kids and boils

Well just a quick note before i settle down to watch my favorite show the walking dead,

The other day my 3 year old fell over at childcare and grazed his knee, a few days later it became infected, as you can imagine trying to dress a 3 year old boil is a bit of a mission!
We went up to the local hospital and got some antibiotics after i noticed a lump in his groin

Living out here i often have in the back of my mind the fear of one of the kids or any of us, getting terribly sick or injured.  having nursed remotely for a dozen years i have seen a lot of horrible situations and urgent evacuations.
Now that I'm a parent it doesn't bear thinking about --- that fear of waiting for the RFDS to come and transport you to a regional hospital.

When my daughter was 4 months old she got a nasty gastro virus and we sat in ED all day waiting for RFDS to come and get us, fortunately after a few plane delays, and several hours of fluid through her Naso gastric tube she picked up and we ended up just staying in our local hospital for a couple of nights

The RFDS does an amazing job, they are dedicated people , and as a nurse ive spent many many hours at someones bed side wishing the plane could fly faster !!


I was lucky enough to do a few flights , not with the RFDS but through the local hospital and we had to go and get someone from a remote community, the pilot had to circle the runway a couple of times while the RAN(remote area nurse) chased the donkeys of the runway.  Landing on a dirt runway in a little plane is actually kind of cool!!  although i tend to get a bit air sick, so being a permanent flight nurse is out of the question LOL!!!



If anyone else has had a trip on the RFDS would love to hear the story


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Well bye bye for now
My fav TV show is about to start the kids are asleep and i brought my first easter egg this year!
I know a little early but it really is the best chocolate!!

cost of food

 The cost of food in remote Australia is increasing, and making it difficult for the average family.
contributing factors are the freight that is required to get the food out here (most of it is far from fresh especially the remoter you go!!).  infrequent deliveries, lack of proper storage, poor display areas, lack of store management expertise, poor planning for the Wet Season, unscrupulous actions and corruption, sometimes double-handling through a secondary wholesaler and poor economies
of scale.( National ruaral and health alliance )

The Fred Hollows Foundation quotes the 2000 NT market basket survey. “In 2000,

the average cost of a basket (of food) in communities in the Katherine region of the

Northern Territory, where the Fred Hollows Foundation works, was $491. In

Katherine, the same basket was $378 and in Darwin $366.” They also describe

poor availability of nutritious food.

The cost of food can be a challenge, as well as the availability, freshness, and variety.
a lot of people will often establish their own gardens and station owners will kill their own meat

The local Aboriginal people often eat bush tucker, this they can hunt and gather for only the cost of the tools and time

 Goanna - I'm told by the Aboriginal people that a goanna is a tasty treat, although fatty




whitthey grubs - full of protein



nuts and Berry's found in the Australian bush

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Travel in remote Australia

Travel in remote Australia can be interesting !! often it takes about 4 or 5 hours to get to Alice springs to do our shopping and go to various appointments. when the kids were babies it could take up to 6 hours, because we would no sooner get down the road and there would be a pooy nappy to change or a hungry kid.  The roads are often long and straight and boring !! it can be easy to get tired and fall asleep. Then of course there are all the animals on the road along the way.

The Stuart Highway is one of Australia's major highways. It is a segment of Australia's Highway 1 extending from Darwin, Northern Territory, in the north, via Tennant Creek and Alice Springs, to Port Augusta, South Australia, in the south—a distance of 2,834 kilometres (1,761 mi). The principal north-south route through the central interior of mainland Australia (Wickipedia)


There are fun ways to travel around too, riding a camel is a great way to see the outback!
A tour through the Kimberly's, Kakadu ,Arman land or Cape Levick in a 4WD is a great experience



Travel in the outback can be dangerous, only travel if you have all the appropriate gear, lots of water and a sat phone, make sure people know where you are going and when you should arrive



Remote Australia is a great place to visit even if the distances can be big, the towns along the way are great places to meet people and have a great experience of the outback.


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a bit of info on the size and population of Oz

          

Ok before i go into some of the topics mentioned in my last blog i thought i would give you a little bit of info first
world's smallest continent but sixth-largest country; the only continent without glaciers; population concentrated along the eastern and southeastern coasts

Over two-thirds (69%) of Australians live in major cities, one in five (20%) live in inner regional areas, one in ten (9%) in outer regional areas and around one in forty (2.3%) live in remote or very remote areas (1.5% remote and 0.8% very remote). These figures represented, in 2009, 15.1 million people living in major cities, 4.3 million in inner regional areas, 2.1 million in outer regional areas, 324,000 in remote areas and 174,000 in very remote areas (Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS], 2010).
anyone with more than a passing knowledge of Australian geography will understand, much of the country is inhospitable with the Interior, or Outback as it’s more commonly called comprising of vast desert and intense heat. As a result, most of its population is concentrated on or around the more hospitable coastal areas.
Overall, Australia’s population density is 2.9 people per square kilometre, making it one of the least densely populated countries in the world – only Mongolia, Western Sahara, Suriname, Mauritania and Botswana have fewer people per square kilometre than Australia. Some parts of Australia are even less densely populated – in the Northern Territory, for example, every square kilometre holds just 0.2 people.(world population review, 2012)

