bus station, but like the rest of them, I sat idly observing the ordinariness of the place and waiting for the driver to return. Then alarmingly, I saw that my small blue case was out on the street. I’m sure it would still be there now if I hadn't got out and quickly thrown it back in with the luggage. Amazed at my own temerity and feeling guilty, I jumped back on to the bus hoping I hadn’t been seen. The last thing I wanted was to have an argument with the driver!

    Sometime Sunday afternoon we pulled in to the Melbourne bus station. We’d  travelled for two nights and a day, and everything I’d ever heard of this city’s dismal weather had been accurate. It was a bleak, wintry afternoon with light rain falling. The city was deserted, but a taxi driver on the rank nearby was only too pleased to pick up my cases, and I gave him the Swanston Street address, which I knew off by heart from studying the hospital paperwork so closely for months.

    I’d never felt so alone and far from home in all my life, and my first instinct was to cry. Instinct also told me that wasn’t an option.

    I sat in the foyer of the nurses’ quarters surrounded by my motley collection of ports, (excuse me, we don't say ports in Victoria, we say 'suitcases'), until the duty sister took me up to my room on the eighth floor. The view was breathtaking and at night was just a sea of lights. I loved it. It was so different to my previous world.

      Of course, there were some teething troubles. After some weeks I still had the rash on my arm and often woke in the night scratching. The antifungal cream had no effect so I lined up for the sick parade one morning. The kindly superintendent saw all the sick nurses and he was very understanding of my plight. A tiny jar of cortisone cream soon returned me to peaceful nights' sleep.

    One thing they had down to a fine art at this hospital, was enabling new students to find their way around. In all the long alleyways around the hospital there were three different coloured lines painted on the pathways. From memory, they could have been red yellow and blue. All you had to do was read the list of departments on the wall to find out which line to follow and ultimately you would end up at the appropriate department.

    In the first few weeks I knew nobody, and I knew nothing of the city, and nothing about the job. I knew, however, in which direction the inner-city was and that we were not far away from it. I saw the trams rattling past and I soon guessed that if I got on a tram going in a westerly direction I would end up in the city. In fact I found that it was cheap on the tram and in no time at all I could access a wonderful new world of sights to see and shops to explore.  On my days off I wandered around looking for theatres and had a lovely time going to movies. It wasn't long before I had seen Dr Zhivago, the Sound of Music, Born Free and My Fair Lady, all on the big screen. I was in seventh Heaven!

    I shopped till I dropped. My habit was to get on a tram to the city, get out at Bourke Street, wander at will, and when I was ready to go home, not knowing where I was, I’d find the nearest taxi and give the driver the address. I had no good clothes when I arrived in Melbourne and enjoyed stocking my wardrobe. 

    It got so bad that the girls would ask me when I got back, “What did you buy today, a couple more slacksuits--or a dress perhaps? A coat?" Well, Melbourne was cold... give me a break, I was a Queenslander!

    One thing I learned early in life was that to do a course meant being looked after. While you were a student someone would always be there to tell you what to do and teach you your new skill. It was like having your own personal navigator. For doing midwifery at the Royal Women's, accommodation was provided in beautiful high-rise modern nursing quarters, uniforms were provided and laundered, and new friends were laid on just waiting to be made. 

    In a few months I had a wonderful circle of friends. Some of them had cars and by contributing a dollar or two to the trip for petrol I was able to join in some wonderful forays into tourist spots around Victoria.

    One of my favourite days out was a day in the snow. We drove in a little Renault to Mount Donna Buang, where we frolicked in this cold powdery stuff I had never experienced before. We picked up old pieces of plastic that lay around and tobogganed down the slopes, ate chunks of freshly roasted chickens and drank champagne out of plastic cups.

    I had been amazed when the girls pulled the car up and bought alcohol from a bottle shop on a street corners, a bottle shop that anyone could walk into. I was used to the law that said you could only go into a hotel, (and we didn’t have bottle shops,) to buy alcohol after you turned 21.

