Flies, damn flies and statistics.

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Work is getting better now that I've worked out the rythm. And we haven't quite been so hammered now: we were on call and only got 4 new patients.

I had a great weekend. Well, a mixed, mostly great weekend. I slept in (for a start), then I went to see the Royakl Flying Doctors Service Base. Which, none too surprisingly is on the hospital grounds. When we were there, the radio operator was having the weekend off, s all the calls were being switched through to the local (St John's) ambos. So the guide explained what was being shown on the board: there was a "routine" flight out to the west, and one down to Yurala (The RFDS base near Uluru) which was an emergencyu, some tourists had rolled their car.


When I got to work on Monday, I found out that the first medical people on sight had actually been two of the medical students attached out here (one of them attached to my team), in their rle as tourists to Ayer's Rock. Apparently the woman was in a pretty bad way (for those interested, GCS 12 before they took her out of the wreck, 8 after, with pupils F+D). Don;t worry, the students weren't stupid, they waited for the RFDS to take them out of the car. We found out on Wednesday that she had been pronounced in the ED.

Now, if that doesn't convince you this is a small town...

In the afternoon I decided to hire a bike to see some of the further out attractions. I hired the bike (signing waivers, etc), rode down to Araluen (the Cultural Precinct). The Strehlow Centre is there; a research into the cultural beliefs of the local indigenous population, and the Alice Natural History Museum, which is fascinating if you like old rocks and old bones (or just like knowing *stuff*, so I was fine). There's a sculpture representing the Caterpillar People (Yperenye), the graves of Albert Namatjira (Wiki it, pleb) and Lasseter of the famous Lasseter's Reef. There's also a grave for the airplane "The Kookaburra", and so much history, for the first time ever, I was grateful for the excessive emphasis on Australian History my schooling was given. There was also a gallery, housing about six Namatjira's, and comparing them to the contempary works in the NSW Gallery and the NGV, I can see why he was such an amazing artist.

when I walked out of the centre, the bike, carefully locked up as it was, was gone. All that was left was the housing of the padlock from the bike chain I had secured it with. You can imagine how impressed I was with that, how it soured my afternoon. I got a lift with the manageress of the Araluen centre, back to the police station (which, at least, spared me a very hot walk and an unbelievable number of flies). I was very lucky though, the owner of the bike hire understood that it wasn't my fault, that I'd done everything I could. As I was starting to learn, bike go missing all the time.

I had planned to get up stupidly early to hire a bike and ride out to Simpson's gap. It's only 17k's away, and there's a nice waterhole at the end of it. I had been told that the hire place (which is in the foyer of a hotel) was open from 5 am. Igot up, as planned at 4.45am, and was dressed... but it was still dark. I had been promised a long, lingering dawn before sunrise by the (local) tourist info staff. So I had some breakfast, and read a bit... By 5.45 it was still dark. At round 6.05, it started to get light, and by 6.15 it was fully as light as if the sun was up, which it promptly did do, ten minutes later. by that time I had made it down to the hotel foyer, only to find that while the foyer opened at 5am, the bikes wouldn't be there until around 7.30.

So I started walking north, and found myself on the track to the Telegraph station.

Which I will tell you about in more detail in my next log, as my fingers are tiring.

No fear that Iwill have more to say until then.... I am working this weekend. Both days. 15 hour shifts.

No... no fear at all.

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Comments

[James]

Errr????
Hey Ailie, Errrr, you might want to add a abreviations list... I had to skip bits when it got too medical, I think my pupils became F+D ;) Just kidding :) Sounds like your having a ball. We were listening to the radio over the internet last night and they said 40° for the alice today. Thats a little warm!! Definetly warm to go riding/walking too much!

[Ailsabree]

F+D
Fixed and Dilated. I don't think that's going to help much. Maybe a better layman's way of expressing it (and appropriate to the area): "pretty bloody close to dead."