Overseas recruitment of Territory nurses.
A task force to address recruitment and retention.
Awarding scholarships to young Territorians to train and stay in the NT.
Encouraging local mature age nurses to return to the work force after having their families.
Developing partnerships with a number of universities to
provide educational opportunities and support for nurses in both
hospitals and remote areas.
The THS says in a report: "The nursing work force in the NT is being
maintained with difficulty.
"The shortfall of nurses in varying specialties throughout the rest of
Australia is having considerable local impact.
"We are already having great difficulty maintaining skill-level
requirements in areas such as paediatrics, orthopaedics, and critical
care nursing.
"We are currently unable to fully meet skill requirements in renal
dialysis, midwifery, near-natal intensive care, and pre-operative
nursing."
Mr Haynes believes "governments are going to have to make it attractive
for nurses to come here.
"But it's hard to know whether the difficulties in places like Alice
Springs are even surmountable, with things like the cost of living in
Alice.
"One nurse who was leaving told me she was paying $300 a week for a
reasonably good unit for herself and her husband.
"She said 'I could live in Sydney for that, and in Sydney the
restaurants are better.'"
The ANF says it would like to see Alice Springs classified by the
Public Service as "remote, so that nurses could then access rental
reimbursement.
"It already applies in Tennant Creek, and I think it should be the same
in Alice," says Mr Haynes.
The Director of Nursing at Alice Springs hospital has implemented some
innovative ways to induce nurses to stay and rewarding staff who stay
longer, but the hospital still needs to fly in contract nurses at great
expense, often for very short periodds.
'Do it yourself' palliative care
A woman who helped set up the palliative care room at the Alice
hospital says Health Department red tape frequently delays admissions.
Di Deans, with her friend, Di Logan, raised $15,000 about five years
ago to equip the room so that dying people can be with their friends
and family.
Mrs Deans says it is up to a panel to approve admissions, and if
members of that group are not available, a decision is delayed.
"Some people only have two days to live," says Mrs Deans.
"Families had a fight on their hands to get their dying relatives in
there."
Meanwhile Cancer Council coordinator Karen Gerrard says admission to
the palliative care room is not guaranteed if the patient needs
full-time care.
There is frequently not enough staff to provide a 24-hour service.
Patients "who cannot be left alone" are often taken to the general
wards.
Mrs Gerrard says the nurses' rooms are some distance from the
palliative care room and this makes it difficult to have help at hand
quickly.
Mrs Deans says when there is a shortage of staff the hospital should
allow relatives, working on a round-the-clock roster, to keep an eye on
patients who cannot be left alone.
Mrs Deans says she has recently raised these matters with Territory
Health.
Territory Health spokesman Greg Clough says: "The palliative care room
is available for terminally ill patients 24 hours a day, seven days a
week, depending on client need and clinical decisions made in
conjunction with the patient and his or her family."
Mrs Gerrard later said: "I agree with [Mr Clough's] statement."
The fund raising by Mrs Deans and Mrs Logan provided a settee that can
be converted into a bed, a microwave oven for use by relatives and
friends of dying people, tea making facilities and a carpet.
"We put in floor to ceiling windows, to enhance the beautiful view of
the MacDonnell Ranges," says Mrs Deans.
"The room is not only for cancer sufferers, but for anyone with a
terminal illness."
The NT Government's voluntary euthanasia legislation - a world first -
was recently overturned by the Federal Government.
Opponents to the NT Act argued that effective palliative care is
preferable to assisting people to die.
Dying well is part of living well.
For most people that means, among other things, dying at
home.
In Alice Springs that will now be an easier choice for terminally ill
people and their carers to make, thanks to the Central Australian
Palliative Care Association.
With funds raised in the community they have bought hospital-type beds
that can be put into people's homes.
These are electronically controlled for height and position and are on
wheels, so that they can be taken outside.
As well, they've bought light-weight wheelchairs, an inflatable bath -
so that the ill person can have a bath in bed - a portable
air-conditioner, a food processor and juicer.
