PART vi: COMMUNITY LIFE
Reflection
The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance
Nathaniel Branden
There are events in one's life which, no matter how remote, never fade from memory
Jim Corbett
Everything happened for a reason
The reason is you are stupid and make bad decisions
It was one of those decades
The Work Behind the Pictures
An unusual life. I spent much of my late teenage and early adult years wishing my growing up had been more normal like everyone else I came to know. Later I came to realise there is no normal and life .. your life .. just is. We do what we can to interpret the past but ultimately we were never asked to be born or to choose the life of our formative years.
I never take for granted living in this lucky country. There are wins and losses, but I no longer wish to have been "normal". In fact I embrace more as I get older the uniqueness of those years. As for how others see me .. less and less I care.
I have been in, on and through around fifty communities in as many years. These pages have images of places I have lived, worked and visited in some meaningful or professional capacity. More recent photos are my own. Those from the past are by family members and colleagues. For the obvious gaps I have tried to source photos from that time, from the internet and some from an unpublished memoir.
To those I hope one day will want to know more, these pictures are for you, and I trust add some images to an interesting tale..
I had an idea to convey the contrast between the often tranquil remote community locations and the often less than tranquil lives of many who live there. As I contemplate having been a welfare worker for thirty five years, to remain effective I find it necessary to maintain a level of detachment . Ageing certainly, gaining wisdom hopefully.
This role has taken me around the country and opened up a bit of the world outside this large island we call home.
I have been asked before to detail this story as many have little idea of the vast disconnect across our affluent lucky country.
However, involving yourself in the welfare of others, no matter if sanctioned, is a sensitive business with complex often unclear, interconnected views. Much of what was seen and done must remain private which is as it should be. These times are best left for others more sophisticated to interpret.
Hopefully a few images will go towards showing where I was more so than what I did when there.
If these experiences have taught me anything it is to take it one day at a time, as you are almost always led to the right place in time.
As real as it may be it is not my place to talk about poverty, disenfranchisement, isolation, variations in quality, violence, dependency or challenges coping day to day. Nor it is my place to talk about the quiet dignity and resilience of individuals, families, workers and government officials who square their shoulders and push against the tide every day.
Others can do that with greater eloquence and passion than I. Yet I have come to know a bit about this type of work and the remote areas people live in.
More than half of my thirty five odd years in this business, and a lot of my growing up before hand, has been in out of the way places.
Throughout, I am often struck by the contrast between the beauty and harmony of the landscape in front of me and the less than satisfactory conditions over your shoulder.
It is the view in front that I have tried to capture with my photos and this is what I want to share.
I already know what I will find when I turn around.
Out of the Way Places
Looking back, the sheer amount of time spent in out-of-the-way places still surprises me.
From Gerard, Coober Pedy and Point McLeay in childhood, through Billiluna, Elcho Island, Mataranka and dozens of other communities, my life has been threaded through remote Australia like a long, slightly crooked stitch.
In my late teens and early adulthood, I thought I wanted something more “normal”. A suburban childhood, one school, one town, one stable friend group – the things other people seemed to take for granted. Later, I realised there is no “normal”. There’s just your life, and what you choose to do with the bits you can control.
I don’t talk much in detail about poverty, violence, disenfranchisement, or the day-to-day grind of people doing it tough. That’s not because those things weren’t there – they were, constantly – but because it’s not my place to tell other people’s stories in that way. Better writers, closer to the centre of those experiences, can do that with more accuracy and more right than I can.
What I can talk about is the landscape, the structures, the systems, and the fact that more than half of my thirty-five years in this line of work has been in places most Australians will never see.
The photos I keep and share are mostly about the “view in front” – rivers, roads, sky, houses, scrub, beaches, desert, townships, airstrips. The “view behind” – the case notes, the crises, the fractured families, the quiet acts of resilience – stays where it belongs: partly in memory, partly in confidential files, partly in the lives of the people who kept going.
If there’s one lesson that threads through it all, it’s this: you take it a day at a time. If you do that, more often than not, you eventually end up where you were meant to be – even if the route makes absolutely no sense at the time.
an ordinary Monday
Just an ordinary Monday …
4.45 am. Into office at home to complete 3000 word proposal to send today to politician who has taken an interest, underpinning achievements over last eighteen months (ben a few) may need up to $100,000 as this place was so run down when I got here in as to be almost non-functional. May still not make it financially. Four CEO’s in a year before me … some a bit suspect.
Improving but still long way to get up to the bottom
Good people here - mostly the bureaucrats who are unaware and remain uninformed about what it’s like here day to day most have no clue. Have to find nice way to say this on paper.
