A Country Nurse: From Wave Hill to rural Queensland and almost everywhere in between

by Thea Hayes

Thea Hayes spent twenty years living and working on Wave Hill Station in the Northern Territory. She arrived as a twenty-two-year-old nurse from Sydney, but when she left in 1979 she was married with four children and eager for her next adventure.And what twists and turns her new life in rural Queensland had in store. From a stint running a corner shop in the small town of Toogoolawah to dairy and cattle farming and working as a nurse in hospitals and nursing homes, Thea's life was eternally colourful. At the age of sixty-five, after losing her husband Ralph, Thea moved to London to work as a nurse and travel around Europe. Back home in Australia, she found a second chance at love with a country boy from WA, and her new life with Bob began with a caravan, a dangerous farming floodplain and a swag full of laughs. A Country Nurse charts Thea's rich and inspiring life, from Wave Hill to North Stradbroke Island, London to the Riverina in NSW, and just about everywhere in between. This is the story of an ordinary girl from Wollongong who has lived her extraordinary life to the fullest.

Genres: Nonfiction

270 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 7, 2020

Reviews

[TheCosyDragon · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Thea Hayes spent twenty years living and working on Wave Hill Station in the Northern Territory. She arrived as a twenty-two-year-old nurse from Sydney, but when she left in 1979 she was married with four children and eager for her next adventure.”

This is more like a teaser rather than a collection of stories. Although the chapter headings lead me to believe that each chapter would be its own little narrative, instead the narrative seemed to jump around a lot. There’s too much packed in, and not enough details.

This doesn’t have the personal details that I need to be entranced by a book. I wanted to hear about Thea’s personal connection with some of her palliative care patients, or a stronger link to her customers in the shop. Even her brush with cancer seemed indifferent, and I didn’t actually care about her family members enough to remember their names. I also felt that her views on Australian Aboriginal treatment were quite antiquated and not well informed. If they aren’t how she saw them, she should do something about it!

My mom was a nurse, and she collects nursing fiction (she’s also impossible to buy presents for!). Thus I’m always on the lookout for more fiction that she might enjoy. Would I normally fork out $29.99 for this book? No, I definitely wouldn’t. Maybe if someone was potentially interested in nursing stories, but enjoyed a loose narrative by a nurse, this would be a book for them.

Did you enjoy this goodreads review? If so you may find it useful to visit my blog The Cosy Dragon . I regularly post new reviews on a variety of genres.

[Jae · Rating 2 out of 5]

Badly written. Not interesting. How did this ever get published!!!

[Rhonda · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great hard-working life story to be shared - loved the adventurousness of her later life including still working as a nurse at 79. The writing was very straightforward, with a lot of "I did this, I did that".

Recently published authors should note how she described how much work she did to promote her first memoir, which I'm inspired to track down.

[Georgie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️