To mark Palliative Care Week - April 21 to 24 - the association will
also be placing resource books worth $700 in the town library.
"When a person first learns that they have a terminal illness they
often want to deal with it by themselves," says association chairman,
Mary Miles, also director of Old Timers.
"We chose the town library to house the books to give people that
freedom."
Mrs Miles and association treasurer Sandra Clyne say education of the
community about palliative care is mandatory.
"In the community's mind it has become confused with euthanasia because
the two issues came to the fore at the same time," says Mrs Miles.
"When the Rights of the Terminally Ill Bill was introduced, there was a
designated palliative care nurse in Darwin, but that was the extent of
the service in the Territory."
Both women acknowledge the palliative care work that has long been
carried out by community nurses and general practitioners, as well as
the family and friends of the dying.
Their commitment is to support this work and strive for improvements
where they can be made.
For instance, local GPs can now consult the palliative care doctor, Dr
Lyn Sampson, employed for eight hours a week by Territory Health, about
the best way to treat intractable pain, often a syringe driver
infusion.
Territory Health also employ a full-time palliative care nurse in Alice
Springs and there is a palliative care room, made possible by community
fund-raising, at the hospital.
Ms Clyne fills the position of Continence Advisor based at the
Community Health Centre.
"Many people's biggest dread is the loss of control of their bowels and
bladder that comes with terminal illness," she says.
"They need to know that these symptoms can be controlled."
Families often feel overwhelmed by the care that a dying person
requires but a good palliative care team can empower families to cope.
Mrs Miles says that in her long nursing career she has known only a
very few people faced with terminal illness who have wanted to end
their lives.
"Every person is so different and has their own needs. If you can help
to meet them so that they can die a good death, it is a very great
privilege, always sad but profoundly rewarding," she says.
A Palliative Care Week thanksgiving service will be held at the Church
of the Ascension in Bath Street on April 21, 6pm.
Watch out too for displays in the main shopping complexes and the
Association's "Story About Caring" flyer.
Killing off the brightest of a whole generation
"The brightest kids of a generation are going to be killed off," a
nurse told BRYAN CLARK, author of this story.
She wasn't talking about some corrupt third-world country, but about
Central Australia, where Aboriginal elders shrug off the deadly petrol
sniffing as a "white fella problem".
Meanwhile, the "white fellas" are clearly paralysed in terms of taking
meaningful action against a killer habit in which kids as young as
eight are openly indulging, left to die by apparently uncaring
governments and Aboriginal organisations.
Petrol sniffers have made their way into Alice Springs, adding a new
dimension to our "antisocial behaviour" mayhem: Police recently
observed a sizable group just a stone's throw from the town centre.
Clark, an author, journalist and former newspaper publisher, spent 11
months at Indulkana as community development officer, before resigning
last month.
He now lives in Alice Springs. Clark also has extensive experience of
Aboriginal affairs in WA and Arnhemland.
I saw an elderly councillor and night warden snatch a can of petrol
from a teenage Aboriginal lass whose father is employed by Nganampa
Health on a Pitjantjatjara Aboriginal settlement.
As always, when traumatised, the girl sniffer exploded into a fit of
temper as she watched her precious supply thrown to the ground.
Collapsing, the girl lay trembling and frothing at the mouth, grunting
and groaning.
Quite familiar with such scenes, an Aboriginal police aide and other
adults patiently sat down nearby, seemingly unmoved by the girl's
cavorting.
She was left on the main road, thrashing and semi-conscious, while the
rubbish collection truck and other vehicles drove around her prone
body.
At last an elderly woman strolled over to the sniffer, prodded her with
a stick, then, taking hold of her wrist, the woman hauled the girl,
like a dead thing, off the main thoroughfare and dumped her near the
clinic fence, walking away without a backward glance.
When the sniffer's trembling had subsided, a Nganampa Health nurse and
his co-workers bundled the sniffer on to a stretcher and attempted to
carry her into the clinic.
