Outback Exodus (3 page)

The 4
th
of January dawns hot and dry again and we rise, feed the children and the dogs and pack up the fire truck to start our journey to the next town. It’s going to take some time to travel the fifty miles between towns with the damage to the roads from the earthquake, but this is a journey that has to be made. There have to be other survivors out there and we need to find them.

Banding together with others is going to mean that we will be stronger and hopefully we will find
others with skills in many areas and be able to form some sort of community.

With the children settled into the cabin of the truck with the dogs
, we set off after one last look at what was left of the town where we used to live. Unrecognisable now as John Creek, just a pile of twisted debris with a pall of dust still hanging in the air, thickened a little with every after shock that rumbles through the ground. We were getting used to the frequent rumbles and the sounds of rubble shifting each time and had learned to navigate around the broken township. Now it was time to move on to Smithtown.

Smithtown, population 5,000
, lies due east of John Creek and is the main service centre for our rural area. Shops, schools, a hospital and a small airport bring people from the surrounding smaller towns and villages there to resupply and Rhys and I are hoping that others have been able to make their way there.

The drive to Smithtown was slow and we had many stops to clear fallen trees and many diversions across the paddocks to avoid crevasses and sand
bogs that had blocked the road. There were fences down everywhere and cattle and sheep wandered the roads causing further dangers to vehicles. Five weary hours later we see the township ahead and things look no better here than at John Creek. The dust pall is bigger and there is smoke mixed into the dust from burning buildings. The destruction is on a massive scale with hardly any buildings untouched, so many have little left standing and the fires have burned through great areas of the township. The suburban sprawl and smaller blocks of land mean that once the fires started it jumped from house to house very quickly.

We can see the hospital sitting atop the hill in the centre of town and it looks relatively undamaged, just a few shattered windows and some of the brick façade has fallen from the clock tower at the top. As most of the frontage is covered with a vine it is possible that the damage is worse
than we can see. The vines may be hiding it from view. We will know more when we get to the building. It is the first place we will head for as it would be a refuge for the injured and for those assisting them. I just hope that there are others here who have survived.

Pulling up on the front lawn of the hospital we see that things are not as intact behind the façade as we thought, but that there is movement and life in the building. The automatic doors are wedged open just enough to get a stretcher through and inside the casualty department there are people milling about.
Not many people and most have bandages on their bodies covering the wounds from the quake. Shock and confusion abound around the department and the staff members are overwhelmed by the number of people who have injuries that they are unable to treat. The theatres are damaged and there are so few personnel to perform surgery. With only three Doctors and six nurses left and over two hundred survivors with injuries ranging from minor to major there is little hope of being able to save everyone, and so many will not survive today or the days to come. I help where I can throughout the day. My old skills coming to the fore, I tend to minor wounds, check on drips and give pain medications. I do find myself present at the deaths of so many we are unable to help as they succumb to their injuries, the only help we can give them is pain medication so they do not suffer unduly. Sadness rules the memories I will carry of this day, closing the eyes of small children for the last time, seeing mothers and fathers crying for those already lost or for those who will be lost, it breaks my heart. Soon I am weeping too, along with the grieving community, grieving for them, for the friends I have lost and for myself and the life that was and will never be again.

In the meantime Rhys has found somewhere to set up camp and has pitched the tent and settled the children. The area is a cleared grass lawn close to the hospital, but with no buildings close and no trees. Ever mindful of the aftershocks, he has chosen well. The dogs are tied to the fire truck, one on each
of the two sides, at the rear and the house dog is in the cabin. This will prevent others from taking what little we have, which is little enough to survive on for a few days and we do not know when we will be able to get more supplies. We are hoping that the government is able to help, but nothing has been heard here at Smithtown as to other survivors. We presume that we are on our own and take precautions to ensure that we can keep the children safe and the supplies as intact as possible. We will share with others, but under our own terms and not surrender to pressure. The dogs will be a good deterrent to those people who believe that they have the right of strength and might during these situations to take from others.

As darkness falls we huddle around the tent, talking about what we have seen and done during the day and wondering how many have survived in other towns and villages throughout the country. We are now f
our days out from the quake and no contact from outside our area has been heard and survivors are trickling in slowly from the outlying villages to Smithtown. Yes, there are survivors, pitifully few though and most are injured, many are actively grieving the loss of family members and friends and everyone is in shock.  That shock makes us all vulnerable at the moment and I wonder to myself how vulnerable we are, Rhys and I, three small children and four dogs.