    I had the time of my life. As we cavorted in the snow my camera took many tumbles, and later, the snaps were blotched with blue spots from moisture.

    The Royal Women's Hospital was undergoing a change when I went there. There were some brand new wards, and some very old wards. There were the new nurses quarters but there were also some very old ones. After preliminary training we were all given fourteen weeks of night duty and accommodated in the old night duty quarters. 

    Typical of old buildings the ceilings where up in the heavens and the fittings were antiquated. Not only was I living in ancient quarters, but I was rostered on one of the older wards. There was one night sister who supervised all wards and she was lovely. Fourteen weeks is a long time to have your routine turned upside down and I think I became a little crazy after a while. Because it was cold during the day I slept fairly well, but there was one day when exhaustion must have taken over, and I slept the clock around. When I woke up it was quite dark, the place was deserted and I soon realized it was 10:30pm, (not 10.30a.m) The quarters were deserted and I ran from room to room calling names but of course got no response. Soon the penny dropped and I twigged to what had happened. Hastily donning my uniform, I hurried on duty.

    Rushing up the stairs to the ward I came upon the night sister who greeted me with a big wide smile, "Oh sister, I was just coming to get you.”

     Despite the craziness, I have some fond memories of my time in the night duty quarters. One evening the girls decided to buy in a meal and I had my first taste of spaghetti bolanaise. I was a bit horrified about the smell of the parmesan cheese on top and didn't eat it again for quite a time.

    At that time I was a member of the world record club and was mostly into popular and folk music, but one of my younger friends was quite fond of classics and it's where I had my first experience of listening to classical music. I had bought a stereo record player, (luxury indeed,) with a speaker at the front and a speaker in the lid and eventually I owned quite a collection of LP s

    The Melbourne suburb of Carlton in those days, was known as Little Italy, and I enjoyed tremendously discovering the new Italian foods. It was a great adventure to buy pizza between a group of us and eat it in the quarters sitting room. My favourite of all though, was cheesecake, and it was a great treat for me to buy a slice from one of the delicatessens and bring it back to the quarters to eat. I had never tasted anything quite like it and the texture was so different to anything I had ever experienced.

    It wasn't just the food I enjoyed in Carlton. There were lots of lovely clothing shops, and I realized too late that they were only too happy to take advantage of a young woman not used to their slick sales ways. 

    They pandered to my rapidly inflating ego, gushing compliments like, "It makes you look so beauuuuutiful--You are beautiful woman!--You wear this coat so weeeeell"

    And I handed over my money!

    One friend I had in Victoria was Sandra from my training years at the BGH. She had left her training halfway through and married a soldier, and now lived near the army camp of Puckapunyal. Occasionally I phoned her and announced that I was coming to visit her for a few days. I can't ever remember asking her if it was convenient but I hope I did. Also I never took any food to eat, expecting them to look after me for the few days, which they always did. I visited them for my twenty-first birthday in July, and they graciously took me out to a bar for a few drinks to celebrate.

    I didn't go out on a lot of dates while I was down in Victoria, but one of the girls I was friendly with from the Mercy Hospital arranged for a group of us to attend the Mercy Hospital ball. She arranged blind dates for three of us, and we had a lovely night with three boys who were polite gentleman. My closest friend and I discussed emigrating to Canada to work for a year or so, but after a time the idea evaporated. I still see her on holidays occasionally at her home in Victoria where she lives.

    After night duty we were all sent out to the Henry Pride Wing for eight weeks. This was a postnatal recovery and recuperation part of the hospital, and was situated in extensive grounds at Kew, the garden suburb of Melbourne. It was absolutely beautiful there and we considered it as rest and recreation for the staff as well. Across the road was the Yarra River where we could hire a row boat and spend a leisurely afternoon drifting on the tranquil water. Large droopy trees dangled long leafy fingers in the shadowy river's edge. It was picturesque and peaceful and soothing to the soul.

