BUSH NURSING.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 841, 13 June 1910, Page 3

BUSH NURSING.

A Melbourne journalist- interviewed the two experts whom the Countess of Dudley brought out to Australia with her to organise /her bush-nursing scheme. ■ These were Miss Hughes, the general superintendent, and Mr. Boulton, the honorary treasurer and vicechairman .'. of the Queen Victoria's Jubilee'. Institute for Nurses, administering an annual income •of £12,000: "Wo have no desire to assume any special knowledge of your conditions," Mr. Boultori said. i'That is the reason why it. is not possible just yet to publish' the details of tho schemo which wo aro assisting to draw up. It is necessary ; to submit tho scheme to parsons with special knowledge in each State,' in order that modifications which a;e advisable to make it applicable to all parts of Australia may bo made. Then, too, Miss. Hughes and I will visit some of .tho bush districts, in order to .ascertain how far tho needs there resemble thoso with which we ~aro:fa'miliar, and how far they will requiro special and peculitu provision. The scheme is an Australian scheme, "and will iJiTlaunched in all the States simultaneously.'"':' ' "Then, too," said Miss Hughes, '.'the:,conditions under which some of our| purses work aro perhaps not so very:,different from yours as . you imagine. There ' aro parts of Ireland, for example, where the isolation: is .very great, and tho circumstances of the people terrible." "It Connomara and Donegal," Miss Hughes • wont on, "there are such places as this: a little settlement of four houses, whero Irish is practically tho only language; isolated homes, four and five miles out, round-about hills and bogs between, with hardly, tracks across them; the nearest doctor 30. miles away. The cabins aro very primitive; you may find tho cattle accommodated alongside the wall of tho house, and the chickens clucking all over the room." "Achill Island'is another of these isolated places," said Mr. Boulton. "Yes," Miss Hughes went on, "to get. to if our nurse's used to have to cross, two arms of the sea.. There are similar places now whero they have to wade oyer at low tide; 'or sometimes a pony will be brought, and they will cross riding behind tho man on the pony. And there are places .where the nurse lias almost to be hoisted- uphill, pushed from behind and pulled from in front. There are parts of Scotland, too, such as Glencoe, whero the nurses have great distances and very rough country to traverse. I think that perhaps out here you do not realise how great some of our distances are, . and what isolation there can-bo in parts of the United Kingdom." u .

"And then the organising work," Miss Hughes continued, "is just what we went through at tho outset in England. It seems absurd now that we ever thought it . difficult, all the differences, and jealousies, and initial stumbling-blocks have completely disappeared, and everything has come right so smoothly and'well."