As the stars begin to sprinkle
the sky we settle for the night, curled up with the children and puppy in the tent. Rest is very necessary for us now, it feels safer here, but how much safer I do not know. My thoughts run through the day as I compose myself for sleep. Visions of what I have seen, done and experienced over the last few days dance behind my closed eyelids and sleep is slow to come, but come it must as my weary body craves rest and recovery.

Sometime later I awake and s
cramble out of the sleeping bag as I hear a low growl from Girlie who is tied to the fire truck. Ever alert, she is telling me that someone is around. There must be men around too as Girlie is one dog that cannot abide men due to abuse when she was young. I quietly move towards the flap of the tent and peer out. Hearing a rustle behind me I glance back and see Rhys also getting out of his sleeping bag. I signal for him to remain quiet until we know what is going on.

Girlie, Duke and Buster begin to bark and I decide that I have to expose myself to whoever is outside and find out what is going on. I quietly open the flap up and step out into the cool night air. Glancing left and right trying to detect movement in the darkness.

Over to the left I see five people walking towards our tent and they are carrying bundles in their arms. I can make out the figures of three men and two women and the bundles carried by four of the adults are small children wrapped in blankets and the other young male is carrying food and water for them. My eyes blink once or twice and then I recognise one of the figures as my friend Krystal, her partner Raymond, and their children Steve, Sandy and Thomas. With them are Paul and Sandra with little David and Carol. Friends, good friends and they have survived. My heart overflows and tears are running down my face as I run to help them with the children and hug and hold my friends. We are a bigger band now, but we are together and stronger for it.

Krystal and I nursed together many years ago and she was up at the hospital and had heard that there was a retired nurse from John Creek arrived with others today and took a chance on it being me. Raymond and Rhys are old friends who went to school together and although their lives had taken different tracks had always kept in touch. Krystal’s friends Paul and Sandra and their children had also survived the earthquake as both families had been camping down at the lake near Smithtown and had
been sheltered by canvas, had they been at home it is doubtful that anyone would have survived as both houses were totally destroyed and one had been consumed by the fire that had raged through the western quarter of the town.

Our band of adults now consists of two nurses, a shop keeper, Raymond who is a mechanic, Paul is an engineer and Sandra is a designer of beautiful clothes. The children, eight in all now, range in age from 14 year old Thomas down to tiny six month old Caren.
Out of the darkness Raymond’s dog, Jet, appears and a great amount of tail sniffing and wagging starts among the dogs. A reunion is soon underway and stories of survival are swapped and questions asked and answered as we find out what has happened to other friends, family and people in the business community. The fate of many of our friends is uncertain, but then we expected that from the damage we have seen and we sadly conclude that many of our friends just did not make it out of their homes as the earthquake struck.

We shuffle around the children in the ten
t and settle them for the night. The adults huddle outside the tent and the talking and comparing of experiences continues. We tell of the earthquake and the fear that we felt, the aftermath and our first impressions of the devastation. Then the tears come to us all as we talk about the searches we made through the rubble of our towns and the lost friends and family and the loss of our lives as we knew them. This night is for sharing our sorrows, talking through our grief and for building bonds within our group. Those bonds will be strong, lifelong and will carry us into the uncertain future that is now such a part of our world.

As we talk the stars and moon wheel across the sky and the first streaks of daylight appear on the horizon. A new day begins amongst the devastation wreaked by the earthquake and what it will bring is a mystery and one that will be solved in the coming hours. We sit on the hill top and watch as the first rays of the rising sun pick out the rubble piles that were once homes and
shops; we watch the dust rising along the sunbeams. Smoke still hovers in parts of the town, less now as the fire has consumed most of the combustible materials and smoulders in small areas. Starving pets wander in and out of the wreckage of homes looking for the families who have always fed them and not understanding where they have gone or why. The sight of all of this silences the conversation and we just sit and stare at what was once a thriving township in the dust filled outback of Australia.

The children start to stir and we prepare breakfast for them, feed the five dogs and get ready to start the day. Sandra will care for the children today while Rhys, Paul and Raymond join the pitifully small group of searchers who are going house to house looking for survivors while Krystal and I will go to the hospital to assist with those who have survived and are injured. Krystal’s older son Thomas asks permission to go with the men to help look for others and after some discussion Krystal and Raymond decide that he can go as long as he is with one of the men in our group. The children have been exposed to so much death that there is no longer any point in sheltering them from it. Sandy will stay and help Sandra with the younger children though, at 12 years old he will be a good assistant for Sandra and a playmate for the younger ones. With these plans made we all hug one another and move off to face our day.

