Oberon

(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.

Challenge Yourself

Make an Impact

Join us!
 

I'm David McMurray, and I'm the officer for the Oberon Heritage Railway. 

Well, for me, Oberon represents heritage and history, and we're blessed here in Oberon with five museums within the railway precinct. There's three: the Railway Museum, the Oberon District Museum, which is right next door to us, and the Skydive Motorcar Museum just down the road. We have a Military Museum, which is a fantastic museum, and just around the corner from us, there's another museum which is privately owned and is just a wonderful collection of tractors, trucks, and other memorabilia. 

And if you wander in the main street, you'll find all sorts of interesting things happening. 

We've got a number of very historic buildings you can visit, all of those buildings. And at the same time, you can stop at any one of our lovely cafes and have a coffee or a light meal. For the community here, well, you certainly want to come back.

Hello, I'm Meg. I live in Oberon, and I've lived here for nearly 37 years. 

My husband and I were posted here originally as teachers, and when we first moved here, we thought, "Hmm, we'll only stay here about four or five years." But the qualities of Oberon, and the true country town that Oberon is, and the country spirit, and the friendliness of the people here speaks for itself when 37 years later, I'm still here. 

We live in Oberon because we love the country spirit, we love the freedom that we have in a country town. It's not too far from Sydney, and that's one of the special things about this place. We want people to come just that little bit further from the mountains to get that real country spirit, that creativeness that Oberon offers, and that friendly atmosphere. We want people to come back to Oberon.

Music.

I'm Cathy Sachets, and I've got the absolute privilege to represent the community of Oberon as their mayor. 

I'm standing here now, and this is one of my favourite places. You know, Oberon, it's the Oberon Common, and it's our community space. I spend quite a bit of time down here, as do other community members. I walk around here every morning, my family come up, or friends come up, we always wander over here, and I show them some of the features of this lovely space, including the memory wall and the Rotunda. And of course, we've got the lake here with our resident ducks. And when we finish here, just a few meters up the road is the Main Street, and we go and we might have a coffee, and I will introduce them to the local shops. 

There's a beautiful antique shop there that they love to browse around. It's a real opportunity, and it's a lovely thing to do when I have visitors and friends. And of course, we've got so much local produce here that just going into the supermarket, it's available because the meat there is actually grown here in Oberon. So come back to Oberon, we want you back. You'll have a very warm welcome here.