A Nurse on the Edge of the Desert by Andrew Cameron

Author:Andrew Cameron [Andrew Cameron]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780994141507
Publisher: Massey University Press
Published: 2017-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

By the time I got back to Mornington, I had learned that I was to become a father. I was in pretty regular phone contact with Daniela. Email and such like still had not reached our remote island settlement; probably a blessing in hindsight. I flew to Germany to be with Daniela, staying with her family in Regensburg in Bavaria. After the dirt, heat and desperation of Mornington Island, Regensburg was very clean, very orderly and (to be frank) very bland, and, as I did not speak the language, a bit lonely and unappealing. But the saving grace of my visit was that on 19 July 1998, little Emily Margaret Regina Cameron came into the world. Emily’s middle names are the names of two of her grandmothers, my mother’s first name and Dany’s mother’s first name. After my wedding day, this was the second happiest day of my life. All the same, Regensburg felt no more like home than ever, and I was preparing to leave when I received a phone call from my manager in Mount Isa.

‘You can’t go back to Mornington,’ he said. ‘There have been death threats against you.’

‘What?’ I asked.

I couldn’t process this information. I knew I had browned a few people off in my time on the island, but I didn’t know of anyone who felt so badly about me or my work that they might go to the trouble of threatening me.

‘Yes, it’s not safe for you to go back.’

‘But what about my stuff? My things?’

‘We’ll arrange for an escort to collect them for you.’

And that’s what happened. It was bad enough leaving my wife and newborn daughter, but abruptly wrapping up my life and work on Mornington — which was more like a home than any place I had lived since I was a child, and more like a vocation than anything I had experienced — was demeaning. I have often wished that I had checked my manager’s claim with the police. I believe they would have confirmed what I suspected at the time: that the whole ‘death threats’ thing was concocted to shift me out; I would have much preferred it if the managerial joker had had the balls to be honest with me.

The Dajarra airstrip was quite close to Mount Isa’s Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) base and was used frequently by the RFDS for training new pilots. A couple of times I went out to the strip to watch their adventurous landings and emergency aeronautical procedures training. Once Daniela came along with baby Emily.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.