Aboriginal women of this region have the prerogative of living much of their lives without bras or any other corsetry. They let their bodies grow as they will, although you can tell a woman is going to town because she might be plucking at her little bush beard with tweezers absent-mindedly while talking to you
Read MoreA spindly-limbed lizard sped up the fly screen on the door. It was the type that gets up and runs on its back legs when the ground gets too hot to touch. The lizard’s deftness reminded me that many plants and animals thrive in the desert heat. There is a sweet spot for them, somewhere within the scorching temperatures .
Read MoreThe waterhole surrounded by rock carvings is not marked for people to visit. There is no reference to the millennia of art, learning and healing there. It is nothing but a miner’s project now. They will smash it all up.
Read MoreWhen it did ring, I would sit bolt upright in bed, wide awake at the tinny burble of the Nokia tune. The ringtone of my phone carved a track in my brain, an ear worm that never went away.
Read MoreThe non-verbal skills of many Anangu people are born of hunting. If you’re looking for someone, you can make a sign for that person across a street or car park. The person you are signalling might use their lips or eyes to point in the appropriate direction.
Read MoreI help my father-in-law gather buckets of apples. They’re crisp and sweet, the first crop of decent apples from a tree he planted twenty years ago. The tree has survived years of hatred and resentment and being dismissed as useless, to bring a bounty of exceptional fruit.
Read MoreI was exposed to a lot of people who had never seen dreadlocked hair up close. “I see, it’s a hat!” said one nurse looking closely at my braided locs. Another told me that she told her children to brush their hair or they would end up looking like me.
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The little boat was sunk in the water to its gunwales, the sea a few inches from my resting arm. I smiled up at ‘Ana and Mathiu as a wooden pallet was put onto the roof of the boat. Perhaps there were also a couple of passengers up there. “That’s your life-raft if you need it,” laughed ‘Ana as the pallet passed over my head.
Read MoreThe island boat was a sturdy gun metal cruiser, not large but strong. Its bottom slapped loudly over the waves. Lan was driving. I remembered him from my days working in the islands. He knew the ocean there like a city kid knows a peak-hour crowd.
Read MoreI didn’t want to get too close to the mother whale. The calf looked tiny in comparison to its mum but it was about the size of a sedan. When they’re born they’re about a tonne. If that one was a week old it might have been one and half tonnes already.
Read More"I was scared the first time I jumped in with humpbacks, that’s for sure. I’d seen them coming down towards us. And I just thought: I wouldn’t mind having a look, just see what these things look like underwater. So I put a mask and snorkel on and swam out a little bit from the boat and waited."
Read MoreSpiders that are as big as a small bird are hard to kill. I pulled a piece of sturdy paper from my work bag and tried to persuade the spider to step onto it, promising her a long and happy life in the grass of the highway exit.
Read MoreBack at our more peaceful house, the list of missing things had new additions every day. One of us would wake the other in the dead of night: “Have you seen my kitchen scissors?”
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“I know not to wear the red, y’know. Where I’m from in Queensland we love to wear it, but I understand the men here don’t want you wear it. So I don’t.”
My first response was to bridle. How could a culture ban a colour? Especially such a powerful and energising colour?
Read MoreThe Key Feature Problem exam frustrated me. If the answer was ‘cancer’ and you wrote ‘malignancy,’ you were incorrect.
For those of us working across cultures, translating medical language into plain English, this was irritating. I failed the KFP twice, by four points and then by one point six points.
Doctors working with me, excellent judges of my abilities, wrote letters of appeal to the College on my behalf, to no avail. The exams cost thousands of dollars in fees, study materials and lost work time.
Read More“It’s the nature of medicine. They’re hurt and we learn,” he said, looking over his reading glasses.
“I reckon when you’re an intern they should just give you a patient to kill and get it over with. As a doctor, you’re going to make a mistake and someone will die. It’s just a matter of time.”
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“If Europeans could build a pressurised metal tube that carries us through the air, why wouldn’t Aboriginal people make similar advances in knowledge?
Aboriginal people were talking and travelling and lying under bright stars. Is it impossible that they created a body of knowledge that encompassed astral travel as an aspect of healing?”
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“You’re going to have to burn them all!” Selva said. Her boss disapproved. Selva was credited in the film and her boss wasn’t. I felt like I’d been knifed. “Please Aunty, there must be another way.” “No, they’ll all have to be called back and destroyed.”
Read MoreI yelled to Mat’s housemate who was listening to music in his room.
He came running.
“I need you to call an ambulance. Tell them I’m having to hold Mathew’s airway open.”
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“We’re med students, Matty. We get every disease we study. I thought I had porphyria last week, only because I’d eaten beetroot.”
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Slot Canyon photograph in banner by Sebastian Boguszewicz
Creative Writing by Dr. Janelle Trees
Photo: Claudia Jocher
I'm a doctor of Aboriginal descent living and travelling with my photographer wife, Claudia. I see myself as a bridge between 'races' and cultures, gay and straight, the child and the crone, arts and sciences. I am inspired by Nature, including humans in all our splendid individuality.
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