Constant Nomad: What, There's a Town Out There?

People have asked me what Dalby's like. To be honest, I really have no idea. I drove through it on my way from Brisbane to the hospital. I remember the one thing that really struck me was how flat the surroundings were. The featureless land stretches out from either side of the road all the way to the horizon. The grand-sounding Great Dividing Range to the east, little more than a collection of hills in this part of the country, faintly breaks the otherwise straight line where land meets sky. Wheat or corn or something like that in industrial-size plots of land go right up to the road. The area being in a drought like so much of Australia, shades of brown is the predominant palette. As far as the town of Dalby goes, I'm vaguely aware that about 12,000 people live here. There's one "Main Street" where all the commercial activities take place all week until Saturday afternoon, then the whole street shuts down and tumbleweeds fill the void left by people. Then roughnecks have duels in front of the saloon and the survivor is sent to the hospital to get patched up.

Ok, I made up the last part, but what I'm saying is that, for the last three weeks, I've hardly stepped outside the hospital. It surprises me how fast I have settled into a routine: drag myself out of bed in the morning, do ward rounds with the docs, then spend the rest of the day seeing patients at A&E. My day usually ends at ten, midnight, or for a couple of nights, past midnight. Then it'd be the same routine all over again the next day.

Despite the long hours, I have been thoroughly enjoying my time at Dalby Hospital. The docs at the hospital allow James, another med student assigned to Dalby Hopsital, and me do intern-level work: do initial assessment on patients, present findings to them, and a lot of the hands-on skills like taking blood, suturing, plastering, and putting in cannulas. So even though I've been here for two weeks, I hardly know what the town looks like.

Today I leave Dalby for the town of my next placement, Chinchilla, 90 kilometers to the west. So on my way out of town, I finally get a chance to snap a few pictures. Note the absence of people in the pictures. It's not that I don't want to include the locals in my pictures. The reason is that today being a Sunday, almost all the shops are closed and the town is virtually deserted.

Entrance to Dalby's main drag