A Country Nurse Read online

  Also by Thea Hayes

  An Outback Nurse

  First published in 2020

  Copyright © Thea Hayes 2020

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  All images included in the photo inserts have been supplied by the author, unless otherwise noted.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  ISBN 978 1 76087 715 6

  eISBN 978 1 76087 3127

  Set by Midland Typesetters, Australia

  Cover design: Deborah Parry Graphics

  Cover photographs: Getty Images; author's collection

  Dedicated to palliative care doctors and nurses in Australia.

  Contents

  Foreword

  Introduction

  1 ‘You fellar goin’ walkabout?’

  2 Our farm Bidgi Park

  3 The Corner Store

  4 Living in Toogoolawah

  5 The biggest surprise ever

  6 Getting to know the locals

  7 Life as a dairy farmer

  8 Our Queensland workers’ cottage

  9 Back to nursing

  10 Murray Greys

  11 The Brisbane Valley Book Club

  12 The big move

  13 Living on the Downs

  14 Home nursing

  15 Ralph

  16 Home alone

  17 Making the most of a disaster

  18 Walkabout to England

  19 Happenings in St Lucia

  20 Mt Olivet

  21 Wedding at Straddie

  22 Straddie

  23 Becoming a jetsetter

  24 Adventures in Kenya

  25 A crash landing

  26 A dolphin, a whale and a Territory vehicle

  27 Bob

  28 The things I carried

  29 ‘Gone walkabout with Bob’

  30 A change of direction

  31 Carraman

  32 Our first flood

  33 A lucky escape

  34 Our first home

  35. Yamba Stud

  36 Rupert

  37 Settling into Narrandera

  38 The Sturt Ladies Club

  39 The magpies

  40 The Rocky Waterholes Bridge

  41 The Wiradjuri

  42 A little bit of history

  43 Nine lives or more?

  44 Rain and more rain

  45 Wave Hill/Jinparrak Art

  46 A momentous moment

  47 The process of having a book published

  48 On the move

  49 Back to Wave Hill

  50 The Gurindji Freedom Day

  51 Where to now?

  52 The dollarbirds odyssey

  Acknowledgements

  Foreword

  Once the siren song of the Outback took over Thea’s heart there was no turning her from her chosen destiny … to live her mothering years as a station nurse, hostess and housekeeper, married to the manager of one of Australia’s largest remote Outback cattle stations, Wave Hill in the Northern Territory, in the wilds of Central Australia.

  Thea and her husband Ralph stood behind Prime Minister Gough Whitlam on the momentous occasion in August 1975 when he poured a handful of red Wave Hill soil into the hands of tribal Aboriginal man Vincent Lingiari. It was Australian history in the making.

  All this could not have been further from her childhood years in the city and for that matter, her early expectations of life.

  Yet her sense of adventure, her gaiety, humour and tolerance, combined with her innate practicality, made her a perfect fit for the life she chose.

  This is the first part of Thea’s story, as told in her first book An Outback Nurse (Allen & Unwin 2014).

  But her story continues! Her spirit burnished in the Outback sun, Thea and her husband Ralph moved closer to civilisation; but city life was never to be her choice again, and nor was age to deter her from continuing her trajectory of laughter and adventure.

  Thea’s story is one of hope and inspiration. To meet her is to understand that age is just a number, serious illness just a hiccup, and love and friendship the grist of life.

  Between the pages of this book is a fantastic story. And what’s more, it’s an ongoing story. Do your sums and you will be amazed at the fact that when many—if not most—people are sitting on the sofa and sipping cups of tea, Thea is still well and truly on the go. Her future stretches before her as a canvas to be painted.

  Enjoy the many canvases this book contains.

  Jane Grieve

  Author of In Stockmen’s Footsteps

  Introduction

  My first book, An Outback Nurse, describes my life as a young nurse on a cattle station in the middle of the Northern Territory in the sixties and seventies.

  While on a holiday to Uluru, I impulsively accepted a nursing job on the second largest property under one management in the world, Wave Hill Station in the Northern Territory. It covered four million acres, with 240 Aboriginal people and thirty white staff to be cared for, and was owned by one of the richest men in England, Lord Sam Vestey.

  Having never spent any time outside the city, I was totally unprepared for the place that I would soon call home. My life changed dramatically. I fell in love with the land, found love, married the overseer Ralph Hayes and we reared our family in the Outback.

  The first time I saw an Aboriginal person was at Curtin Springs in the Northern Territory, eighty-four kilometres from Uluru, on a bus tour organised by the CSIRO. A week later I arrived at Wave Hill Station and met the Gurindji and Warlpiri people, who worked so happily on the station with the white staff. I was to find the most fascinating aspect of my nursing job was my relationship working with and caring for these people.

  The book reveals life towards the end of the great pastoral station era, charting their demise in the sixties and seventies, and the changes that followed: the Wave Hill walk-off; the handover of land to the Gurindji tribe; the start of land rights for Aboriginal people. It’s about my life with my husband and children—having babies, educating them, looking after the health of the white and Aboriginal staff, and the friends we made and the fun we all had together.

