Audio Transcript
Adrian Plitzco (Host) – 00:00:02: Hello and welcome to Tune in to Care, a podcast exploring the lives of carers. In this season, we shine a light on the diversity of caring communities. From bustling cities to remote outback towns, carers come from all walks of life, and though their challenges and experiences may differ, we hear how they all share the same resilience and dedication to their caring role. Tune in to Care is produced on Aboriginal land across Australia. We acknowledge the Traditional Owners as the Custodians of this land. Tune in to Care is brought to you by Wellways Carer Gateway. Carer Gateway is an Australian Government initiative providing free services and support for carers. My name is Adrian Plitzco.
Carer – 00:01:04: So, for myself personally, I’ve been struggling, like, lately with looking after the kids all on my own. And I think it’s good to be around other adults and have a bit of yarn. I think a yarn and is a very big thing to me.
Carer – 00:01:17: I connected to it in the end, because I knew people in that community and made people know that this young lady is here to talk to you about this because I come from that community.
Adrian Plitzco – 00:01:27: Struggle for support in remote areas is not uncommon, and that’s why community and family play an important role for caregivers. In this episode of Tune in to Care, we speak to Gloria and Mossiearna, both remote and Indigenous carers living on Mornington Island, and both indeed do live in a remote area because Mornington Island, to give you an idea, is a bit more than 1,800 kilometres to Brisbane, or about 2,300 kilometres to Sydney. Mornington Island, also known as Kunhanhaa, is an island in the Gulf of Carpentaria in the far north of Australia. And you can imagine that to establish a communication line, of any kind, to that area is just as challenging, if not harder, than talking to someone in a rural or regional area. You might have witnessed the difficulties we had in the previous episode when you talked to carers in outback Queensland.
Adrian Plitzco – 00:02:30: In a moment, Gloria and Mossiearna will share their emotional and logistical struggles of caregiving in their remote community on far away Mornington Island. So please understand that the quality of the recording, because of the distance and the remoteness, is unfortunately not the best. After the conversation with the two carers, we will hear from two experts discussing the complication and complexity of gaining community trust in remote areas. Remember, community plays an important role for remote carers, and that’s why it is crucial for support services to respect local customs and traditions, and how do they achieve that. So that’s what the two experts will tell us later on. Now the lines are ready, let’s talk to Gloria and Mossiearna. All too often caring for someone you love evokes in remote care is a passion to look after other people in their community as well, because there are simply not enough services available. Like Mossiearna, she not only cares for her 5-year-old daughter, but also for elderly people. Also, Gloria, her dedication to community and family care is unwavering despite personal health challenges. Gloria, please tell us more about yourself.
Gloria (Carer) – 00:03:54: My mother, when she was a young lady, she lived in Burketown, a place just across where we stay on the island here, and there were no schools in Burketown at that time. And they sent my mum and her other six siblings on a boat from Burketown, that’s missionary time from Burketown to Mornington Island. And so, my mother, my grandmother and my grandfather sent her to have education and my sister over to her sister to Mornington Island for schooling because she wanted to educate them. That’s where my mum and all my uncles and aunties stayed there, and they got married to the Lardil people and they since lived on Mornington Island all their life. My sister and I were born on Mornington Island, and we stayed on Mornington Island. We got married, had children, and since then we stayed on Mornington Island, grew up Mornington Island.
Adrian Plitzco – 00:05:05: Who do you care for Gloria?
Gloria (Carer) – 00:05:07: My sister. She older than me, just do it yeah.
Adrian Plitzco – 00:05:11: Thank you. Gloria. Now Mossiearna, please tell us about yourself.
Mossiearna (Carer) – 00:05:17: Okay, I’m Mossiearna and I was born on the Tableland, and I came to Mornington when I was 7-year-old. A single mum for my little one, Maylina, my little one, I’m caring for her and she’s five.
Adrian Plitzco – 00:05:34: Do you think it is important that your daughter is in a familiar environment rather than being in some, let’s say, strange place?
Mossiearna (Carer) – 00:05:41: Yeah, she’s with me 24/7. Like, she’s got a history of bronchomalacia on the right side and been flying in and out of Mornington since she was two months, going to Mount Isa and Townsville and down Brisbane there, get quite a lot in the hospital. I just get too attached to her and am just overprotective, I guess.
