Last week John Rovers, a North American academic, was let loose for a few days in remote Australia. Here is his story.

Lots of pharmacists drive 4WD vehicles to work and around town. Presumably, driving one of these trucks will come in handy if you ever get stuck. But let’s face it, 99.9% of the time, the most challenging off road experience for a pharmacist is driving up his driveway in Manly when it has leaves on it.

But last week, I had the chance to find out just how remote ‘remote’ actually is and when driving one of those gigantic Toyota Landcruisers with the roo bar, 4 different kinds of radios and the air intake at roof level actually makes sense. Trust me, your Porsche Cayenne would last less than a week out there and your little RAV 4 would have rattled to death by lunch time.

I spent 5 days studying drug distribution logistics on the remote Ngaanyatjarra lands of Western Australia. Remote in this case means:

(a) 10 hours west of Alice Springs or 10 hours east of Kalgoorlie
(b) 5 hours off the nearest bitumen road
(c) needing 4WD low range – WHILE YOU ARE STILL ACTUALLY ON THE ROAD
(d) heavy traffic is seeing a dozen camels in the middle of the road.

Getting stuck on the Ngaanyatjarra lands is quite a bit different than getting stuck in traffic at the Gabba after a game lets out.

I found this to be a challenging environment. Every flat surface is covered in a thin film of red dust and if you wipe it off, it will be back by tomorrow. It’s not every pharmacist who receives a request from a nurse to come over to the nurse’s house and kill a brown snake on the front porch.

Keeping a healthy diet is tough when a bag of 3 carrots costs $5 – assuming carrots are even available this week.

And yet I found this to be a place where health care workers come voluntarily and where they give every effort against long odds to improve the fairly fragile health of Australia’s indigenous people. It’s hard work but they do it without complaint and they do it well.

No doubt to a few, it’s the Australian equivalent of joining the French Foreign Legion and leaving an unpleasant or painful past behind.

But the professionals I met really do seem to enjoy their work and my hat’s off to them. I doubt they get much credit for taking on what must be the hardest jobs in health care. Good on ya! Every one of ya mugs!

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Tagged as: Australia, health, lifestyle, logistics, remote