     If it was a restful place for the staff, it must have been restful for the mothers. The multiparas, (mothers who had already had at least one baby), from the Womens’ went there on their second or third day after confinement, transported by ambulances that were especially equipped in the back with three-tiered stretchers on each side. Each ambulance carried six mothers with their babies in their arms. It was a great place for mothers to relax too as they wandered leisurely along the pathways in the sunny gardens.

                                                                    --0--

     Back in Ward Thirty-four at the main hospital, my education teetered on the brink of a steep learning curve. A postnatal ward with an antenatal annexe, I was shocked to find when allocated to the anti-natal section, I was expected to take blood for the pathology tests. I soon learned how much blood to take for each test, and after being shown once how to find a vein with the needle, I was expected to do the job.

    I'm pleased to say I quickly became proficient and was often told by the mothers, “I didn't feel a thing!" As a matter of fact when I got back to Queensland I considered applying for a job in a pathology as I had enjoyed that work.

    Another day in an antenatal ward in my early training is memorable for the terror it caused me on the day. A woman was well overdue to have her baby, but labour was reluctant to start. The charge sister instructed me to give her a glass of orange juice containing a tablespoon of castor oil. This was a popular first treatment to induce labour at the time.

    A short time later the poor woman came into strong labour with frequent, severe labour pains.

    “Hurry Sister! Trolly! Down to the labour ward!” 

      I hurried, but it was like trying to get away from that angry bull of my childhood nightmares. By the time I’d transferred her on to a trolly and into the lift she was noisy, distressed, and threatening to ‘push’. The lift was antiquated, and oblivious to any need for haste. I could see me coming in for some unscheduled experience.

    I tried to stay calm. “Breathe in and out through your mouth, dear.”

     I wanted to scream, ‘DON’T PUSH!’
   
    Eventually we bumped to the ground floor. I still had one obstacle to overcome. In all wards at the Women’s Hospital there was a chest-high heating arrangement in the middle of the wards resembling a large table. Around this stood all the trained staff disgussing work, (and gossiping,) and I left the trolley just outside the labour ward doors, flew to their side, excused myself, and relayed my story. The head sister clucked her tongue at my stupid panic, put on a pair of gloves to examine the patient, and reluctantly followed me out to the trolley. 

    She never did get to do that examination however, and as she disappeared into the labour ward pushing the trolley herself, and calling for assistance, I retreated back up in the lift, thanking God once again for his mercy.
   
    Ward 34 was a big Ward, accommodating about 10 mothers in the main postnatal section. Interestingly, these were all the married mothers. There was an enclosed veranda along the side of the ward that took another six mothers. These unmarried girls were known as A-Mums, as their private affairs were handled by the almoner. The almoner visited them after they’d given birth, and if they hadn't already agreed to adoption they were strongly pressured to do so. Most of us thought that was the right thing to do. There was no supporting mothers benefit in those days either, so a mother who kept her baby was a brave soul. Not only did she have to cope with the cost of raising her child herself, but she had to contend with the stigma of being an unwed mother, and a social attitude that was against her. Also it was unlikely she would get any assistance or maintenance from a disinterested baby's father. I remember one girl who made the choice to keep her baby. She was a university student and we were all disgusted, thinking she had made a great mistake. 

    I must say the onus was on the girl to take care of herself. I know I grew up taking for granted the attitude that men would indulge (in sex,) before marriage and that was acceptable, but women did it at their own risk. I do admit though, in the back of my mind that whole concept didn't make much sense. When I think back to those years, I realize I was naive, and like most of the other hospital staff I had a 'holier than thou' attitude. I guess that's how society was evolving.

    Of course the main point of training in midwifery was to learn how to deliver babies, and we had workbooks for various skills which had to be signed off by trained staff or tutor sisters during that 12 months. I guess the focal point of our training was our time in the labour wards. A second labour ward was situated in the newer multi-story section of the hospital. A further challenge was the language difficulties we experienced because of living amongst a population of largely Greeks and Italians. When a 'foreign lady' was in labour it was necessary for the staff to know some of the words in her language to help her through the pain stage. One of the few I can remember was 'respire', (? Spelling), which was Greek for breathe. We shouted it long and often. The worst thing was sometimes we mistook a Greek for an Italian lady, or vice versa.