Adrian Plitzco – 00:06:03: Gloria, why is it important for you to care for your older sister?
Gloria (Carer) – 00:06:08: My sister is the family now, and my mum and dad is deceased, so it’s just two of us now, that’s on the island living now. And I have children, well, I share with my sister because I love her so much and we grew up together. We had ups and downs together. I love her so much. That’s why I care so much about her.
Adrian Plitzco – 00:06:33: What are the challenges for you, Mossiearna, in your role as a carer?
Mossiearna (Carer) – 00:06:38: I find it hard because I’m a single mum and I get like, no help, but I’ll struggle, but I manage. I’ll get help if I want to go out of town or anywhere, like, you know, get a lift, you know, if I go to the post office or shop or anything, you know, if I need to go to the hospital with her or stuff like that.
Adrian Plitzco – 00:06:57: Gloria, what are the challenges for you looking after your sister? What makes it difficult?
Gloria (Carer) – 00:07:03: Sometimes I find it hard because I’m not a well person. I’m a sick person myself. You know, looking after myself is a very hard thing because she’s not a well person and she’s older than me and you know, the challenges I face is a problem for her, you know, what she want, when she want and you know, there’s great challenges for me because I’m her younger sister and I’m not a well person at times, you know, because I go to the hospital at times and you know, my challenge is very, very hard.
Adrian Plitzco – 00:07:44: Mossiearna, how did you find out about Wellways Carer Gateway?
Mossiearna (Carer) – 00:07:48: Last year when I was in Mount Isa, we went out for this carers thing in Quamby. Yeah. So, we had to go day trip to Quamby and just with the carers stuff and that there and it was nice. Had catering and everything out there and had yarns and yeah, it was good. We had a couple of like little activities like sit around in a circle and like share, you know, feelings and whatnot. I love working with old people and caring, you know, just sitting down and helping them with, you know, listening to their stories. I’m a happy person, like to talk to people here and there, especially older people, you know, like, that need help, ask them if they want help or you know, you live with help, carrying with their groceries and whatnot.
Adrian Plitzco – 00:08:41: So you not only care for your daughter, you actually care for the community or at least part of the community as well.
Mossiearna (Carer) – 00:08:48: People in the community, they, you know, Elders, especially Elders, you know, they want hand at the shop or anywhere. Like, just especially like I can be her carer.
Gloria (Carer) – 00:09:01: Yeah. One day, one day.
Mossiearna (Carer) – 00:09:04: Especially your sister. Yeah, I like listening to her stories.
Adrian Plitzco – 00:09:10: Do you think the fact that you are caring for your daughter, does that help you to have a better understanding to care for other people?
Mossiearna (Carer) – 00:09:18: Yep. I just love it, like. And she comes along with me and she like, want a yarn up and ask questions, like, yeah, keep on ask and sit down and like tell her and break it down to her and tell her what it means and you know, and she’s really helpful too, like if I’m with like an elderly somewhere, she likes to help carry stuff, you know, for them and lead them along. So yeah, I just love it.
Gloria (Carer) – 00:09:50: You know, sometimes they’re not much on the island at times. Only a couple of times they come on the island and so we just get little support from families, and you know, when these people, they’re off the island, we don’t get that support.
Mossiearna (Carer) – 00:10:07: Well, I’ve been just getting help for the last three days, two to three days since they’ve been back. But I can manage, you know, especially the Elders, you know, they needed that more attention, you know, so I’m getting support. Like I said, the Elders like really need the more attention and this is where I step in, come and help.
Gloria (Carer) – 00:10:29: You know, I get so much help when I go to Mount Isa, when I go to the hospital. Yeah, they take me to the hospital, they sit there, they take me shopping and in Mount Isa, yeah, I get a lot of help from them when I’m in Mount Isa. The only time I get help from them when they come over here, you know, they support us, you know, when they come over, but when they go back, we don’t get no support after that. But they, they’re very nice people. They’re good people and they help us so much, you know.
Mossiearna (Carer) – 00:11:03: Like they take a bunch of Elders and take them out fishing or down to the beach.
