Brewarrina

(Music)

I came here as a new grad and I've stayed on since. I've always  enjoyed working here - one of the other reasons is that I met my husband in my new grad year - and the team environment here and getting the things I get to do is second to none - you can't get to do it anywhere else.

You can Triage our here, you can canulate, venepuncture, IDCs, SPCs you name it - we can do it out here.

I am a ward nurse generally but obviously in a rural facility I am also an accident and emergency nurse, when there's a trauma or there's a need for it. 

I also do community nursing, we also have dialysis here at this facility, I've also done dialysis nursing and obviously we have palliative patients.  We have a lot of post rehab patients, so we do a lot of wound care.

The variety is on the of the things I enjoy the most about working here, also you have aged care, you have emergency and you have your normal everyday ward work, so every day is something different and you get to experience things you wouldn't see in the city as they would be swept away to a specialist unit.

I have so many more skills my friends wish they would have but don't, they don't get the opportunity with all the junior Doctors down there in the city.

My role is virtual outreach support to the nursing staff in the district, education sessions through the video conference we support the staff because they may have a question about a medication or a procedure.   For this month in May we have approximately a hundred virtual sessions offered.

When I started working here, they supported me for triage, like how to work in a rural ED. First of all if anything comes through the ED, how to handle that, I've done a vaccination course, advanced life support, so if something happens we can administer drugs.

We have excellent support from vCare which is the speciality emergency team based in Dubbo, and all the retrieval teams they can connect us with.

Here in Nyngan we are very lucky - we have the support of our managers and usually on call RN overnight.  

Because of the diverse nursing that I do I've always been able to do those extra courses whether it be palliative care, community nursing, dialysis.

We're using this technology and this education to improve, to help our nurses, support our nurses.

I've done lots of emergency courses through the district with training days on site here or just in Dubbo or in other towns and they've help further my skills give me that confidence to be in charge.

We do have more registered nurses starting, here - New Grads - which is also very enjoyable as you get to  help them and  you learn new things off them, things they are learning at uni or they have learned in other facilities, so the team is quite diverse but in a way it is very experienced and very strong.

Working in a small rural facility again, the team is not just the nurses on the ward, its actually the whole facility. I might ring a community nurses today to get an assessment with a patient that's being discharged tomorrow, I might actually speak to the front office staff about something particular about that patient, so actually everyone is involved because it is such a small community and a small facility so my whole team is everyone including the ambulance officers who walk through the door.

They're beautiful out here, I couldn't ask for a better team, they're all lovely, all supportive, you just couldn't find any, any team like it.

In a small rural facility everyone is dependent on eachother , its teamwork - if someone comes in ED everyone comes and helps you, they know what is there role and they support us in those situations, in every situation.

I had some free accommodation over at the units for 12 months and then I brought myself a house here in town - so I'm a permanents stayer.

There s no reason not to even if you don't stay out here forever the skills you'll learn in Western LHD will be transferable back in the city and the things you'll see you'll never see anywhere else.

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[Music] I'm Jess Payton, I'm a biosecurity officer for Western local land services. I'm based in Bourke but I currently service both the Bourke and Brewarrina area.

Mainly I deal with the most is pest and animal management for pest species. I also do a bit of travelling stock reserves as well and emergency management preparation and the occasional animal health case as well with the district vets.

I've got a pretty good connection growing up out here with the landholders naturally, so yeah catching up and just having that day-to-day sort of dealings with landlords just makes it my job so much easier. We've had a really really good season the last couple of months which is a good turnaround for having a drought for so long, so yeah that vibe has completely changed any sort of issue that you're looking for as a land holder or just the community yeah just call into normal local land service office or yeah contact your biosecurity office we're always around everywhere.

Spoken in local Aboriginal dialect: "we remember the people who lived before us."

For the thousands of years our elders have told us many stories of how our country came to be. We have been told in the beginning there was just flat red ground. We were told this was the beginning of our dream time. Many things happened in our dream time.

We have been told that Baiames had entered the land of the moon and the sun. We have been told that Baiames on walkabout took a giant step from Cobar to Gunderbooka, a sacred place of the Ngemba people and then he stepped over Byrock where he left the mark of his footprints on a stone and then he came here to Brewarrina.

He stopped at the waterhole known as the Gurangura and he was mighty hungry. He looked around and behind a rock wall he saw a large black fish, swimming in a pool of water. He raised his spear and crushed the fish but he was only wounded that black fish. He took off crashing through the rock wall down there and the water came gushing out after him. That fish, he borrowed deep into the hard ground to get away from Baiames but Baiames, he would have none of that. He dug after that black fish, cutting into the hard ground making large holes in the earth and as he chased the wounded fish the rushing waters filled in the holes. Biaimes chased that black fish for a long long time. See those bends, well that black fish he made those bends as he tried to escape, and do you know what happened to that black fish?

Well he got away but that doesn't matter because Biaimes and that black fish created our mighty river, which runs as far as the eye can see, and so for a while, life for our people was good. Then the big dry set in. The sun was scorching our earth and our waters were sinking. Our people faced a famine, if there is no water there is no food. No animal life, our people could die. Baiames found out and he returned to Brewarrina with his two sons. Baiames and his sons were so strong and they scattered large stones and dug up boulders sending them out into the pattern of a great fish net. This fish nets became Ngunnhu. But still no water and that evening the people gathered on the riverbank and held a big corroboree for Baiames and his sons.

Baiames took a coolerman and showed the old men how to call the rain. For hours the ground rumbled under the old men stamping feet kicking up the dust which rose high. Exhausted the old man fell to the ground and while they slept the dust clouds beefed it higher and higher swirling around Balu the moon who filled the dust clouds with rain. And then drop drop drop, the rain it poured down for days.

The people watched as the water rushed into the durungara, over the rock wall and covered Baiames stone fish traps, the noo-noo. And when the rain stopped and the flood fell, that hip-eye, the fisherman saw the fins and mouths of thousands of fish in the water. They were so happy and they rushed into the river and drove them into the Ngunnhu. Our people were hungry and then hip-eyes, they killed many fish with their speaks and their spears. As the fishermen, the hip-eyes caught the fish, they heard one of the fish grunt like a wounded animal and they saw that this fish was Baiames black fish and the black bream still runs today when you catch them. Once again Brewarrina had plenty of water. This is the story of how the Ngunnhu, Baiames stone fish traps came to Brewarrina. This is our dream time story about this special place, where we sit here today and now this is your dream time story to pass on to your children and your children's children.

English (auto-generated)

[Music]

Ar Brewarrina central school, we're like a family. The staff, the students, the community and that the town itself is just an amazing place, where there is so much potential. The students that I teach are wonderful they, always come to school smiling and they're always willing to give everything a go. I think that Brewarrina Central has a lot of programs that operate within it to make students lives and students experience at school I really full some experience. The school is a very important part for the community especially for small town like this. The parents play a big role at Brewarrina central school because they know that they have an input. Everybody has the same vision and that is to do the best for the children and I just want the students here to know, that we will always be opem for them and it's a place where they can come back to because it's a wonderful.

English (auto-generated)