Walking into the hospital Krystal and I are greeted by the exhausted staff who have worked through the night and after a handover of the patients who will be in our care for the next few hours we start work, dressing wounds, many of which have now become infected, checking drips and bathing those who are unable to wash themselves. Clean linen is now becoming scarce as are medications to treat the infections and relieve the pain and we can only give painkillers to those whose need is highest. We fear that there will be no resupply at all for some considerable time, if ever. The uncertainty means that we must preserve our stocks for the people who have the greatest need or for those who it will help the most. Need is now taking over want in this disaster, the lack of communication with the rest of the world is making decisions for us we would never make under normal circumstances.

I have at least three patients who will not make it through the day and all we can do is make them as comfortable as possible, wash them down with cool water and hope that their suffering is not too much. Infection is rampant throughout their bodies and there
are few drugs left to fight major infections as much of the drug stocks have been depleted due to the high infection rates. Sadly I minister to these patients knowing that we cannot help them. It is up to their bodies to fight this last battle, but it is a battle they will probably lose and all I can do is to sooth them when they cry out and try to make sure that during their last moments they have the sound of a caring human voice and the touch of gentle hands. Some patients, however, will survive their injuries and those are the ones we must work hardest to make sure that they do. They are young, strong and have plenty of fight in them. The trauma of what has happened has not destroyed their will to live, nor have their injuries or the depravation of what now amounts to a third world hospital situation. They will heal and will go forward to make new lives in this world. This gives much pleasure to all of us who are caring for them, in this area of the hospital there is laughter, smiles and through the pain there is the joy of survival, the joy only known to the young. Those of us who have faced the situation outside know that there is much work to be done and many lives lost. We have to rebuild now and scatter from the townships because of the unburied dead who are now so numerous that the survivors are unable to give them the attention that they deserve. Disease is now a big worry and we are on constant watch for it amongst those that have survived, in particular the injured, the very young and the very old, all of whom are vulnerable to infections. 

Lunchtime brings food and conversation as those who are able cook for those who cannot. We feed
those who cannot feed themselves and then eat ourselves. So many things are running out in the township now that food is becoming an issue and some of the men have gone out and foraged for fresh vegetables and fruit in the gardens of the town and others have taken guns and hunted down wandering cattle and shot them for food. We have to be aware though of the supplies that we cannot replenish so easily and ration things like flour and sugar. The shops in the main shopping centre, though damaged, are supplying these things at the moment, and an armed guard has been placed at each shop to make sure that no one takes more than their share. We have to share what resources there are and make sure that everyone has a fair and equal share.

A meeting of all survivors has been called for tonight
at the sports stadium to enable fair division of work and supplies, to call the role of survivors and their skills and to discuss the options that we have upon leaving Smithtown. We must plan where to go, how to get there and what to take with us. We need to be as self-sufficient as possible on this journey. Lists will be made, checked, remade and rechecked over and over in the next few hours and days. We cannot afford to make mistakes with what we need. Shops, homes and offices will be scoured to ensure that we have what we need and then we can pack up our band of survivors and make our way to our next destination.

The day draws slowly towards sundown and our shift change. During handover I have to report that sadly two of the expected deaths on my patient load have happened and that the last one is just hanging in there at the moment and with hope her suffering would soon be over. I can also report that two of the younger patients are doing well and are up and about. Discharge is going to be an issue though as there are no family members left to care for them. This is a problem with several of the children and will also have to be discussed during the meeting tonight. We will not abandon any child or adult who has survived.

The day has been punctuated by aftershocks, some small and some much larger ones. We are getting to the stage where we don’t feel the little ones so much now, but the larger ones bring fear and rain plaster down from the ceilings of the old building. I for one am not sure how much longer the old place will stand up to this and ask for this to be included in the list for discussion tonight.  We may need to move everyone to a tent hospital outside for the safety of both the patients and the staff. As it turns out I am not the only one who is concerned about this and it has already been listed for discussion.

Now it is time to head back to our camp site and find out how the others fared through the day, relax a little before the meeting and eat. My body craves food and rest badly at the moment, but as I am one of the healthy ones I have to keep going until others are strong enough to join the
communal effort. I smell the food before I get to the tents pitched close to the fire truck and I walk faster drawn towards that wonderful smell and the light of the fire.