The girl awakened, fighting violently and screaming obscenities at
those around her.
She regained her feet, ran somewhere out of sight and soon returned
carrying a star picket, wielding it like a club.
At random, she furiously smashed vehicles' windscreens and headlights,
causing more than $2,000 worth of damage within 10 minutes.
At this particular community, where the residents are quite used to
sniffer's rampages, none of the houses are fitted with glass windows;
all are a transparent plastic - not dangerous when shattered and less
costly to replace.
Every now and then when the sniffer's petrol supply runs low, or are
exhausted, they target those staff vehicles carrying super petrol that
are always kept housed in sheds or garages, the doors secured with
sturdy chains and padlocks.
By one means or another the nocturnal raiders force entry, either by
removing sheets of galvanised iron from the walls or roof or levering
open barred windows or doors.
Characteristically, the sniffers rarely damage petrol-carrying cars;
more often than not, they effortlessly get into the petrol tank via the
cap or by severing a fuel line.
There is usually not any spiteful vandalism done to such cars.
White staff with super petrol cars are frankly advised not to lock
petrol caps, but to leave them invitingly open.
On those occasions when Aboriginal elders have tried to interfere with
the sniffer's life style, communities have suffered their houses being
pelted with rocks throughout the night, vehicles being wantonly
vandalised, tyres deliberately punctured, windows smashed, noisy
squabbles in the streets to prevent sleeping, and even personal
violence with stones, spears and fighting sticks.
Casual visitors to such communities invariably ask why all windows are
heavily barred like gaols and why doors are reinforced with metal
sheeting and angle iron.
A reign of terror by sniffers can result in resignations by European
staff, many leaving their battered houses at first light.
If no petrol can be stolen, the sniffers gather at night and completely
trash any unoccupied house they find.
Their frustration can drive them into hateful furies of destruction.
By morning, the house will be completely destroyed, with only the
internal frame intact.
In recent times, at Indulkana, two fully equipped houses and a church
have been smashed to smithereens by rampaging sniffers.
A councillor commented: "It don't matter.
Them Aboriginal Housing mob fix 'em up, or give new ones, might be."
Among themselves, when frustrations erupt, young female sniffers are
frequently assaulted and severely beaten when male sniffers forcibly
steal their cans of petrol.
Sometimes, too, the girls prostitute themselves for petrol or cash.
A white unmarried staff member said: "Every week one of the sniffer
girls knocks me up late at night.
They make it quite plain I can have my way if I'll get them some
petrol."
Marathon Walkers: Why do they do it???
What motivates Japanese undertaking solitary walks over huge
distances?
"As Buddhists, when we get over something difficult, our spirits will
get stronger," says 26-year-old school teacher Kenjiro Nakamura, from
Hiroshima, planning to walk the Simpson Desert.
"And if I have a stronger spirit I can have a better life, more
opportunities, now or in the future."
Meanwhile, 61-year-old Brian (he says he has no surname "because my
father didn't give me one"), who's gearing up for his seventh odyssey
on foot, says: "Walking is what I do. I like it. I do it mainly for me,
but I also want to put something back into society."
Pushing or pulling a cart over tens of thousands of kilometres, Brian
has raised $10,000 for the Red Cross, and for brain injured children.
He's looking for a "major company" to sponsor him, "per day or per
kilometre or whatever", so he can raise money again for the Red Cross
(where he can be contacted).
Kenjiro's just walked from Finke to Alice Springs and plans to traverse
the "French Line" from Dalhousie Springs to Birdsville next year.
In 1993 he walked from Port Augusta to Ayers Rock and Alice Springs,
which took him two months.
In 1994 he walked from Alice Springs to Halls Creek and Broome - also a
total of 60 days on the road.
Walking with just a backpack and sleeping under the stars, Kenjiro
carries up to 15 litres of water.
"When it's hot I sit under a tree and walk at night. It depends on the
moon," says Kenjiro.
"When I was walking I could think a lot about myself."
