Adios Mackay!

Contract done. Bank balance topped up. Back on the road again!

Our six weeks at Mackay were just lovely. The guaranteed sunshine and twenty-eight degrees every day may have had something to do with it. The convenience of a self-contained unit on the hospital grounds also made life a breeze. But it meant we missed out on our daily walks.

We started daily yoga sessions instead. Ern’s flexibility is improving markedly. Daph’s flexibility is almost non-existent… and her windy back passage during downward dog needs working on too. Despite amateurism, it’s doing wonders for the soul.

Daph has enjoyed her time here. She got to catch three babies! That’s a three hundred percent improvement from the last contract. Daph shouldn’t have caught any babies. In a private hospital, that’s the doctor's job. These women have paid their doctor a substantial amount of money to deliver their babies. But if the doctor doesn’t believe Daph when she phones to tell them we’re fully dilated (“She can’t possibly be! You must have got your examination wrong!”), then it’s not Daph’s fault that they didn’t arrive in time to witness the beautiful midwifery-led births.

Daph has learned that the private health system is a money-making business that does not offer better quality care, despite the designer price tag. It messes with every moral fibre in Daph’s being, caring for people who believe they are getting better service because they are paying for it, but knowing that it is sub-standard and misinformed, to say the least.

Daph thinks there can’t possibly be any children left in Mackay with their tonsils or adenoids. They were churned through a conveyer belt system with a “buy one, get one half price” attitude, with parents believing that removing the tonsils will improve the child’s behavioural difficulties and bedwetting. That’s what the latest “research” says. We are so lost.

Ern worked his usual wizarding wonders and helped more lost souls find their way. He was fully booked for our entire stay. Through word of mouth and universal energy, he has naturally healed a plethora of interesting subjects whose gratitude and enlightenment will pay dividends in the future.

And so, after four months away, and a multitude of life-changing experiences, we begin our slow journey home. Grateful and blessed.

This is the life. Proper.