    Of course sometimes we had fun during our training, especially if it was an exercise in an empty ward. The first thing we learnt though, was how to bath a baby, and we learned on one of the newborns whose mother was willing to participate. I'll never forget the baby's  name, (Jason Bacon).

    And of course the nitrous oxide provided lots of laughs when we had practice breathing on the mask. For the mechanics of delivery we were all given a cardboard box with a hole in two sides to represent the pelvis, and a brand-new rag doll with a pretty face but an elongated soft head. With the doll and box we learned the positions the baby went through during the birthing process. I named my doll Penelope, and brought her home at the end of training like a new baby

Chapter 29 Registered Nurse in The Country

  5th from 5th
                                    Chapter 29   Registered Nurse in The Country

I leaned over the railing of the nurses home veranda one day, waiting for Larry to drive through the front gate to pick me up to take me home for a long weekend off. I enjoyed the drives home with Larry. It was a good opportunity for brother-sister bonding, now that we were both a bit older. Eventually I saw his lovely, red Falcon sedan approaching and to my surprise there was a girl sitting in the passenger seat. I knew he'd been taking this girl out but on this occasion she proudly showed me her engagement ring. I knew Cassie from the hospital in Assville. She’d only stayed a short while before moving on to the little bush hospital at Eadervale.

      They married in September of 1964, and her sister and I were bridesmaids. We wore full-length pale blue dresses made from lurex, a heavy fabric predominantly woven with a shiny silver thread. The front hems of the dresses were caught up and secured with a self-made rose to show off the bright red high heel shoes we wore. On our heads we wore a fascinator, which was a little stiffened band of the blue lurex material with a self-made rose and blue net attached. It was a bit like a see-through miner's helmet, and we wore long, matching blue gloves and carried a little bouquet of red roses. Larry's two close friends from school and his cane cutting days were the best man and groomsman. Cassie wore a beautiful gown of embroidered cream satin with long sleeves which finished with a peak over the backs of her hands.

    While I was still in BGH training, Larry and Cassie had their first little baby girl and I became an aunt for the very first time. She was the dearest little baby and I just loved being an aunt. I knitted little baby things and after leaving the hospital, sewed little dresses and hats to match.

    One day when I knew the farm was being sold, I spent an hour or more on a visit walking around the yards and machinery taking photos with my little niece toddling along holding my hand. She was a bright little girl with black curly hair, and a sparkling cheeky nature.

    By the time training was finished I had arranged a starting date for midwifery at the Royal Women's Hospital in Melbourne. I finished general training in January of 1966 and as my starting date in Melbourne was in May, I had four months to fill in. I had been training for four years and five weeks. Training normally took just 4 years, but the five weeks was added by the BGH Board because I had transferred from one hospital to another. Those trainees who had sick leave during the four years had to make up the time. I had no sick leave during my training but as I had taken a day off to attend my grandfather's funeral, I had one day to make up.

    When I got home, I rang the hospital in Assville to speak to my old friends, and when the old battleaxe heard my voice she straightaway told the matron that I was on the phone.  Before I knew it, (despite the fact that I had told my friends I would never work as a trained nurse, as I could never imagine being in charge of running a ward!), I suddenly had a job on the trained staff in Assville. 

    I worked there for three months and enjoyed it, but had a rough time one Sunday with only one nurse to assist me. The nurse was in the maternity ward seeing to the mothers and babies for their afternoon feeds when, down at the general end where I was working alone, (Sundays were generally quiet,) the ambulance brought in a young man who had been bucked off a horse and had a head injury. 