  Many have asked, ‘What happened in the decades since Wave Hill?’

  This book, A Country Nurse, answers this question for my family and my readers and also for the Aboriginal people who worked with us at Wave Hill.

  The future held a change of lifestyle for our family, from a large cattle property to life on a country farm and owning a corner store at the same time; raising and showing stud cattle, making new friends, learning new skills, a book club, along with illness and sadness. Then followed a new love, a new home, travelling Australia and overseas. Life goes on and if you are adventurous, it gets even better and there is always something new and exciting around the corner.

  1

  ‘You fellar goin’ walkabout?’

  Our last day, and our last smoko on Wave Hill. Penny, the youngest of our four children, raced ahead. Ralph and I wandered slowly across to the smoko area between the kitchen a
nd the recreation room at the new Wave Hill Station homestead, at the site of Number One bore. The Wave Hill mob were all waiting there to join us for one last cup of tea together. Twenty years previously, in 1960, I had walked onto Jinparrak (the Gurindji name for old Wave Hill Station) smoko veranda, paved with flagstones with an outside wall of paperbark and a roof of spinifex, having just arrived on the mail plane from Alice Springs to take on the position of station nurse. Tom Fisher, the manager of Wave Hill Station, had picked me up at the airstrip, driven me to the station, and after showing me my new home, called a donga—a galvanised room with paperbark veranda and outdoor shower—said, ‘I’ll see you at smoko on the smoko veranda at 3 p.m. You’ll hear the bell.’

  I did hear the bell, and nervously walked out onto the veranda to meet the Wave Hill mob. And my life changed forever.

  Ralph was the shy, handsome improvement overseer who gave me an inquisitive look as I was introduced to the enquiring staff of Wave Hill; the man I fell in love with, married, and with whom I spent twenty years on cattle properties in the Outback.

  Now, in 1979, the time had come to move on.

  Ralph hated the thought of leaving. He had gone to Wave Hill as a young jackeroo in 1955, giving twenty-five years of his life to the Vestey Company. Ralph, who could speak the languages of the Gurindji and Warlpiri people, had grown up on stations in the Northern Territory. He was little more than eighteen months old when his father and mother, Dick and Mary Hayes, in 1936 accepted a management position with the Vesteys at Waterloo Station in the Northern Territory (Waterloo is east of the Ord River Scheme, where the famous Argyle Downs Station was pioneered by Patrick Durack, as written about by Mary Durack in her book Kings in Grass Castles). Ralph was loved by the Aboriginal people, especially by his Aboriginal nanny Murrawah. When Ralph became the manager, Murrawah came to live at Wave Hill. Ralph was always there to help the Aboriginal people; someone with whom they could discuss problems in their own language, share stories and tell jokes. One of his great mates was Vincent Lingiari, who became the head of the Gurindji tribe.

  By the end of the seventies, there was far too much alcohol consumed on the station, even though it was controlled by our social club. In preceding years, the Vestey cattle stations were ‘dry’, meaning no alcohol was permitted for anyone but the manager, and that was mainly for him to share with VIP visitors. Occasionally someone’s ‘hide would crack’; they felt desperately in need of alcohol. A vehicle would sneak off to the nearest watering hole which in our case was the Top Springs roadhouse, 160 kilometres to the north, and of course, after that, staff wouldn’t turn up for work for a day or so.

  Ralph and I felt that the time had come for our staff to be able to enjoy a drink. Times were a-changing—dry stations were a thing of the past. After contacting head office, we were allowed to start a social club. Each evening, those who wished could buy two drinks at the bar in the recreation room. On Saturday night, six drinks were allowed. But when staff from other stations arrived at the weekend with requests of ‘let’s have another carton’, consumption of alcohol started getting out of hand. The Aboriginal people were also getting their six cans of beer every Saturday night. The Aboriginal women, who didn’t drink, gave their allocation to their husbands. The nurse on the station had her hands full on Sunday morning stitching up split heads, attending broken limbs, cuts and bruises, the result of drunken brawls in the Aboriginal camp. Introduction of alcohol to Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory was passed by the Legislative Committee in 1964. It was the law: the Aboriginal people, men and women, had the right to drink.

  It had been four years previous to that last smoko at Wave Hill that we had started thinking about our future. The thought of our boys leaving school, without us being there to guide them, was not on the cards. We wanted our own place, a farm of our own, somewhere ‘down south’.

  During our holidays every second year, we would look at small properties in South-East Queensland. Ralph’s brother Milton and wife Madeline purchased a farm at Toogoolawah, 100 kilometres north west of Brisbane, and while staying with them, we found a property that suited us and suited our pocket. Ralph’s mother also lived at Toogoolawah.

  Our new property was a lush 640-acre dairy farm, without a milking quota, on five deeds, with irrigation and good cultivation on the hills just outside Toogoolawah. Yes, it was rundown, but we could see the potential to eventually go into beef cattle. It was close to town—an hour’s drive to Brisbane—and up in the hills. We even had our own rainforest.

