Leaving? Coming? Home Again

My bags are packed and my provisions are loaded. I am now to the end of my remote Aussie adventure. In 5 short hours, I will board my 4^th trans-Pacific flight this year, which will ultimately be the last to take me away from the country that has become my second home. Since 2005, as a very naïve Graduate student and now as a Remote Area Nurse, I have spent about 3.5 years in this place. Which, given my transient record, is quite a feat in SJH’s world. I feel very comfortable and confident now in all things Aussie -- the land, people, culture and place & I dearly hate to go. However, I leave with a huge smile, even if ultimately I have no idea when I will return. I am smiling because after saying for so long that I wanted to work in Aboriginal communities, I can finally chalk the experience up as on of the greatest in my life thus far. And so, on this balmy Darwin evening, I sit here now reflecting on what the last 10 months of being in remote Australia has meant.

It’s meant that I ….

1. am comfortable with silence
2. and have grown to love terrible coffee!
3. have experienced a kick-ass sunset (if not also sunrise) every day
4. and have been profoundly educated on a culture far different from my own
5. have often been one of only a few ‘whitefellas’ anywhere within a six hour radius
6. and have seen massive amounts of desolate landscapes, only the scrub and the cattle to account for
7. witnessed births and deaths and violence and tears … and been solely responsible for rectifying each
8. understand even more so how precious a letter or package addressed to me actually can be
9. am accustomed to living with the basics, eating very blandly and being extremely happy for the small things
10. was blessed to get to share 6 weeks of it with my sister when she came over for a medical rotation. Aside from her, I’m pretty confident that no one will really understand this job and what I’ve been doing this year
11. am a better person for having to deal so intimately with a people and place where I am the outsider & the ‘whitefella’ which embodies so much negative history
12. will forever smile when I think of special people who have generously taken me under their wing to teach me about their culture and their land…and gently directed me when I made my mistakes
13. am extremely comfortable with my own company
14. have achieved my goal of working here, affording me to not have to work for the rest of the year
15. have been able to visit lots of friends and new places, such as the Great Barrier Reef with my sister, Devils Marbles and Brent & Paul’s hobbit home
16. have a deep respect for the community members who have made a positive life for themselves despite the odds
17. have grown tremendously as a clinician, having now been thoroughly exposed to all things tropical medicine across the entire life spectrum
18. trust myself and know my boundaries when it comes to what I am capable of and what I need
19. feel a bit slack on creating videos and slideshows and posting snapshots and such. No matter my desire to share my experience, I don’t feel like I maintained my steam.
20. have met some really incredible people, notably being Peter, Prue, Dallas, Emma, Sonia, Mat and Martin. I think I have gained lifelong friends from many, if not all, of these people… 
21. am a stronger, more resilient, less sheltered human being. I have been exposed to an incredible amount of ‘new’ that has filtered through me and left it’s mark. Forever, I have been touched by this land and these people

Aboriginal Australia from Stephanie Holcombe on Vimeo.