Wendy: A few months ago, the dri­ver and I had to take the ambu­lance out to a tragedy about four hours north of the clin­ic. We had to trav­el after the rains; the roads were very cor­ru­gat­ed. The police request­ed we come out, it was a sud­den death, to do a life extinct form. 

So off we went in our ambu­lance which is real­ly cum­ber­some and top-heavy. 

You can only do 80 kilo­me­tres an hour on the dirt road in that vehi­cle oth­er­wise, you can blow a tyre or flip it.

Because we were going rea­son­ably slow­ly and safe­ly, we were able to dis­cuss, between the dri­ver and I, what sorts of things we’d expect to see when we got to the scene. It was a sud­den death, so that per­son we wouldn’t have to wor­ry about, but we’d have to wor­ry about all of the bystanders, and who was there, and what shock was involved. We had time to dis­cuss that.

As we were dis­cussing it I was look­ing around at the scenery, and I’ve lived most of my life in North Queens­land, but I saw the most absolute­ly beau­ti­ful coun­try I’ve ever seen in my life.

It was so green. It was just green everywhere.

We passed bill­abongs with lily pads, emus, galas, cock­a­toos, lizards, kan­ga­roos – every­thing you could imagine…

We saw snakes and big sarus cranes as we were going along, and cross­ing all these cause­ways that should have been dry, that were still flood­ing with water.

We got to the scene, and because of what was around us we were calm, col­lect­ed and cen­tred on what we had to do.

We got out and did our busi­ness… then we went around to every­body who was there and gave them support.

We let them have their say about what hap­pened, and let them talk it through. That took a cou­ple of hours, to make sure every­one was okay.

We trav­elled home on that same journey.

It made us pon­der on how short life is, and think about our own fam­i­lies and communities.

As we were in this bit of depres­sive, self-reflec­tion cycle, this bloom­ing lizard – I’ve nev­er seen any­thing so big; it was huge – just mean­dered across the road. And then it
just stood in front of the vehi­cle and wouldn’t move. I’ve heard all these sto­ries about lizards run­ning up trees, would it run up our vehi­cle? But it just stood there and looked at us for a good three min­utes and then it just mean­dered off.

We were in fits. We were laugh­ing so much.

And I think, that whole cama­raderie, that abil­i­ty to be able to reflect on every­thing that hap­pened and nature giv­ing us a light moment.

By the time we got back to the clin­ic, we had done all of our debrief­ing, we didn’t need to ring any­one, we didn’t need to go to any oth­er sup­ports, we didn’t need to talk to a 
coun­sel­lor. Nature itself had unbur­dened us.

I think, out of all the sto­ries I have got to tell, that’s just going to remain in my heart and soul for­ev­er because it was where I real­ly went, ​“We’re only on this plan­et for a short time, and if you don’t open your eyes and look around you, you’ll miss everything.”