Page 2 of Ruby’s Outback Love

CHAPTER ONE

Bourke NSW

Present Day

RUBY

I sat at the small table in the kitchen of my home and sipped at a steaming cup of tea. The past month had been difficult and no matter how many hours I worked; it didn’t help.

I still couldn’t put my encounter with Sargeant Phil Thacker at Barrawon Station, behind me. We had been at the station for a clinic and surgery and, Phil, to check out a report of two trespassing shooters. As the man in charge of the station, I’d assumed he would keep company with a desk. Apparently, that wasn’t the case and on this particular day, he’d felt the need to get a dose of fresh air out in the field.

Our encounter hadn’t been friendly and Drew, the head of our team, had been chewing me out over it ever since. Now, Linda wanted to meet with me over breakfast and ‘chat.’

Let me explain about the team I was a member of….

The man in charge was Dr Andrew Lowman, a brilliant and compassionate eye surgeon who had been head of Ophthalmology at a major Sydney hospital. He’d been in charge of our team for six months when I’d joined just over a year ago.

Every second week, on a Monday, he would fly from Sydney to Dubbo. From there, the FDS King Air plane would transport him, Cameron O’Brien, an anaesthetist and Linda Freemont, a nurse, both from Dubbo Hospital, to Barrawon Station which was around three hours south east of Bourke. I’d meet them both there, completing our team.

First up after our arrival would be surgeries, which had been scheduled two weeks before, followed by a clinic and scheduling of surgeries for the week after next. The routine didn’t change much. We’d all stay the night and catch up on the local gossip with Viv, Gary and their station hands, over a barbeque.

The following day, we’d be taken to Bourke via two four-wheel drive vehicles. Barry drove out to the station from town to take care of the post-op appointments. His assistance helped our schedule to work.

James, or Finn – depending on who the pilot was for that day, would remain in case one of our patients needed to be flown out urgently. If all was okay, they would stay the night and return to Dubbo the following morning with the plane.

We’d spend two days in Bourke where we had a mix of post-op consults, new patients and surgeries. Drew would catch up with Barry, who also took care of the eye patients in town while he was gone. After a couple of days, on Thursday, two four-wheel drive vehicles would transport us to Tarara Station. It ran both cattle and emus and was situated around four hours north east of Bourke.

Either Finn or James would meet us at the station on Thursday afternoon, spend the night and fly us back to Dubbo on Friday after post-op consults had been taken care of.

Around three months ago, this routine had changed. Andrew had bought a beautiful old homestead a few kilometres from Bourke. The property ran cattle and would supplement his income. He’d kept the foreman and men from the previous owners, quit his prestigious job down in Sydney and sold his apartment.

Now he no longer needed to commute, our schedule had changed. Every second week, on Monday, we left Bourke before dawn to drive out to Barrawon Station. Drew operated all morning, consulted in the afternoon and did post-op consultations early on Tuesday morning.

We no longer needed to spend Tuesday and Wednesday in Bourke now Drew was a resident of the town, so we included Rossmore Station, two hours north east of Brewarrina, to our schedule.

Diane and Zane Bugden owned Rossmore Station, around three hundred thousand acres of cattle country and they employed eight staff. They had been more than happy to make accommodation available for our overnight stays and two rooms for consulting and surgery. They were what my Aunt called, ‘salt of the earth’ people, always happy to pitch in and do what they could for their community.

After post-op appointments on Wednesday morning, we headed to Tarara Station. Surgery took place on Wednesday afternoon, post-op and regular appointments filled Thursday and after staying overnight, we’d drive back to Bourke while Cam caught the FDS plane back to Dubbo. It was an excellent schedule and we were able to make a real difference to the expanding communities.

Drew would spend the week we weren’t travelling, consulting and operating at the hospital until a new clinic being built in partnership with Dr Barry Bright - the only GP in town, was completed. The clinic would be state of the art with an operating theatre, three consulting rooms, large treatment room and full-time blood collection facility. Necessary scanning and x-ray would continue to be done at the hospital. The new building was ideally situated in Oxley Street and was well under way. Once it was ready, Barry and Drew would leave their current practice locations and move in.

Kerry Williams, an anaesthetist at the hospital had been helping out on the weeks we were in town, but Cam had decided, as soon as the clinic was finished, he would move to Bourke permanently. The hospital had been more than happy to have his services part-time even after he’d made it very clear to them, the team was his priority. He was a superior anaesthetist and would make an incredible addition to the staff of a small country hospital.

It had come as a shock to us all when Cam had decided to leave the city of Dubbo and join us in the small country town.

I sipped my tea and smiled. Cameron O’Brien aka Cam, was our Casanova. Our playboy. He’d left a trail of broken hearts everywhere he went. So many women had attempted to sink their polished hooks into him, but Mr Tall, Blonde and Sexy had managed not to become snagged.

Despite what I considered his demeaning and irresponsible ways with women, Cam was a wonderful doctor and competent anaesthetist. He had a way about him which put even the most nervous of patients at ease.

Linda Freemont, my offsider, was rapidly becoming a good friend, we seemed to have a special connection and I found myself telling her things I had never told anyone else.

She was an efficient, compassionate and caring nurse who had taken over a few months earlier when our previous nurse, Ally, had been forced to step down because of a difficult pregnancy. Ally and her husband, Rick, were now proud parents of a healthy baby boy and the whole team had ‘adopted’ him as their godson.

Linda and I were perfect together, completely in synch to the point of almost reading each other’s minds when something was needed. I’d liked her from the first time we’d met which was unusual for me, I neither liked nor trusted many people at all. My trust had been broken, smashed to smithereens, many years earlier.

Ally and Linda had met each other during training sessions in Broken Hill, where Linda worked for the FDS. They had stayed in close touch. When Ally had told her she was leaving her job and didn’t want to return, preferring instead to concentrate on being a mother, Linda had applied for transfer with the FDS and contacted Dubbo hospital to also replace Ally there. We later learned; she was attempting to escape a previous violent relationship.

Drew and Linda had fallen into a relationship pretty quickly and now lived together at the property he’d bought. I’d never seen two people so much in love with each other, they were meant to be together, of that I had no doubt.