    I tried to notify the doctor on call but he was on the golf course. I then notified the matron as she was always on call to do x-rays. About half an hour after the first admission the ambulance turned up again with the second casualty. This time they brought in a footballer with a suspected fractured collarbone. I was starting to get flustered. All thoughts of a quiet Sunday at work now banished from my mind, I rushed around admitting the second patient and trying to get all the work done. A second phone call to the doctor still produced no results. I couldn't believe my eyes as I saw the ambulance pull in for a third time. I was astounded that they had yet another football injury on board.

     I spied the arm sling and thought, ‘Oh God. not another broken collarbone.‘

    I practically abused the ambulance driver, so stressed was I by then. I phoned both the matron and the doctor for the third time. It appeared the doctor was still out swinging his clubs in the fresh air, but the matron came across from her quarters in the nursing home soon after to x-ray the injuries.

    All this time my first casualty was getting restless about the lack of interest in his head, and decided he had more pressing commitments at home on the farm. Tough-man then walked out of the hospital, and we never heard any more about him.
             
                                                                  --0--

    Life moves slowly in a place like Assville, and most days on the wards were boring to the point of frustration. A drama took place one Saturday though that really shook me up. The morning work was in progress when I heard the front doorbell, and as no one else seemed to hear it, I wandered along the verandah, intent on answering it myself. 

    When I reached the front entrance there stood a young honorary, (part-time,) ambulance officer and an agitated young woman beside him.

     Dishevelled, wet and crying, she begged, “Please hurry! Oh, please hurry!”

    The distraught ambulance officer looked out of his depth.

     With his hands held out in front in a gesture of helplessness, he stammered, “Semiconscious–drowning–twins–we got them off the bottom of the waterhole...” 

    "Bring them in quickly!" I wheeled round and headed back down the hallway, stopping briefly at the matron's office, warning her of what was coming.

    She flew into action, issuing orders, working on the boy's chests until she was able to expel some water, and then she directed me to put them into oxygen tents. The two little 5-year-old boys were both asthmatics, but I'm pleased to say they made a full recovery. I sent up a silent prayer of thanks that the matron was close at hand that day.

    Only twenty years old when my training ended in January, I was turning twenty-one in the following July, which meant that I would be in Melbourne for my twenty-first birthday.  Twenty-one was the age of majority. Everyone had a party when they turned twenty-one, and I felt that missing out on a twenty-first birthday party would not do at all. So Mum and I organized a celebration. Dad also threw his heart into it and ordered printed invitations from the Assville newspaper office. (There was no other printing office in Assville) I made my own key out of gold cardboard. Two of my nursing friends from BGH stayed over in Green Springs with us. Most of the families from around Green Springs came to help me celebrate at the outdoor party/barbecue. It was a lovely night. I still treasure the gifts I was given. Cassie played the piano accordion but so young and shy was she that she sat facing a tree instead of facing the audience!

     In those days, reaching eighteen was no big deal at all. The first alcoholic binge occurred at twenty-one, if at all, and usually only by males. I remember Larry's hangover from overdoing it on wine when he turned twenty-one.

It pains me to witness on the television these days, young women abusing their livers so wantonly through youthful ignorance, because they will pay the price with their health in later years.

Chapter 28 From Boring Efficiency to Hell on Earth

                                 CHAPTER 28 From Boring Efficiency to Hell on Earth

    If Assville had been a culture shock, the big general hospital, from here on referred to as BGH, of 1963, was hell on earth. Their methods were vastly different. I now found all the ward sinks were supplied with pHisoHex dispensers and before dressing a wound we simply washed our hands with that strong smelling, creamy white lotion. It wasn't long before I found myself being ticked off for my controversial treatment methods, and was sent back to the PTS (preliminary training school), to learn procedures.

    I now rushed from the nurses home across to start work half an hour early, and left, more often than not, half an hour late. I'd never walked so fast in all my life, or worked so hard. Unfortunately the hospital was always short of equipment, especially cloth drapes, which were autoclaved in the operating theatre utility room. I found myself in an impossible situation, not allowed to work without drapes, but not having enough to cover the trays for the wound dressings. And wounds we had plenty of!

