I had the plea­sure of com­plet­ing my last ever nurs­ing place­ment in Alice Springs. I am from Dar­win, study­ing nurs­ing up here with Charles Dar­win Uni­ver­si­ty. How­ev­er, place­ments are scarce and there are sub­stan­tial wait times for place­ment offers. 

An oppor­tu­ni­ty arose where I could com­plete by the end of 2021 if I was to trav­el to the desert, where I would be placed in the Emer­gency Depart­ment of Alice Springs Hospital. 

My dream is to become an emer­gency nurse, like my moth­er, and I could not turn down such an expe­ri­ence, par­tic­u­lar­ly to increase my chances of land­ing a grad­u­ate year in emer­gency. The place­ment was amaz­ing, but with so many sur­pris­es along the way!

My place­ment itself began a week late, so I man­aged to com­plete four weeks of place­ment in three. To begin with, lock­down in Dar­win and Kather­ine delayed my dri­ve, but then the floods came!

I pulled into Ten­nant Creek about 5pm, after leav­ing Dar­win about 8am (best not to do the math!) and was meet­ing up with a friend from High School who now lives there, work­ing as a Defence Lawyer for Legal Aid.

I sent her a text like ​“hey, I’m actu­al­ly doing real­ly well, I might just push through to Alice Springs and catch you on the way back”, to which she respond­ed ​“girl­friend, you ain’t going any­where, that place is flooded!”

If it wasn’t for her intel, I prob­a­bly would have kept going, unaware of the sit­u­a­tion! But we had a great, well-over­due catch-up and enjoyed Wok’s Up take­away at her Aunt’s, while bot­tle-feed­ing a res­cued Joey. It was a hoot, and I nev­er thought I would have such a night in Ten­nant Creek!

The next morn­ing, I couldn’t stop smil­ing on my way to Alice, until I hit the back­log of trucks and cars blocked from the floods – guess it real­ly wasn’t a myth. Spec­u­la­tion about an hour wait, to ​“any minute now”, to anoth­er five hours wait was ram­pant, so I got out of the lit­tle Hon­da Jazz and trekked all the way to the top of the line – five kilometres! 

There I met a bunch of truck­ies who had been wait­ing since yes­ter­day with no chance of cross­ing today – the water was still rising. 

They were love­ly folk but being a young solo woman out there with no recep­tion, no water, and no camp­ing gear, the offer to camp out with them wasn’t that entic­ing, so I drove about 200km back up the Stu­art High­way to Aileron Roadhouse.

When I got up to the bar, all the rooms were booked out and the place was packed with peo­ple aim­less­ly glar­ing at each oth­er like ​“what do we do?” After accept­ing my fate to sleep in the car in the carpark, I walked back up to the bar and the bar­man said, ​“you’re not going to believe it girl, but there is one room that has just become avail­able, and we thought you would be the first to ask.” Enough said! 

I took the room and did not arise till 10am the next day – I was exhausted!

I final­ly made it into Alice Springs about 12:30pm. I was stay­ing with my friend since preschool, who relo­cat­ed to Alice from Dar­win years ago and is now engaged to a love­ly lady from Alice.

Stay­ing with them was the mak­ing of the trip, for I was able to come home to a com­fort­able place with peo­ple I knew, so the feel­ing of being away from home wasn’t so strong. 

On our days off, we would go hik­ing around Alice, or vis­it Glen Helen Gorge for a swim and burg­er. Giv­en the rains, every­thing was so lush and green, and I’m glad I got to see this side of Alice. It doesn’t come around often!

Alice Springs Hos­pi­tal is a great lit­tle hos­pi­tal, and I loved every minute of it! The emer­gency team is so full of life and sup­port­ive. Giv­en the cas­es that come through those doors, they have a great sense of humour, yet are so skilled and knowl­edge­able in emer­gency care, par­tic­u­lar­ly with their scope of care for a rur­al location. 

I have found my pas­sion in emer­gency nurs­ing, thanks to this place­ment, and will endeav­our to source a grad­u­ate year in emer­gency. Wher­ev­er I may be placed, I am sold on emergency! 

I feel like every nurs­ing stu­dent should do a place­ment away from home and [I] will make sure I encour­age all stu­dents to take such an oppor­tu­ni­ty if it aris­es. The Alice Springs emer­gency team is such a young, fun crew, and I felt that ​‘spir­it of nurs­ing’ my moth­er always talked about.