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Outback Australian Characters by Fine Poets
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Outback Australian Characters |
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Art and Culture,Entertainment,Poetry
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In this article, Finepoets.com describes the kinds of characters they met in outback australia who read the poetry of Banjo Paterson, Henry Lawson and CJ Dennis. Dr Robert Royle People joke about Dr Robert Royle working for the RFD Medical Service. In the light of his somewhat imperious manner, they reckon he’s royal by name and nature. Robert’s going a bit troppo on his own in the bush, but underneath it all, he is just sad. It’s lonely in the bush without a woman and there’s no point going to town looking for one. What privacy can the local doctor have? Welcome to Monto, Population 717 says the sign. What a joke. The bullet holes say it all. b-o-r-i-n-g. Robert Royle had a wife but she died. It’s weird to be a doctor and have your wife die on you. It’s not meant to happen. His patients trust him as a doctor, but it’s not like he has any friends. It was his wife who had the social skills and the relationships in town. He gardens to fill in his non- clinic time and he makes sure there’s not much of that. He’s plotting his way out of Monto. Royle is tyrannical on the job. Canberra is sick of him. They’re refusing the D.W.S. classification he needs to get an unsuspecting overseas doctor in to take his place. “District of Workforce Shortage”. Another bloody Canberra acronym. His current dirty tricks campaign is the only thing that keeps his depression in check. This week he’s told them he’ll refuse to do any local obstetrics unless they give the clinic the D.W.S. he wants. Last week, he said he’d stop his nursing home consults. And he did. Canberra realises he means business. They hate him even more. Finding a replacement for himself is the only way out of town that this principled GP can see. The truth is, he wouldn’t leave Monto in the lurch. It was his father’s practice once. And Mum is still around. In the nursing home. Very convenient for a doctor wanting to check up on his patients without being seen to do so. Dr Monika Schreiber A third generation South Australian from the Barossa Valley, Monika Schreiber might as well have been a nun. Love has passed her by, she doesn’t know why, nor is she particularly concerned about it. She is attractive in a plainspeak sort of way, straightforward in manner, and not that interested in the ways of men. Professionally she finds them easier to deal with than women, but that is about as far as her analysis and observation goes. She has a somewhat masculine bearing and some of her colleagues wonder about her sexual orientation. She’s oblivious to that kind of gossip, she simply gets on with her job as an RFD. Medicine suits her. She likes it, she finds it absorbing and it is sufficiently absorbing to keep her from being lonely. She is one of the few full time female GPs under 40 in South Australia. Demographically she is becoming a rare species and Canberra knows how valuable a commodity she is. Most of the others go part time in order to bring up their families, while the young male doctors all seem to be becoming specialists. She meets Dr Robert Royle because he grows epiphyllums, as does she. She wants to meet him to see what he’s got. The idea that there is a plant that thrives on nothing but air and water is appealing to her. Falling in love is not on her agenda, but when it happens it turns her world upside down and she’s not ready for it. Divisional Manager Dr Michael Cameron Now an administrator, colleagues variously think the no longer practicing Michael Cameron is overly ambitious, a dobber and hopefully about to shoot himself in the foot. He is pigheaded and resigned to getting his respect and pleasure elsewhere: Canberra mostly. There is sex in politics and politics in sex and he seems equally adept at both. He has a wife back in Melbourne. The travelling RFD life has some advantages but you can only fool some people some of the time…. Dr Brilliance Mumbaiwa A surgeon, Mumbaiwa has been reduced to part time GP–ing in one of the more remote RFD clinics, by virtue of his recent arrival status. He’s still on a temporary resident’s visa and needs to do his seven years in the bush before he can resume surgical work. He is an African prince amongst thieves. The locals in this part of the Territory are only here because they couldn’t survive out of gaol in any other place. They’re a mean, rough as guts, dangerous lot, dealing amphetamines and women to truckies, spare parts and weapons to anyone who can pay. They’re boozed or amped up most of the time. Trips are measured in slabs of beer. They make it hell on earth for everybody in the area. Only somebody who didn’t know better or had no alternative would take on the RFD job at this clinic. Dr Mumbaiwa is far from everything he understands. There are few women, and even fewer that he cares to speak with, let alone anything else. He hates the food, but doesn’t know how to cook for himself: he always had servants at home. He hates the local Top Enders, and they’re not used to a black man with attitude, especially not one given to wearing pale blue caftans at the weekend. He blew it on day one by putting an ad in the local paper advertising that his clinic had fresh water. A bit of cultural training by the AMA wouldn’t go astray. How long can he last? The favourite poem of Dr Mumbaiwa is The Integrated ADjective by John O'Brien The Integrated Adjective John O'Brien Outback Australia Jack Thompson
Related Articles -
Australian Outback, John O'Brien, Jack Thompson, The Integrated Adjective,
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