6.30 am Coffee
7.00 am Community service manager (nice lady) calls in for regular morning catch-up, coffee and collect stores for aged care centre and meals on wheels. Store bulk food in freezers at my house otherwise will be stolen. Buy in bulk as local store too expensive.
7.30 Down to the office. Usual stuff. Banking, Centrelink, flat tyres, humbug for money, community people getting mail and using phone, more humbug, who is coming to work today. (Have good reliable crew for the most part), bit of planning, staff support, what are the disabled in our community up to today, who is in town, which government mob coming, hope road closed keeps them away and I can ignore their emails and phone calls, what is happening with whatever and so on …
8.30 organise machinery for the day … grader, backhoe, rubbish collection. Most machinery on last legs, assist with running repairs, fuel, moral support etc. Out around the camp to plan day’s activities.
Hurry blokes up from store ... get to work. Over to HACC to sort out new employee tax file numbers etc.
Check with accounts to see if we are broke yet or still lurching through. Talking with community people, more humbug.
11.30 am coffee and emails.
12.00 boys back with machinery catch up and plan afternoon
12.30 lunch and meeting at home with community workers (its quiet here)
1.30 pm some TV and a feed, boys arrive to collect machinery and some tools, store in sea container my place to reduce petty theft, get on with afternoon work (new blokes are self-motivated. A real bonus, how long will this last.)
2.00 pm office for a short while then off to help part time handyman put up disabled ramp at telecentre. He is very handy … husband of school teacher. Boys arrive to help then one of them off to find missing car with kids in it. It’s the wet here and bush tracks not too flash. Gave fuel but they leave in dodgy Toyota (this relevant later). Handyman discovers one of my new boys good welder.. Immediately gives support and into it. Handy piece of knowledge.
Work pulling down fence. Will not have high barb wire fences on community this is a village not a colonial camp.
4.00 pm more emails and calls at home office. Time to call parents and the wife. All good
4.45 Community service supervisor back and end of day debrief (this I habit I instigated year ago and very beneficial for all)
5.30 Support worker having trouble with bloke with mental illness. Go to house settle him down and give him his medication. All good
6.30 Community people arrive concerned that the Toyota sent out to find the Toyota isn’t back and turns out second Toyota needs to be push started if it stalls. (See where this is going) So with other bloke off we go in the dark following dirt roads and bush tracks to look for Toyota that went to get the first Toyota. Very muddy and water over wheels at some spots. Bit of faith required when crossing creeks or several chain of submerged road (see where this is going?)
After about 40k’s I turned left instead of right in the bush at one of the creeks (The flood plains can be a kilometre or more wide) and up to the diffs in a bog hole go I.
My offsider did the digging as he told me to go that way. No good. Knew it would-be. I have had a bit of experience getting bogged on station country back in the 80”s. Satellite phone … send out another Toyota to get the Toyota that went to get the Toyota. Had a sleep … was preparing to spend night in vehicle when a Toyota turned, up hooked up chains and out in one minute. Turned around and went back same way, Missing people will have to stay missing .. water coming up at creeks during last few hours so bit slippery getting back.
11.30 pm back at camp boots three inches higher with clay.
Feed and bit on snooze on couch then bed.
5.00 am Up again online newspapers and emails correspondence to answer all sorts of admin stuff … get dressed have breakfast and more coffee
6.00 am First knock on door can I have grader on standby if cattle truck get bogged. No problem as he pulled me out of mud last night. (Needed the grader in the end as cattle truck turned over about 3.00 pm that day ... easier to put a photo than words. Didn’t finish that little adventure until around 9.30 that night)
6.30 am telephone call for half an hour with neighbouring CEO. We all need support and he had good info
7.00 am Offsider comes to collect the Toyota that went to collect the Toyota to meet the other Toyota that had got a message through that they were on their way back.
7.15 am Community services supervisor back and we start all over again ….
a not so ordinary Tuesday
living, working passing through
living
Gerard
From the tender age of four through the next eleven or so years this was my upbringing.
Coober Pedy
Desert life was something out of the ordinary at age four and five
Point McLeay
Another isolated community and another school
Port Augusta
A blend of community and industrial town life
On a whim an opportunity arose. It was time to go full circle and head back to the scrub
Touching again the life of my childhood
Billiluna
Trying to manage chaos
Elcho Island
A chance to do something I have always wanted. Island life in the tropics
Mataranka
Unplanned but ultimately very welcome. A defining moment through the opportunity, the remote locations and the people
Working
A mixture of living on communities, working within a catchment area
or engaged in some professional capacity
passing through
Road trips require a couple of things: a well balance diet of caffeine,
salt and sugar, and an excellent set of tunes
Oh, and directions
Jenn McKinlay
Everywhere else on the map
