Book review - Bush Nurses

When the foreward of this book starts with a story about a nurse helping save the life of a baby in-utero by physically holding the cord off the baby’s neck until the Flying Doctor can arrive as backup, you know this book will have some fascinating stories. But when the story finishes with the doctor doing a follow-up and the nurse informing him that after the plane left, runway flares extinguished, clinic cleaned up & getting to bed at 4am; she was woken at 6am by someone asking for panadol… well you know that the stories will have just that little bit extra incentive to keep reading to learn more about “Bush Nurses”.

As you get away from the big city and into regional areas, you start to notice some of the differences in the way health care is offered. When you get away from the regional areas into the country areas, there’s a bigger difference again. But when the nearest doctor and hospital is only available by calling in the RFDS; you have to be a pretty special kind of person to undertake nursing in outback clinics where anything can and usually does happen. This book celebrates those special people and allows them to offer some insight into their world in their own words.

Despite a career as a nurse Annabelle Brayley is the first to admit she has always had a love of hearing people tell their stories. Now retired and as a regular contributor to the RM Williams Outback Magazine, Annabelle regularly gets to indulge in this passion. 

Getting into the stories told in the all too short 287 pages, you get just a glimpse into this world. There are tear jerking moments as you read the account of a tragic weekend in North West NSW where a long awaited R&R opportunity was interrupted by a house fire killing 2 children and a car rollover on the way to the race meet involving a member of the community that didn’t survive their injuries. In contrast though, there are the laugh out loud moments of the way nurses trained to help human patients, also end up working on the animal companions – going to show that an understanding of veterinary medicine doesn’t go astray if heading outback.

The stories contained in these pages are ones of resilience, of self discovery and at times “creatively” dealing with bureaucratic rules made by people who don’t understand outback communities. “Bush Nurses” also offers rare insights into some of the earliest AIM nurses and the way they handled isolation and limited medical facilities to help provide the “Mantle of Safety” that John Flynn envisaged. It is these ideals and the commitment that continues to outback Australia that has inspired Penguin books to donate royalties from the sale of this book to Frontier Services in recognition of 100 years of service to rural and  remote Australia.

If there is one criticism that I have of these stories, is that some of them seem a little too short. Understandably to fit so many stories into so few pages, some editing had to be done, but with some of the stories it feels like you just start to get into it and its over with. If you can handle that then you’ll have no trouble picking this book up and losing yourself in various communities across Australia.

Published by Penguin Books Australia. RRP $29.99

An edited version of this review was published by the Uniting Church QLD Synod Magazine "Journey" in their July edition. Thanks to them for asking me to do the review and providing the reading material in the first place.