  We employed a very competent man named Owen Ward and his family to run the dairy while we went back to Wave Hill for another four years.

  And now here we were, about to take off from Wave Hill Station. It was the ‘show place’ for the Vesteys in the Northern Territory, with it’s beautiful everything—accommodation, furniture, garden, lovely staff and dear Aboriginal people. But we were determined to give ‘down south’ a go.

  I was packing for weeks before we left, as well as trying to master the knack of backing and turning a heavily laden horse float with our Toyota LandCruiser, with Ralph yelling instructions in the background. Our personal gear, plus the radiogram, was all to go in the horse float. It was nerve-racking, but I got there in the end.

  We had a large farewell party with guests from all the neighbouring properties, plus Jimmy the cook put on a silver service lunch down at the Five Mile Creek.

  I don’t think the Aboriginal people at Wave Hill realised we were leaving for good.

  ‘You fellar goin’ walkabout?’ they asked us.

  I felt very sad to be leaving them and took photos of them all in family groups; photos that I still have today. They would miss Ralph very much, but he was happy that his Aboriginal friends were established in their jobs on the station and being paid their rightful wage.

  Finally, we were off. Penny and Pluto, our Rhodesian Ridgeback, accompanied me in the Toyota. Ralph drove the borrowed station truck, laden with his four camp horses, Penny’s pony Pepper and our Beale pianola, well protected from the horses.

  One of the Wave Hill stock inspectors Peter Flanagan came to help Ralph drive the truck the 3502 kilometres to Toogoolawah and then was to drive the truck back to Wave Hill. We camped at local showgrounds along the way, yarding and feeding the horses each night and morning; eating at roadhouses on the way. One night we stayed with friends Nora and John Kirsh and their ten children at Maxwelton. Pepper wasn’t travelling well, so we gave him to the Kirsh children without telling Penny, as we knew we probably wouldn’t get back for ages to pick him up. It was late June and such a cold winter that we nearly froze one night at Roma. We had one big swag for the three of us; Pluto made four when we pulled him into our swag to keep us warm. Penny thought it was great fun, and so did Pluto. The trip would take us ten days including our stay with the Kirshs.

  Two of our teenage sons, Anthony and David, were boarding at Downlands College in Toowoomba at this stage, having moved from St Joseph’s College Hunters Hill in Sydney during the Christmas break. We had left our youngest son, thirteen-year-old Jason, at Toogoolawah with Ralph’s mother Mary to spend two years at the local school before going to Downlands as well.

  After calling in to see the boys at Downlands on the way through Toowoomba, we went straight to Toogoolawah. We had a new life ahead of us; we wanted to work on our own property and be able to enjoy life without being so isolated from family and friends. We were going to make it work for all of us.

  2

  Our farm Bidgi Park

  Our farm, Bidgi Park, was situated on Scrub Creek Road, Toogoolawah, only five kilometres out of town in a small cul de sac of dairy farms. It was a dead-end road, which crossed the Brisbane River just before our farm, and ran into the Pohlmans Range. As part of Cressbrook Station, the first property in the Brisbane Valley, Bidgi Park was the original site for the release of red deer from England in 1870. It was a far cry from our last home, 750 kilometres from the nearest town—Katherine in the Northern
Territory. The name Bidgi came from my daughter Penny, who at the age of two was fascinated with grapes. She called them ‘bidgi-bidgi’ as Pansy, her Aboriginal nanny, had taught her at Wave Hill.

  Bidgi Park had irrigated pastures running back into rolling hills (with lots of lantana, we discovered later), a hay shed and a very fly-ridden farmhouse. Lantana, an introduced plant from tropical regions, forms a dense thicket and releases chemicals into the surrounding soil to prevent seed germination of native flora, so it eventually takes over native bush land. But it was a dairy farm! Ralph was pleased, as he had worked on his uncle and aunt’s dairy farm at Maryborough as a teenager.

  Owen Ward, his wife Elaine and their school-aged boys moved in with their own furniture. The previous owners had left a few pieces of furniture behind which they were also happy to use. They did have an antique four-poster steel bed that I was interested in buying—they refused my offer but when they moved their furniture, they couldn’t get it out through the door. They told me later they had to cut the legs off to get it out!

  Amazingly, we managed to get a quota (milk at a premium price) from the Kilcoy Dairy Co-Operative, as our farm was in their pick-up area. A milk truck picked the milk up, and our milk herd was tested monthly to determine the quality and quantity of each individual milker.

  We needed more dairy cows, and as cattle prices were rock bottom in 1976 when we bought our property, we were able to buy cows for as little as $12.50 each. Unbelievable when you consider prices of cows now. We discovered ‘clearing sales’ too, buying second-hand farm equipment for bargain prices.

  Our holidays from Wave Hill every second year had meant spending part of the time at our farm making improvements, planning how we would clear the lantana and deciding how we would renovate the house. One holiday the whole family painted the homestead. We would hire a large caravan to camp in and enjoyed exploring our property. The farm ran back into two valleys, with three very steep hills which still had patches of beautiful native rainforest.