Snippets

While at one of the outstations, we saw a dingo - she had had puppies. "Who's the father?" led to a wide sweep of the hand, indicating the whole community. The puppies were in a burrow like a wombat hole; we could just see them. The lady kept the dingo away by threatening a stick.

The old man from the community we visited on Wednesday is the last living speaker of his language. Only a very small number of people ever spoke it. (Trev said 400 total, but I don't know how that works out over 40,000 years) A linguistic group from the eastern states somewhere spent some time with him, recording him. The language is not far off being lost - but it's good to see that in some circles at least, it's valued.

The guy who's working with the indigenous rangers is an ecologist and ornithologist. We're hoping to learn from him! Tim has mentioned him before. We appreciate his approach. We've just come from tea at his house. We met a guy there who's volunteering with the rangers, trying to develop native bees & hives. Native honey is not as sweet apparently.

The lady from Traralgon I'd spoken to while still in Leongatha, the one who works at the women's centre, was at tea tonight. She was talking about the value of homeland communities, how well people do on their own land, and how sad it is that the government's policy is moving people away from them to bigger centres like Wadeye. It's do to with centralisation and assimilation. Development?

The new med student is Dan. We've been here a whole week longer than him, and we feel a bit familiar with things. So we can see progress! We think we'll take Dan & one of the nurses (who is new here too) around the sights on Sunday. We need longer here really, to explore it all - go out in a boat, fishing, visit communities, look for bush foods.

We're covering 2nd on call tonight & tomorrow night. Tim's at the clinic now - one of the girls I saw at the outstation on Wednesday is having an allergic reaction to penicillin.

I've enjoyed visiting the Aged Care residence and I've been doing some health assessments. Will need to take some blood for parathyroid hormone next week.. at least I know how to process it now!

I brought a 1kg Jalna youghurt with me from Darwin. It's finished now, but I'm really pleased: I used the container to make another kg, with an esiyo sachet mixed with tepid water & then sitting in a saucepan of boiling water. It took 12 hours to set well.