Sunday, February 25, 2007
Stranger in a Strange Land
Simplicity is making the journey of this life with just baggage enough. –Charles Dudley Warner
We’ve been in Australia for 6 weeks now, and although we are “settling in”, it remains an adjustment.
Things have been quite busy for me at work. My 3 students have arrived and begun their training. Their basic didactic teaching is familiar, but I don’t know the local doctors, the hospital routines, or community resources, not to mention Australian medicine and customs. So it’s been a steep learning curve for all of us, but we have been making steady progress.
Also, two weeks ago Vicki and I moved into a different house. DAHS gave us the opportunity to move to another house a block away. This home features a huge tropical garden. Besides the wonderful smell of frangipani trees, there are two water ponds, bamboo, and coconut, papaya, and banana trees. The house has a wonderful long veranda in the back, and a very shady yard. Vicki and I have spent quite a bit of time painting two rooms, cleaning and tidying up and moving into our new quarters. These quarters are certainly some of the best in town, certainly a lot better than what the majority of my patients live in, and we feel very lucky. I have been doing a lot of home repairs because of the labor shortage in the area- e.g. there is only one licensed plumber for the entire Kimberly.
The weather remains very hot, and the townspeople say it’s the “driest Wet” season they remember. We’ve had some amazing thunderstorms, but little water. Daily temperatures have been above or close to 100 F. with a lot of humidity. So we’ve been walking early in the morning, getting out at 6 AM and watching the sunrise. We have several favorite routes; out to the Wharf and back, around the racetrack at the golf course, and a route along the edge of the mudflats where we routinely see wallabies and parrots, which we’ve enjoyed a lot.
On Valentines Day Vicki made us a lamb dinner, and I made her a plumeria lei like she used to have in her Hawaiian childhood.
But behind all this is our adjustment to rural Australian and Aboriginal life here in the far north. When unpacking, Vicki found the quote above, which speaks volumes. Besides downsizing and leaving possessions behind, I am making a conscious effort to leave the baggage of my preconceived notions behind. I am not really ready to write about culture and community here in Derby- it may be a long time before I can do that well and fairly. We just haven’t been here long enough. I don’t know the hidden rules and expectations. So while I can’t help but have a lot of impressions, I try to let them go. It is what it is. I can only say that I am glad for the support I get from my co-workers at DAHS and the RCS as the patients have a lot of medical problems and are very challenging.
Tomorrow morning I go out on my first “remote clinic”, driving into the outback to a community called Jarmadangah. My students and Vicki and I join the RCS students from Broome next weekend for an Aboriginal Culture workshop in this same community, so I am looking forward to this trip.
If you’d like a taste of Aboriginal culture, I highly recommend the movie “Ten Canoes” which is out on DVD here in Australia. We watched this wonderful film this weekend. The people are from Arnhem Land, 1000 km from here, but the red dirt, the hunting for bush tucker, and the people’s approach to life seem similar to this area in many ways.
For most recent photos, go here:
We’ve been in Australia for 6 weeks now, and although we are “settling in”, it remains an adjustment.
Things have been quite busy for me at work. My 3 students have arrived and begun their training. Their basic didactic teaching is familiar, but I don’t know the local doctors, the hospital routines, or community resources, not to mention Australian medicine and customs. So it’s been a steep learning curve for all of us, but we have been making steady progress.
Also, two weeks ago Vicki and I moved into a different house. DAHS gave us the opportunity to move to another house a block away. This home features a huge tropical garden. Besides the wonderful smell of frangipani trees, there are two water ponds, bamboo, and coconut, papaya, and banana trees. The house has a wonderful long veranda in the back, and a very shady yard. Vicki and I have spent quite a bit of time painting two rooms, cleaning and tidying up and moving into our new quarters. These quarters are certainly some of the best in town, certainly a lot better than what the majority of my patients live in, and we feel very lucky. I have been doing a lot of home repairs because of the labor shortage in the area- e.g. there is only one licensed plumber for the entire Kimberly.
The weather remains very hot, and the townspeople say it’s the “driest Wet” season they remember. We’ve had some amazing thunderstorms, but little water. Daily temperatures have been above or close to 100 F. with a lot of humidity. So we’ve been walking early in the morning, getting out at 6 AM and watching the sunrise. We have several favorite routes; out to the Wharf and back, around the racetrack at the golf course, and a route along the edge of the mudflats where we routinely see wallabies and parrots, which we’ve enjoyed a lot.
On Valentines Day Vicki made us a lamb dinner, and I made her a plumeria lei like she used to have in her Hawaiian childhood.
But behind all this is our adjustment to rural Australian and Aboriginal life here in the far north. When unpacking, Vicki found the quote above, which speaks volumes. Besides downsizing and leaving possessions behind, I am making a conscious effort to leave the baggage of my preconceived notions behind. I am not really ready to write about culture and community here in Derby- it may be a long time before I can do that well and fairly. We just haven’t been here long enough. I don’t know the hidden rules and expectations. So while I can’t help but have a lot of impressions, I try to let them go. It is what it is. I can only say that I am glad for the support I get from my co-workers at DAHS and the RCS as the patients have a lot of medical problems and are very challenging.
Tomorrow morning I go out on my first “remote clinic”, driving into the outback to a community called Jarmadangah. My students and Vicki and I join the RCS students from Broome next weekend for an Aboriginal Culture workshop in this same community, so I am looking forward to this trip.
If you’d like a taste of Aboriginal culture, I highly recommend the movie “Ten Canoes” which is out on DVD here in Australia. We watched this wonderful film this weekend. The people are from Arnhem Land, 1000 km from here, but the red dirt, the hunting for bush tucker, and the people’s approach to life seem similar to this area in many ways.
For most recent photos, go here:
