Thurs­day Island (TI) is over 4,000km from my home. It takes more than 12 hours for me to get there, by car, big plane, small plane, bus, and fer­ry. How­ev­er, despite the great dis­tance, I felt called to pur­sue a nurs­ing place­ment in a remote location. 

On my first day there, I saw this quote from Pas­tor Charles Loban in an exhi­bi­tion in the cul­tur­al cen­tre: ​“We nev­er had the oppor­tu­ni­ties young peo­ple have now. If you’ve got an ambi­tion, pur­sue to the fullest. Grasp it with both hands and take it on board.” 

When I read that, I knew I had made the right deci­sion to come.

How­ev­er, my men­tal health place­ment was chal­leng­ing in all the ways I didn’t expect.

Although my for­mal expo­sure to peo­ple liv­ing with men­tal ill­ness turned out to be very lim­it­ed, by being flex­i­ble and open-mind­ed, I was able to have many won­der­ful inter­ac­tions with local peo­ple doing great work in their com­mu­ni­ty to improve people’s social and emo­tion­al wellbeing.

The most valu­able les­son I learned while on TI was to be open-heart­ed, but stand back, be respect­ful and patient­ly wait to be accept­ed into some­one else’s space. This land always has been, and always will be, the land of Tor­res Strait Islander peo­ples. Although I was a vis­i­tor, I was keen to learn all I could about their cul­ture. Anoth­er quote, this one from TI Elder, Robert Sagi­gi, sums it up nice­ly: ​“You can’t buy respect. You earn respect, show respect to get respect. Respect your Elders.” 

Eddie Mabo’s grand­son, Gar­ry, was the Com­mu­ni­ty Sup­port Work­er in the men­tal health team. I’m grate­ful for the time he spent teach­ing me about his cul­ture. One day, he men­tioned that his moth­er, a won­der­ful cul­tur­al woman, was speak­ing at a lan­guage sym­po­sium at the cul­tur­al centre. 

I arrived at the con­fer­ence just as it fin­ished and the many par­tic­i­pants from all across the Tor­res Strait were sit­ting down to a leisure­ly lunch and impromp­tu sing-along in language.

With­out Gar­ry to intro­duce me, I need­ed to be patient so I sat back and wait­ed to meet his mother. 

When the time was appro­pri­ate, I was intro­duced to Aun­ty Bet­ty. She grasped hold of my hand with a strong, warm grip and spoke with me at length about her pas­sion for her Tor­res Strait Island cul­ture and the impor­tance of pre­serv­ing lan­guage and tra­di­tion­al songs. 

It took me a few moments to realise that she was liv­ing with a vision impairment. 

While we sat and yarned, she told me that she is a mas­ter weaver with­in her com­mu­ni­ty but, due to her low vision, she can no longer weave as much as she used to. 

As a result, she has decid­ed to ded­i­cate her life to teach­ing cul­ture to her peo­ple and, indeed, any­one inter­est­ed in learning.

On my last day on TI, I went and vis­it­ed Aun­ty Bet­ty at her home. While we yarned, I shared how the day before I had been to a con­tem­po­rary dance rehearsal run by per­for­mance and com­mu­ni­ty arts spe­cial­ist Sonya Stephen.

She had been work­ing with a small group of par­tic­i­pants explor­ing the Kulap vine as a sym­bol of iden­ti­ty, life, com­mu­ni­ty, growth and transformation.

Using the record­ings on my phone, I was able to replay the music from the per­for­mance for Aun­ty Bet­ty. I attempt­ed to explain, in my own words, the way the dancers moved and my inter­pre­ta­tion of the meaning.

After the per­for­mance, Uncle Pedro, the retired may­or, spoke in a heart­felt way about how all these young dancers con­tain great poten­tial just like the Kulap seed pods. His belief in the strength of his peo­ple moved me to tears and I shared this with Aun­ty Bet­ty, over a cof­fee and a biscuit.

A short while lat­er, Aun­ty Bet­ty very rev­er­ent­ly pre­sent­ed me with her own Kulap shak­er, the tra­di­tion­al musi­cal instru­ment inte­gral to Tor­res Strait Islander dance and song. She demon­strat­ed how it was used and explained that for her, the rat­tling noise pro­duced by the shak­er rep­re­sents the loud voic­es of her peo­ple and their cry to the Gov­ern­ment of Aus­tralia about their great need for assis­tance with hous­ing, edu­ca­tion and health care. 

I am tremen­dous­ly moved and grate­ful that Aun­ty Bet­ty chose to entrust me with her pre­cious instru­ment and the respon­si­bil­i­ty of shar­ing her story.