Why Australia?
"Australia is much safer than other countries," says Kenjiro.
"I think I couldn't do the same thing in America. It's too dangerous.
"There are gangs. People would kill me. But here people are nice.
"Australians like Japanese people. They helped me a lot. All the time
they stopped for me and gave me some water. That's enough for me."
A French walker is believed to have perished in the Simpson, so is
Kenjiro frightened?
"Yes, I have to organise it more and more. This time I wanted to walk
through but the road was closed, it had a lot of rain.
"It means no tourist cars could go through for two weeks. So I gave up
this time."
What does he like about the outback? "For me it's a better place than
the east coast of Australia," says Kenjiro.
"There is a lot of space.
"I can never have the same space in Japan. And all the time the sky is
so blue.
"The people as well, they are so nice. They talk to me a lot. I can
talk to them."
What does he think about the flies?
"When I was walking, all the time I was lonely, so they are very good
friends for me."
Kenjiro plans leaving Dalhousie Springs mid next year, using Purnie
Bore as the last water supply, and reaching Birdsville within a
fortnight.
Brian is due to head off from Alice for Port Augusta on June 1 this
year.
"From there, if it's hot, I'll go to Victoria for thee or four months,
and then over to Perth."
If it's not too hot he'll tackle the Nullabor straight away.
"I haven't done the Nullabor before," he says.
Brian's "done" just about any other route in Australia.
He started with a short one - just 1000 km with a few detours - from
Adelaide to Ceduna in 1977 "to prove the doctors wrong": Brian had been
diagnosed with a spine defect reportedly disabling him for life.
Next he walked form Perth via Darwin, Three-Ways and Burke to Broken
Hill - taking two years and covering 11,200 km all up.
In 1987 and '88 he walked from Perth to Darwin and back, and a couple
of years later, from Alice via Halls Creek to Port Headland.
Why?
"I like being out of doors, sleeping under the stars, being on my own,
meeting terrorists, spinning them a few yarns."
He says the "terrorists", as he calls them, enjoy a cup of tea and see
him as a piece of Australia. Brian's got no argument with that.
KIERAN FINNANE talks to author Alexis Wright.
Not one good thing ever really happens to Ivy, the central
character of Alice Springs writer Alexis Wright's debut novel Plains of
Promise.
Ivy brings painfully alive the phrase "stolen generation" in a tragic
but fascinating narrative primarily set in Wright's traditional country
around Lawn Hill in the Gulf of Carpentaria.
KIERAN FINNANE continues her interview with the author:
News: Ivy's fate is quite despairing. Did it have to be? A.W.:
I think that happens to a lot of people, a lot of Aboriginal people.
If you're really an unlucky person, nothing good comes except for what
you can make of your own inner world.
I'd like to think that that doesn't happen in real life but I think we
haven't heard a lot of the stories yet of the people who have been
taken away and I think those stories may be more horrific than what
I've got in the book.
People think: "Oh, they connected back with their mother or their
families after they've been taken away for all those years and it's a
happy story", but I wonder is it happy?
Has it been a satisfactory reunion and sometimes I don't think so.
I guess I don't have much faith that there's going to be positive
outcomes in life for everybody.
News: How did the story grow, what did you start with?
A.W.: I wanted to write a novel set in the Gulf country which is where
my family come from.
I was living in Melbourne at the time, feeling a long way from home and
it seemed that it was never going to come to an end.
A friend of mine whom I worked with in the former National Aboriginal
Conference, which has been replaced by ATSIC, set up a land council in
the area.
He didn't have any funding, he was trying single-handedly to get the
multi-national mining company CRA to talk to the Aboriginal traditional
owners in the area and come to some sort of arrangement over their
lands.
He died very early during that struggle and his son Murandoo Yanner
took over.
I guess the novel is in some ways my attempt to come to terms with my
separation from the country, not that it's a story directly about me or
my family.
I also thought, when I started, that it was a way of bringing some
attention to the area.