So when i talk about some of the challenges related to living in remote Australia you can see the size , and inhospitable climate is a major contributor to some of these challenges



Challenges living in remote Australia

Well where to begin??
Travel and distance
Medical help
Food and price of food
Clothes,homeware and furniture   and other goods
Social contact
Phone and Internet until recently
Flooding
Pregnancy

I'll make a post on each of these things, and the experiences I've had.
Hopefully you will find in interesting reading

Would love to hear anyone else's experiences

travel in remote Australia

At the QLD - NT boarder

Just in case you didn't know

The road into a Community in Cape York

a dirt road going to an Aboriginal community

 Stuart Highway

On the tanami desert

 

 

 

Well travel can be interesting in remote Australia!!

It can be long, hard, dangerous .......

 

Here is some advise - (never drive outside of your comfort or expertise level and ask if unsure)

 

The sealed roads are often long and straight, there is the danger of hitting a roo, or other animal. I have had quite a few near misses - wedge tail eagles are the worst they are so big and take for ever to get off the ground.  I've also had a few hits, sadly . the worse was a roo, which did jump away but cost me over $2000 and left me in a ditch on the side of the road.  There is also the danger of fatigue and falling asleep, this sadly happens often. blowing a tyre at high speeds in not good either (the speed limit on the highway in the NT is 130km/hr)

 

Dirt roads can be reasonably easy to travel if you don't get stupid, animals are also a risk, cows, camels, donkeys can be found along these roads as well because there is less traffic to deter them.

wet dirt roads are to be avoided !!! Ive seen quite a few cars almost swallowed by mud. 

 

 

Crossing water can be OK but only if you know what you are doing !!!!!

I can't stress that enough, always get out and walk across the water (of course be aware of crocodiles in certain parts then don't go anywhere near the water!), if the water is going fast but only shin deep do not cross, your car will be washed away!  Also be aware not to get washed away yourself or hit by debris of fallen tree branches

 

If the water is stationary then it can be quite deep and still safe to cross - again only if you are experienced.

 

never underestimate the dangers of crossing water - i have done so many many times and i am still cautious each time,

 

Drive safe and if you are unsure always ask a local

 

bye for now

The Kimberly's WA

Now the Kimberly's in WA was a great place to work, the weather in winter is beautiful! We had so much fun and spent most of our free time, swimming in the river at Fitzroy Crossing - crocs and all - although i wouldn't recommend it, they were fresh water crocodiles but they can become dangerous and in a big wet or dry season salt water crocodiles can travel to fresh water ways.  We would light a fire on the riverbank and cook some fish and potatoes in alfoil and eat with our fingers watching the sun go down.  Sometimes we would travel to Broome which is a beautiful coastal town and i got lots of pearl jewellery there, also great fish and chips to be had !! We would drink at the local pub and talk to all the tourists, backpackers, contract workers and locals - an outback pub is such a great way to meet people!!

Horse riding

One thing about living remote is the exposure to animals - this is my three year old - he was two at the time this photo was taken.  My daughter Temperance would have her morning nap under a big shaddy tree while Bailey had his lessons.

Community living

These photos were taken at one of the remote Aboriginal community's i was living on, the last picture was the view from my back door.  The first two pictures are of the road leading into the community.  Is such beautiful countryside, the roads can be tricky to drive on especially if it rains.  Going into town one day from another community near this one, I got stuck at a river that was usually dry, it was full and flowing fast when i arrived, so i had to wait with a few other people until it slowed down a bit. when i eventually drove across water was lapping just below the car window!! i was too nervous to stop for photos but it was really an amazing site !!

new to blogging

Hi

As you can tell I'm new to blogging!!
I have lived in rural and remote Australia for about 12 years now and love it !!!
I don't think i could go back to 'city life'

There are a lot of challenges especially before mobile phone service !! - although we just used to pop over to some ones house and yell out 'hello' there was definitely more face to face contact, and of course the local pub was always over flowing and a great way to meet people.

One of the biggest challenges especially if your new to country life is getting access to consumables
one day i wanted to make potato bake so i went to the local shop and yes they had ran out of potatoes !!!
another thing that can be hard to get ---is well just about everything (depending on where you live and how small the town is)
Over the years I've gotten pretty good at either waiting until i traveled into a bigger shopping town which could be months, went without or did online shopping.

That is why i have decided to develop an easy one stop online shop for baby gear
http://outbackbabyshop.com

hopefully it will help people get what they need in one easy stop

If you have any questions or comments on outback life i would love to hear from you, and some of the challenges you may have faced.
I will post later some of the other challenges I have had living 'out bush'

bye for now

Living in remote Australia has many challenges !!!
I'm in the process of setting up an online store - a one stop shope for all your maternity, baby needs, toys and games!! the shop also has links to other great products as well.

Save time and energy on searching and check out my new website

http://www.outbackbabyshop.com