Bush Nurses by Annabelle Brayley

Title: Bush Nurses: Inspiring true stories of nursing bravery and ingenuity in rural and remote Australia

Published: Penguin Au March 2013

Status: Read from March 21 to 23, 2013 — I own a copy {Courtesy the Publisher}

My Thoughts:

In Bush Nurses, Annabelle Brayley has collected stories that span a century of nursing in inland Australia, to share the extraordinary challenges that the women (and a few men) upon whom thousands of people rely for everyday and emergency medical care, face in providing health care to the rural and remote areas of Australia.

In 1912, the Australian Inland Mission (renamed Frontier Services in 1977) was established by Rev John Flynn to bring medical and spiritual services to the outback. With few doctors interested in traveling in remote areas, it was nursing sisters who carried the scheme into the community, travelling by camel, horse, rail and even motor tricycle, providing care for the indigenous and white communities.

In the bush, nursing staff were usually the only source of medical care for hundreds of kilometers or more, and even today that holds true. Nurses tend wounds, birth babies, give inoculations, respond to emergencies, even operate when there is no other choice. They teach classes in preventative health, fundraise for community resources, offer counsel and comfort and more. And it’s not just people they treat, animals often become patients as well in areas where vet care is impossible to access.

Their stories are heartbreaking, amusing, inspiring and incredible. Isolated, with few resources and in tough conditions they are on call 24/7. These first person vignettes provide a glimpse into the life of a bush nurse, and the invaluable contribution they make every day.

Providing health care to the rural and remote areas of Australia poses unique challenges and it takes resourceful, determined, brave and committed people to do so. People like these.

Note: Penguin is donating the royalties from Bush Nurses to Frontier Services.