Then it was one of the more neglected and isolated parts of Australia
although nowadays it's always in the papers because of where the
negotiations have led in the past two years.
Because of my family circumstances I'm not able to live up there and
apart from that we don't have any access to traditional lands, we still
don't.
Not just my family but most Waanji people because the lands are all
owned by CRA and remain so under the mining agreement.
News: Why do you feel driven to write?
A.W.: I wanted to write from a very early age. I never had any
encouragement from the school that I went to - they never expected
Aboriginal kids to do well or to do anything!
I never felt that the education being offered was directed towards me.
The poetry, plays, fiction I heard at school intrigued me but the
story-telling mostly comes from my grandmother.
I had a lot to do with her from a very young age.
I listened to her stories and the family talk for all the very early
years of my life.
That created my imagination - it was full of superstition and also a
longing for the traditional homeland.
I could only imagine the places they were talking about and the
explanations they gave for everyday life which were quite fantastic:
the tree started flowering not because of the season but because of
someone's death or whatever.
I learnt a lot from that, it stayed with me right through life.
My grandmother's still very close to me but now she's very, very old.
She taught me a lot in life and I hope she feels she did well with me.
Then for years as I was working I felt that I'd like to write but I
didn't know how to start.
There was also never a right time because I was always needed for the
next crisis that was happening.
But when I was in Melbourne I got some time off work to do media
studies at RMIT during the day and I went to classes at night to study
creative writing. There were other people all in the same boat, though
some were a lot more advanced than I was.
That's when I started to really seriously try to write.
News: How did you go about becoming a published author?
A.W.: I started writing this novel before the birth of my last
daughter.
As she got bigger I felt I had no time to write.
Even though she was just one child, she was like ten!
It was an absolute struggle to write until a few years ago when she had
started school and I made a decision to take six months off work to
finish the novel. Then I was working again and had to go to Brisbane.
I took the manuscript over to University of Queensland Press where Sue
Abbey is a great supporter of Aboriginal writing and was very
supportive in ensuring that UQP would accept my manuscript.
She had two independent assessments made before they accepted to
publish it and then it was a long process to go through - wait your
turn, then work with editors and the marketing and promotions people,
work on the cover design, even the title.
The working title was People Like You.
One day I was having a dispute with someone in Canberra about a
particular program or the way it was being applied and he said to me
virtually "Life would be much better if it wasn't for people like you."
I've heard that said a lot to Aboriginal people or about Aboriginal
people - almost that things would be much better if you didn't exist.
I thought very deeply about this.
But the publisher didn't like it and it went through a whole series of
changes until it got down to Plains of Promise, which is what the Gulf
country used to be called by the first white men who went there looking
for new grazing land.
Pastoralists spoke with great expectation of the "Plains of Promise"
and now it's the turn of the mining industry, but the traditional
people are still there and what benefit do they reap from the
"promise"?
News: Did you ever know a community like St Dominics or any mission
community?
One of your achievements is that the reader gets a sense of a real
social entity at St Dominics, as much as it's mostly an incredibly
destructive one.
A.W.: I wouldn't like anyone to think that St Dominics is a particular
place because it's not.
If anything, it probably comes from a long association with and
exposure to many, many places that are like that.
It's a composite of the lot.
News: What about mental health institutions, such as Sycamore Heights
where Ivy spends some 20 years?
Have you had experience of those, did you have to do research or was it
something you were able to imagine?
A.W.: It's imagination I think and a little bit of research.
News: And the belly-dancing therapy?
I was amused by that section. A.W.: That's a bit of a send-up really of
schemes applied to Aboriginal people.
They come from great ideas from governments or churches, from
non-Aboriginal people and sometimes from Aboriginal people themselves.
People can be sucked in and some weird and wonderful things might even
work but who makes those judgments about what's going to work and
what's not going to work?
I've seen a lot of things that are quite weird that Aboriginal people
have no say over, then they fail, and then Aboriginal people are blamed
for them and there's a big enquiry about it. It's a send-up of those
situations.