    In my first week, I was rostered on the men's surgical ward where I was put out in the back section as the treatment nurse. Every patient had an infected wound! And they were usually post-operative. Every day I had at least eight wounds to clean and have draped ready for inspection before the doctors’ rounds at 8:30 a.m. I spent my life running, (I could have won an Olympic walking race,) between that ward and the theatre begging for sterile drapes. All the nurses talked about how much infection there was in the hospital, and how short of equipment we were. 

    In Assville, I had never seen an infected wound, now I never saw a clean one! Almost every operation site broke down with infection. The first patient I encountered in my dirty back ward, was a sixteen-year-old youth who had a wound in his side the size of a fist. In the first place, all he'd had was an appendicectomy!

     Some of the ward sisters were irrationally strict and perpetually angry, and often just downright nasty. One or two were friendly and fair, most were plainly prejudiced because I had come from a country hospital. I pined for some other career and wrote endless letters to places like airlines and defence forces asking about jobs. But there was always some reason why, in the end, I stuck to nursing.

    One time after a particularly bad session in the women's medical ward, I ended up sobbing my heart out at the matron's office. However, I was crazy if I thought I was going to get a hearing there. She told me to compose myself while she spoke to the ward sister, and that was that. I was in a bad way though and rang home, determined to leave the hospital. 

    Straightaway, as always, Mum and Dad got in the car and drove the 120 miles over mostly dirt road to where I worked. Dad had bought a Falcon station wagon the year before and while I was so far away he had a mattress made for the back of the car. Every time I had a crisis he and Mum would hastily grab their stuff and drive across that dusty road to visit me to console, cajole, and resolve. They were my soft place to fall. They picked me up and got me started again. Many a night they spent sleeping in the back of the car in a caravan park, until I recovered enough to carry on.

    One of the greatest things about moving on to a larger establishment was the friends I made. The nurses quarters were large, but apparently not quite large enough, because there came a time when a small group of us were transferred across to an old building which had been the isolation quarters. It was like a small house with its own kitchen etc and we loved it there. I was in a tight-knit group of three and the other two girls taught me to play cards. The three of us played day and night. We even played '500' on the train on a trip we took to Cairns for a holiday. Those girls started me off on a lifetime love affair with card playing

    The night duty stints lasted eight weeks, and required a move of all our possessions, lock stock and barrel, to the night duty quarters. These were situated at one end of the old brick nurses quarters. It was an elongated redbrick wing with a long veranda that looked out over the hospital grounds. For sleeping during the day, all doors were shut and all curtains drawn to make the place as dark as possible. But to keep it cool enough, all the rooms had a large noisy fan in the ceiling. All going at once, they sounded like a bomber squadron overhead.

    It was very easy to steal tablets from the wards, and I always kept myself equipped with an antihistamine with a strong sedative effect. After a while though, it builds up in the system, so after a week or so I could skip a few days without suffering any sleep loss. Night duty is also memorable for the food that was provided for our midnight meal. Each night in the ward kitchenette we’d find two tiny tins of food, one of soup and one of a variety of others. It might be curried rice and sausages, or sausages and vegetables etc. Most of us soon got into the habit of skipping the midnight meal and we took our little tins off with us. At the end of the eight weeks I had a small carton of little tins of food, which came in handy on days off. Many times I sipped on soup in the nurses day-room for a late breakfast with a friend.

     Though the town only had a small beach half an hour’s drive away, it was usual to have an annual  Siren of the Surf carnival. Some years before, the nurses had entered a team, and, messing about in the quarters one day, we found their flag. A few of us got together and decided to enter a team again. Since I was the tallest of the group, they elected me to carry the flag. I was excited. At last I was going to get a chance to do some marching. One of the senior nurses became our coach for practice and she took us down to the beach where we slogged away marching through loose sand.

    Our thighs screamed abuse at us as she yelled, "Lift those legs! Point those toes! Shoulders  back!”

