24- poles apart- Darnley island day 1

#24. Poles apart. Darnley day1

A magnificent morning flight to Darnley island. I met Sandy the traveling midwife who hops around doing antenatal visits with women local to the various islands of the Torres.  An amazing woman with what she calls the "best job in the world".

We briefly land on York Island where in 2006 the SBS series RAN - Remote Area Nurse, was filmed, then off in to the azure and turquoise wilderness of coral and sand to Darnley Island called Erub by it's locals.  First impressions was that this is what was meant by the person who first coined the term Paradise!!!

Imagine the picture perfect tropical island, surrounded by blue/green water and coral outcrops, banana and coconut palms,  mango and pawpaw trees, white salt like sand, housed dotted among the mangroves, rocky fish traps, and water so clear that you can see the ocean floor as thought there was no water.  This place is magic... Just call me Robinson!!!

Then we landed. I met Ben (the relief nurse I'm replacing) who drove me and my gear the 15 min track over the hilly volcanic terrain that is this amazing island. Ben took me to the clinic and my accommodation a 2 bedroom town house on top of the modern clinic. The view from my front verandah is nothing short if billion dollar ocean views. The ocean is across the road from the place, ocean breezes fill my unit with a fresh salty aroma as I type this blog, and I swear I can hear whales whistling outside my front door. 
This place is truly beautiful beyond description.

The clinic is run by a crack unit of health workers, who triage the patients into three categories. A health worker pile, a nurse pile and a doctor pile. The doctor resides on the island and frequently trips to other islands in the eastern region by chopper. Unless a life threatening emergency exists, the doctor only works office hours, and nurses carry the oncall pager like Saibai. emergencies are few and far between here. I'm not sure why that us, but for the obvious fact that Darnley is too far from PNG for nationals to cross with emergencies, and the general health of Darnley islanders is very well monitored by a well oiled primary health care model that benefits from a resident doctor. Saibai in contrast is so frantically busy and only gets a doctor for a couple of days a month, it is hard to get a primary health (core business) model up and running. 

In that regard from a frantically busy, swamp/mangrove boarder frontier island to a slow paced, primary care, coral white sand beach island.... The two could not be more different.  They are Poles apart!!!

In my room I unpacked my bags to find that when my bride jokingly jumped in my bag on sunday night saying "I'm coming with you", that she squashed my shampoo bottle, my jocks and socks took the hit and now smell like palmolive 2 in 1.  Not impressed honey!!!

So I'm off to admire my sunset, eat some crackers and dip admiring my ocean view, then when I'm up to it, I will wash my smalls !!!