News: Nonetheless it's quite moving when all the women have been lead
down this path and then they're left on their own again with their
fantasies and their yearnings.
A.W.: That's what happens all the time to Aboriginal people, this great
idea just going down the drain and people are left high and dry.
News: When you start to write about Mary and the Coalition of
Aboriginal Governments, there's really not a good word you have to say
about the experience, in terms of its sensitivity to the personal needs
of people involved.
Is that something that you consciously wanted to say?
A.W.: I don't feel that I didn't have a good word to say, I quite
sympathised with the organisation but maybe it comes out that way.
In a lot of organisations there's a cohesion between people at various
levels but at the same time it's very hard work that they do.
It becomes quite ruthless, given the ruthlessness of the governments
they have to deal with, and it really hardens people.
It's on all of our minds that it does harden us and we have to very
consciously not let it overtake our lives in all aspects.
News: That section of the book for me didn't have the richness or the
depth of the first section.
I felt that the city environment didn't come alive and that the people
weren't really alive either, whereas with the people in the mission,
for all the thwarted and painful existence that they led, there was an
incredible richness.
A.W.: To be in a city for Aboriginal people is very hard.
It's so expensive to live there for a start and being away from the
land, their traditional areas and communities.
They start operating in a different sort of way.
News: The men in the novel are incredibly violent towards the women.
All of the men are characterised in that way to various degrees - white
and black - except for one poor man, Lawrence, who gets his neck broken
when he tries to speak out.
Is that something that you were conscious of wanting to say?
A.W.: If all the men turned out that way, I don't know how that
happened except to say that the characters that I created weren't based
on my feelings or perceptions of people in general.
But the characters as they developed in the book were true to the
characters I was trying to create, they developed in those ways.
There was no attempt on my part to make women good and men bad and
that's not how I see the word in general anyway.
The type of communities created under state laws - missions and
reserves - weren't pleasant places for people to live on, whether they
were Aboriginal or non-Aboriginal.
Any race of people would have suffered badly under those laws and the
way those laws were applied to people.
They made people into types of people that they probably wished they
weren't.
In unpleasant places occupied by unhappy people a lot of violence
happens, it's hard to explain why and how to stop it.
A lot of it's to do with taking people away from their traditional land
and the hopelessness of knowing you can't get back and that you're
incarcerated in these missions and reserves for the rest of your lives.
Those unhappy families and communities still exist because people can't
get back to their traditional country and they can't live in a way that
they wish to live.
I also think that Aboriginal literature should be moving into areas
where other indigenous people have been able to take their literature.
We need to have the freedom to write about characters, men and women,
and events as we see them.
I'm thinking of writers like Louise Erdrich (Native American), Kerrie
Hulme and Allan Duff (Maori), Salman Rushdie (Indian), Gabriel Garcia
Marquez and Mario Vargas Llosa (South American), to name but two, and
the Africans like Ben Okri.
Of great non-indigenous writers too, like William Faulkner. These are
the people I've learnt from. We'll reach a better understanding by
following their example, writing true to our experience.
News: "Promise" generally is associated with something positive yet
really at the end of the book I felt like the promise for most of the
Aboriginal characters was a pretty grim one, that life goes on with all
this anguish, it just inexorably goes on.
A.W.: Pastoralists spoke with great expectation of the "Plains of
Promise" and now it's the turn of the mining industry, but the
traditional people are still there and what benefit do they reap from
the "promise"?
News: In the recent controversy over Leon Carmen, who published a
fabricated "autobiography" of an Aboriginal woman, he claimed that it
was much easier for a woman, and an Aboriginal woman at that, to get
published than for a white man.
Is that your experience?
A.W.: My experience of getting published goes way back to even gaining
the ability to string a few sentences together.
I had to learn all that later in life, I didn't get that at school.
So it's been a lifetime of struggle, to get educated as an adult rather
than as a child, and to write. Writing is not a Aboriginal thing. To
get to this stage has taken a long time.