Thea Hayes - A country nurse : from Wave Hill to rural Queensland and almost everywhere in between

Also by Thea Hayes

An Outback Nurse

First published in 2020

Copyright Thea Hayes 2020

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

All images included in the photo inserts have been supplied by the author, unless otherwise noted.

Allen & Unwin

83 Alexander Street

Crows Nest NSW 2065

Australia

Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

Email:

Web: www.allenandunwin.com

ISBN 978 1 76087 715 6

eISBN 978 1 76087 3127

Set by Midland Typesetters, Australia

Cover design: Deborah Parry Graphics

Cover photographs: Getty Images; author's collection

Dedicated to palliative care doctors and nurses in Australia.

Contents

Once the siren song of the Outback took over Theas heart there was no turning her from her chosen destiny to live her mothering years as a station nurse, hostess and housekeeper, married to the manager of one of Australias largest remote Outback cattle stations, Wave Hill in the Northern Territory, in the wilds of Central Australia.

Thea and her husband Ralph stood behind Prime Minister Gough Whitlam on the momentous occasion in August 1975 when he poured a handful of red Wave Hill soil into the hands of tribal Aboriginal man Vincent Lingiari. It was Australian history in the making.

All this could not have been further from her childhood years in the city and for that matter, her early expectations of life.

Yet her sense of adventure, her gaiety, humour and tolerance, combined with her innate practicality, made her a perfect fit for the life she chose.

This is the first part of Theas story, as told in her first book An Outback Nurse (Allen & Unwin 2014).

But her story continues! Her spirit burnished in the Outback sun, Thea and her husband Ralph moved closer to civilisation; but city life was never to be her choice again, and nor was age to deter her from continuing her trajectory of laughter and adventure.

Theas story is one of hope and inspiration. To meet her is to understand that age is just a number, serious illness just a hiccup, and love and friendship the grist of life.

Between the pages of this book is a fantastic story. And whats more, its an ongoing story. Do your sums and you will be amazed at the fact that when manyif not mostpeople are sitting on the sofa and sipping cups of tea, Thea is still well and truly on the go. Her future stretches before her as a canvas to be painted.

Enjoy the many canvases this book contains.

Jane Grieve

Author of In Stockmens Footsteps

My first book, An Outback Nurse, describes my life as a young nurse on a cattle station in the middle of the Northern Territory in the sixties and seventies.

While on a holiday to Uluru, I impulsively accepted a nursing job on the second largest property under one management in the world, Wave Hill Station in the Northern Territory. It covered four million acres, with 240 Aboriginal people and thirty white staff to be cared for, and was owned by one of the richest men in England, Lord Sam Vestey.

Having never spent any time outside the city, I was totally unprepared for the place that I would soon call home. My life changed dramatically. I fell in love with the land, found love, married the overseer Ralph Hayes and we reared our family in the Outback.

The first time I saw an Aboriginal person was at Curtin Springs in the Northern Territory, eighty-four kilometres from Uluru, on a bus tour organised by the CSIRO. A week later I arrived at Wave Hill Station and met the Gurindji and Warlpiri people, who worked so happily on the station with the white staff. I was to find the most fascinating aspect of my nursing job was my relationship working with and caring for these people.

The book reveals life towards the end of the great pastoral station era, charting their demise in the sixties and seventies, and the changes that followed: the Wave Hill walk-off; the handover of land to the Gurindji tribe; the start of land rights for Aboriginal people. Its about my life with my husband and childrenhaving babies, educating them, looking after the health of the white and Aboriginal staff, and the friends we made and the fun we all had together.

Many have asked, What happened in the decades since Wave Hill?

This book, A Country Nurse, answers this question for my family and my readers and also for the Aboriginal people who worked with us at Wave Hill.

The future held a change of lifestyle for our family, from a large cattle property to life on a country farm and owning a corner store at the same time; raising and showing stud cattle, making new friends, learning new skills, a book club, along with illness and sadness. Then followed a new love, a new home, travelling Australia and overseas. Life goes on and if you are adventurous, it gets even better and there is always something new and exciting around the corner.

Our last day, and our last smoko on Wave Hill. Penny, the youngest of our four children, raced ahead. Ralph and I wandered slowly across to the smoko area between the kitchen and the recreation room at the new Wave Hill Station homestead, at the site of Number One bore. The Wave Hill mob were all waiting there to join us for one last cup of tea together. Twenty years previously, in 1960, I had walked onto Jinparrak (the Gurindji name for old Wave Hill Station) smoko veranda, paved with flagstones with an outside wall of paperbark and a roof of spinifex, having just arrived on the mail plane from Alice Springs to take on the position of station nurse. Tom Fisher, the manager of Wave Hill Station, had picked me up at the airstrip, driven me to the station, and after showing me my new home, called a dongaa galvanised room with paperbark veranda and outdoor showersaid, Ill see you at smoko on the smoko veranda at 3 p.m. Youll hear the bell.

I did hear the bell, and nervously walked out onto the veranda to meet the Wave Hill mob. And my life changed forever.

Ralph was the shy, handsome improvement overseer who gave me an inquisitive look as I was introduced to the enquiring staff of Wave Hill; the man I fell in love with, married, and with whom I spent twenty years on cattle properties in the Outback.

Now, in 1979, the time had come to move on.

Ralph hated the thought of leaving. He had gone to Wave Hill as a young jackeroo in 1955, giving twenty-five years of his life to the Vestey Company. Ralph, who could speak the languages of the Gurindji and Warlpiri people, had grown up on stations in the Northern Territory. He was little more than eighteen months old when his father and mother, Dick and Mary Hayes, in 1936 accepted a management position with the Vesteys at Waterloo Station in the Northern Territory (Waterloo is east of the Ord River Scheme, where the famous Argyle Downs Station was pioneered by Patrick Durack, as written about by Mary Durack in her book Kings in Grass Castles