Ange’s face lights up as she swipes through pho­tos from her time work­ing remote. She’s enam­oured by snaps of squishy-cheeked bubs on her lap in Com­mu­ni­ty to maps of Aus­tralia traced in red mark­er, fol­low­ing all the roads she’s travelled.

“I did most of my trav­els, ini­tial­ly, in my Corol­la and a swag,” she laughs.

“Being foot­loose and fan­cy-free trav­el­ling solo to some of the most amaz­ing places, and meet­ing some beau­ti­ful peo­ple, was the absolute high­light of my career, with­out a doubt.

“The sig­nif­i­cant smells, colours, peo­ple, moments, recipes, water­ing holes you can only get to if you know locals – I wish I’d jour­naled all of that.”

Ange began her nurs­ing career at ter­tiary hos­pi­tals in Perth, and then start­ed to dab­ble in remote area nurs­ing all across Aus­tralia, before doing her post-grad in Rur­al Crit­i­cal Care and then trav­el­ling some more. She’s now work­ing in Albury and teach­ing at Charles Sturt Uni­ver­si­ty in the nurs­ing division.

Ange says, ​“Who I am now as a per­son is large­ly influ­enced by those peo­ple that I’ve met on the road.”

“There are some fair­ly unpleas­ant parts, as well as some sig­nif­i­cant trau­mas that you are exposed to, but I feel priv­i­leged to have been there to sup­port and help those peo­ple in those tough moments.

“I’ve become very grate­ful for the expo­sure and expe­ri­ences that I had.”

Work­ing con­tract to con­tract, Ange appre­ci­at­ed the oppor­tu­ni­ty to have con­trol over what her work-life bal­ance looked like.

“You lit­er­al­ly plan your life around what your pri­or­i­ties are,” she explains.

“My pri­or­i­ties through­out trav­el­ling were to be able to trav­el home and see my fam­i­ly at least a cou­ple times a year. But apart from that, I didn’t real­ly have any­thing, or any­one, keep­ing me in any par­tic­u­lar place.”

That is, until Ange met her now hus­band and start­ed their family.

“One of the first things I said to him is I’m very pas­sion­ate about doing my nurs­ing out in rur­al and remote areas, and he hadn’t real­ly expe­ri­enced that so he was keen to have a go as well,” she recalls.

“We’ve been very for­tu­nate to get to trav­el togeth­er. We went up to Palm Island in 2021 and he was teach­ing while I was nurs­ing. It was real­ly nice to share that expe­ri­ence with him.

“Then we were for­tu­nate enough to become preg­nant with our lit­tle one – he’s now three. Since I got preg­nant, we moved back to the Victoria/​New South Wales bor­der. We’ve made that home for the time being, and I dab­ble when­ev­er I can in remote nursing.”

Jump­ing into facil­i­tat­ing CRANAplus cours­es for the first time at the start of 2025, Ange found that she fell right back into the mind­set of remote area nurs­ing, and is glad to have this new outlet.

“I was con­cerned I didn’t have the knowl­edge base after being out of it clin­i­cal­ly for three years, but sure enough, when you get teach­ing, it’s absolute­ly all still there.”

“Facil­i­tat­ing with CRANAplus is real­ly handy for me to scratch the itch of my pas­sion, and con­nect and net­work with those nurs­es that I miss a lot.”

Ange says she’s lived a lot of chap­ters in her life already, and feels excit­ed to think that she’s only halfway through with so many still ahead – hope­ful­ly to be filled with more expe­ri­ences out remote.

“I would absolute­ly love to go rur­al and remote again in the next cou­ple years. I’m real­ly keen to do that as a fam­i­ly. I think that would be a beau­ti­ful expe­ri­ence for my lit­tle one to live out in those areas and expe­ri­ence life very dif­fer­ent to how we live now.”