    I guess nobody owned a portable tape recorder, because there was no music to march to and she kept time by clapping. This worked fine for most of us, but on the day of the carnival we discovered that one of our team had no ear for music, and was out of step for the whole circuit. That lost us points and we came third, (out of three teams.)  To rub salt into the wound the girl who was out of step came second in the beauty contest.

    I had my own special rewards though. I heard one of the judges mutter, ‘lovely legs’ in my direction... whoo hoo...  (all that marching pain paid off!) And that evening when I was sitting in the club lounge, one of the lifesavers from the town’s leading Life Saving team came up to me and congratulated me on the standard of our marching, telling me we were the best.  Lifesaving carnivals are still common today and lifesavers are old hands at marching properly.

    At the hospital there were rules about when we were allowed out, and what time we had to be in at night, but most times the rules were not strictly enforced. The permanent night sister, however, was inclined to do spot checks when the mood took her, now and then checking we were in our beds by 10:30 p.m. One night I came in at two a.m. after a date (a rare occurrence for me I hasten to add,) and I became flustered when I found the night sister in the middle of a round of the nurses beds. In panic I hid behind my door, which achieved nothing except that I had to front the matron the next morning, and explain why I was absent from my bed when the night sister checked. Had I been able to think on my feet I would have jumped in under the covers and avoided the reprimand. In any case I found that staying out until two a.m. was highly overrated and not worth the fatigue the next day, so I dropped the habit pretty much before it even got started.

    There was a lady's auxiliary that raised money for the hospital and one time they decided to have a fashion parade, and asked the nurses to parade aprons. I was among the nurses who the matron asked to take part, and we all readily agreed. She asked our group because we were always active in the Student Nurse Unit. (like a union but more of a toothless tiger)

    Soon after that though, I met a young German shipwright, who was leaving two weeks later to sail a boat back to New Guinea. We went out a few times and I developed an enormous crush on him. He had the exotic, (I thought,) name of Hans.

    The Saturday before he was to leave, I had arranged to meet him to go for a drive, but just as I was walking out to the hospital gate, the matron called out to me and reminded me that the fashion parade was in progress. I was shattered!  But I had a great respect for the matron, and would never have considered letting her down. Margaret went out with Hans in my place.With the benefit of hindsight, my loyalty to the matron was misplaced though, because she never would have sided with the nurses if it came to a showdown over anything. Anyway, Hans left and I never saw him again. Probably just as well as he was a lot older than me and a heavy whisky drinker, to the point of wiping himself out.

                                                                      
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    The medical superintendent of BGH, a man of small stature and violent temper, was someone I never got on with. I was too shy for his taste and he was too arrogant and bad tempered for mine. One time during my stint in the operating theatre, I was scrubbed up with the job of manning the suture trolley, while he operated. Apart from the anaesthetist, there was another doctor assisting the super, and a theatre sister working on the instrument table. (I had been brought up in awe of doctors to such a degree by my mother, that I thought they were Gods, too special for me to even speak to. Even the young ward residents intimidated me.)

    While the Super was operating I could see that he was becoming frustrated because I didn't have the sutures ready, yet still I could not find the courage to speak.

    Finally he begged, "Ask me what I want, nursie, for God's sake ask me what I want!"  I did after that, but I still found it difficult.

    I must admit he was a good surgeon though, and one day I watched him operate on a woman who had an addiction to the headache remedy, Bex powder. I watched his assistant scooping out the kidney bit by bit with a long instrument like a narrow spoon. The kidney had become like wet ashes from the woman's addiction to the analgesic powder. Inevitably, they became illegal.

     Too often though, the super’s angry belligerent nature got the better of him, and I saw a display in the theatre one day that I will never forget. He was in the middle of an abdominal operation, when his niggling criticism of the theatre sister about the operation starting late got to her. She bristled, because the fault lay with the young resident who was working as the anaesthetist. He had arrived late to the operating theatre. The super wanted everything ready for the moment he walked in.
   
