A Luce Affiliation

When did I start watching all this TV?? When I first moved out of home in 2002, we didn't have a TV. In 2004 we got a TV, but the only show I watched was Twin Peaks- which is *practically* film. In 2006 I started watching Six Feet Under, which singlehandedly converted me to TV. Now I watch: -Mad Men -Thirty Rock -United states of Tara -The Wire -Freaks and Geeks I can't even remember them all! I keep telling myself that it's because TV is smarter now, edgier. BUT WHAT IF I'VE JUST BECOME DUMB?? A DUMB AND LAZY COUCH-SITTER?? Excuse me I have some TV to watch.

I have just started a week of night shifts. Seven long nights in a row, but in what other job do you get a full seven days off every 8 weeks?? And it's not all bad- nightshift can be freeing to the mind! As Daniel Kitson described in his awesome show 'It's the Fireworks Talking', staying up all night can make you feel INVINCIBLE!!! Or at least give you the type of meandering, loose-associations-type thought pattern that 9-5 never delivers. Last night on my drive to work I was thinking about the amazing monitoring capability of the intensive care unit. When you first start working with intensive care patients- those in an 'induced coma'- it is completely bewildering trying to figure out if they're okay or not. The senior staff will suddenly become very concerned about one particular patient, who to the casual observer, looks identical to all the other apparently sleeping patients in the intensive care unit. Of course, the senior staff are responding to th...

Sometimes I get very anxious, this doesn't seem to correspond to particular events. Some days I'll just wake feeling diffusely anxious. Today Jason suggested that he get some tranquilliser blow darts to shoot at me when I'm getting anxious. "See, I will support you with love. Love and blow darts."

We returned to Melbourne 10 days ago, and I am haunted by the sense that i have returned *from* Australia, to *another place*. My idea of Australia has grown so much that Melbourne seems like an international city, part of an international community of cities, but certainly not integral to the Australian identity. We spent a week travelling from Broome back to Alice Springs, through the Tanami desert. I had decided to read Australian books on my holiday- I read 'Cloudstreet' and 'Dirt Music' and a true crime book about Bradley Murdoch. I had attempted Cloudstreet before, and found it unbearably kitsch. A story from my parents' childhood. This time I loved it. I suppose things can seem kitsch just because they are unfamiliar.

Jason and I have made it north of the Berrimah line to Darwin. We may have caught a bit of croc fever on the way- it being clearly too early in the year for mango madness. We saw seven crocodiles on our wetlands cruise at Yellowwater, then set off intrepidly the next day to Koolpin. In order to get to this 'jewel of Kakadu', we had to cross a river containing an *actual saltwater crocodile*. I was so scared!! I told Miriam that if she was killed by a crocodile- and therefore definitely frontpage news for the croc-obssessed NT Times- I would be sure to tell them she was wearing her lovely Gorman bathers at the time of death. Crocodiles are basically primordial monsters. They sit on the banks as still as rocks, then slip soundlessly into the water and *completely disappear*. Their teeth sit outside their mouths, giving them an evil grin. On the way back we opted to scale a sheer rock face in order to avoid the river crossing.

Ahh, gloomy old day in Alice Springs. I have no contingency plans for inclement weather here! The fact that our house is at least half packed up isn't helping. Last night one of our friends reflected that it wouldn't be "so bad" moving back to Melbourne. After all, she said, "You can walk along Merri Creek and pretend that you're in nature!" Which, from a Central Australian point of view, is simply hilarious. In this town, you can ride a bike for fifteen minutes in any direction and end up in proper, unadultered BUSH. I will definitely miss the sky- 360 degree horizons!! The feeling that the sky is so big and round above me that I am actually a tiny figure in a snow-dome. It is going to take some getting used to the plush environs of a big city ED. In the department here I can sit at the main doctor's work desk, and, if I reach my hand behind me, tickle a patient's toes as they lie on their trolley. I also suspect that the Melbourne patients wi...

Today Jason and I officially became locals in Alice Springs- the Todd river has flowed three times whilst we've lived here! I will tell a story, but not in a Crocodile Dundee, or Gods-Must-Be-Crazy way, I hope. One of my patients was a middle aged Aboriginal lady, who came from a long way out bush. At least one day's drive. She had never been to Alice Springs before in her whole life. As luck would have it, she injured herself whilst here in the Big Smoke, and had to come to hospital. She sat in the cubicle looking terrified, and told me quite frankly, "I'm very scared. I've never been to Alice Springs before." She asked if her husband could be called in from the waiting room- unlike the locals, she didn't realise that most people bring a family member through to the department with them. So he came through. When I told them both that she would need to stay in hospital, her husband said- so very softly that I had to literally put my ear up to his mou...