a country practice

time has really sped past me again - already a quarter of the year has gone and i'm still not out of summer holiday mode. my beautiful 17th edition harrison's i carted all the way back from taiwan is sitting on the shelf gathering dust. my grandiose plans of one specialty a month is already 3 months behind. *shrug and sigh* only 9 months until i'm an intern! i refuse to think about it. perhaps the problem will go away if i just ignore it. *blink*

rural rotation last week and once again i love being away from routine and spending time with group a people. a couple of days in ballarat was terrible, especially the first afternoon when i smouldered in my seat with my thoughts of death and disgust. the second evening was a lot better - had fun running around trying to hit the tennis ball, then cooking dinner with everyone, then eating until we couldn't eat any more. lou baked a cake!

on to stawell (pronounced stall), a town of 7000, where we spent the whole week spending time with community health workers (didn't see a doctor once). it was boring most of the time but the people fascinated me. farmers' hands are big and rough - when you pinprick them to measure blood glucose, all the blood just disappears into the cracks in their skin. they are like the earth, smell of soil and rain and sweat, brown from the sun and work. and they are so unsophisticated, so simple in their wants - i fell in love with the people there. uni had baz and i stay 25k out of stawell at halls gap at a backpacker's called tim's place. it is a tranquil huddle of huts in the shadow of the grampions, and at night i loved reading camus, smoking and sipping bourbon under the beautiful solemn trees, amongst the watchful kangaroos that graze at the gardens, listening to the breeze and the silence (bar the occasional car that drives past and the nordic chatter in the background), and losing myself in the brilliant stars spreading all the way across the sky. it was a really awesome place (although baz woke up one night with a spider on his face).

the rest of the group had been scattered like dandelion seeds in the wind: lou and min to goroke with nick and mickey; brumbles and deb to maryborough; manny and mark to castlemaine; joe and jason to baccus marsh. i can't wait to see them all again and find out what their towns have been like. hopefully everyone's taken photos so we can see what trouble they got themselves into!