    Fortunately that day there were two theatre sisters on hand. The younger one was scrubbed up assisting at the instrument trolley, and it was the senior sister who was arguing with the superintendent. She was not scrubbed up but was hanging around as an extra scout. I had seen the anaesthetist come in late, although the nursing staff were all totally prepared, waiting with the patient at the table. 

    When the head sister told this to the super he flew into a rage. "It's not for the nurses to question the doctors!" he yelled at her.

    Then he went on abusing the nurses and swearing, “Bloody nurses! How dare you!”

    She coolly replied, "I'll see you in your office, sir," and walked out. 

    Meanwhile, so overcome by rage was the surgeon that he turned around, looking for some way of venting his anger. I quaked in my shoes, but exchanged glances over my mask with the instrument sister.

    Next to the operating doctor there was always a little trolley on wheels which held two stainless steel hand basins of warm, sterile water. These were for the surgeon to rinse blood etc off his gloved hands while he was operating. When the enraged super turned away from the patient, he kicked the trolley hard and sent it rocking back and forth, teetering on its wheels and slopping water on the floor. Nobody spoke.

    Apparently having seen it all before, the theatre dresser stayed calm. I was surprised as he casually picked up a discarded trolley cover and wiped up the water. (The theatre dresser was like today's ward orderly. He wore a white gown over his khaki clothes and only worked inside the hospital helping to do the heavy work with patients. He had wheeled the patient on the trolley to the theatre and would be waiting around to return the patient to the ward after the operation.)

     Back in the theatre anteroom later, we were all agog to hear how the charge sister got on when she confronted the superintendent in his office. “Full of apologies! “she said, quoting ‘I promised my wife I wouldn’t lose my temper again.‘  

    Another operating theatre was used regularly once a month by the 'ear nose and throat' specialist who came up from Brisbane. Plenty of tonsillectomies were still being performed and I was the scout in the theatre for one of these one day when I was stunned by what happened. As you can imagine, cutting a little child’s tonsils out creates quite a lot of blood in the mouth and throat. As the unconscious little boy’s colour turned blue, I rushed to get the oxygen cylinder from the corner of the theatre.

    Before I could move with it, however, the specialist spoke calmly in a soft singsong voice, "Don't worry about oxygen, nurse. Oxygen is expensive, and there's plenty of oxygen in the atmosphere." (Yes, the child did recover.)

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    I had a close friend at the hospital who had transferred in at the same time as me, but she came from Brisbane and was nine years older. Margaret was desperate to get married and was always madly in love with some fellow who had a friend who needed a date. I couldn't guess at how many times she had her heart broken. After a time I woke up to the folly of accepting blind dates that she’d arranged, as most of the men were married and just wanted a one night stand, and I was tired of fighting them off.

    Margaret was an incongruity within herself, and would say, "Don't you sleep with them! It doesn't matter about me; it's too late for me, but don't you sleep with them!" At the same time her personal habits of dress were immaculate, and she always purchased sensible clothes and shoes of good quality.

    She should have accepted her own advice, because some months before the end of her training she found out she was pregnant. She made a hard decision and then, as I had already finished my training and left the hospital, wrote to me about the agonising details. 

    Abortion was illegal at the time, but someone put her on to a doctor in Sydney and lined her up with friends of friends in a flat down there. For a fat fee, the doctor arranged the abortion and sent her home to await results. The young men in the flat gave her a bed and sat with her as she writhed in pain on the toilet.

    After graduation, Margaret left the hospital to live interstate. She continued nursing and going out with new partners. Finally, I got an invitation to her wedding. We lived states apart so I was unable to go anyway, but a few weeks after the invitation came I had a second card in the post from her. 

    She’d scrawled, ‘Same day, same place, different bridegroom Here's hoping it works out between the brawls!’ She desperately wanted a husband.
   
    Surprisingly, they stayed married for quite some years and raised two beautiful, and  clever children. Margaret was a born mother with plenty of nurturing instincts and had endless patience when the babies were small.  Eventually she and her husband did divorce, but at present still live in the same house.