Gloria (Carer) – 00:11:09: Beach, yeah. When they come over to Mornington fishing and you know and doing little activities. Activities, yeah, yeah, activities too. They have down here when they come over and yeah, we all enjoy it and all the ladies come along and you know, we all enjoy ourselves, you know, because we don’t see each other very often, you know? Yeah. Now I have to see it more.
Adrian Plitzco – 00:11:40: Has the support you’re getting changed your role as a carer?
Gloria (Carer) – 00:11:44: Yeah, it’s good. Yeah, we are seeing changes, well they support us by taking us out to the bush, fishing, do shopping and things like that when they come here. So that’s the support we get from them. And you know, we enjoy ourselves with other ladies so a bunch of ladies go out to the bush and enjoy us, do hunting and fishing like that, you know, like I like to see it improve if they come more often, you know, on the island and give us that support, you know, I think we need more people too.
Adrian Plitzco – 00:12:25: How do you cope when you don’t have the support? Do you actually try to support each other?
Mossiearna (Carer) – 00:12:31: Oh, we just, just sit down with each other and like have a conversation and you know, like they say what we’re going through and we will all like, they’re probably going through the same thing and understanding each other and help each other out.
Adrian Plitzco – 00:12:58: That was Gloria and Mossiearna, highlighting the struggle for support in remote areas and the lifesaving role of community and family, but also the crucial role Wellways Carer Gateway plays in providing much needed assistance such as transportation, social activities, and emotional support. Now how easy or rather difficult is it for service organisations to provide support in remote areas? We will discuss that with our two experts who we already have met in the previous episode. Lou Faulkner, General Manager of Carer Gateway Services at Wellways and Jannah Cruden, Rural and Remote Strategy Care Support Officer at North & West Remote Health.
Jannah Cruden – 00:13:44: Hello Adrian.
Louise Faulkner – 00:13:45: Hi Adrian.
Adrian Plitzco – 00:13:46: Jannah, first up, can I say that you find mostly Indigenous carers in remote areas.
Jannah Cruden – 00:13:54: For sure. Definitely majority of the population is First Nations Indigenous people, and they are very isolated, discreet communities. Few of the communities you need council permission to enter. So as a service we’re really lucky that we have that just in general and a few of the real discreet communities, you actually have to sign in when you get into town and sign out when you leave.
Adrian Plitzco – 00:14:22: Signing forms, that sounds like a simple procedure. And I guess there is more to that. Let’s compare the services you provide for remote areas with the ones in regional or even metropolitan areas. Yeah. What are the differences?
Louise Faulkner – 00:14:37: I think one of the biggest differences is that it’s incredibly respectful to ask for permission to go to these areas as well. So that relationship building would take quite a period of time. Jannah would be able to talk so much more to this, to really have permission and be accepted to go on and meet with people and just connect and start building relationships. Would that be?
Jannah Cruden – 00:15:00: For sure. And again, we are really lucky to have that longstanding relationship with the local councils and the local tribes as a service. As an organisation, I wouldn’t just get off the plane for a leisure trip, especially not having those existing relationships with the community. But definitely, it definitely always comes back to respect and these communities have a lot of traditional protocols and traditional ways of doing things. So, we always have to be mindful and make sure that the community and the council allow us to be in their space and feel that it’s appropriate for us to be there. So, I’m always taking that into consideration, and I know often, sometimes with many services, those relationships are reviewed, these community, all of the communities that we service through the Lower Gulf, so the Gulf of Carpentaria, we have local staff in every town. So that also really helps us to keep those relationships strong.
Adrian Plitzco – 00:16:05: The council gives you permission to enter the area so that you can actually provide your service and your support to people that are in need of them or of it.
Jannah Cruden – 00:16:17: I can’t tell you exactly how it works on my level. I do know that at times community has come together and had meetings about the services that are on the island. Or, well, in community in general, not just the island, and had meetings about, yeah, the services currently present, what they’re doing, what they could improve with or even, you know, allowing community to have their voice if they do feel as though a service should move on.
Adrian Plitzco – 00:16:44: It only sounds to me like an additional hurdle, you have to sort of overcome that hurdle first before you actually can go in and do your work.
Jannah Cruden – 00:16:52: Oh, for sure, and North & West Remote Health has been servicing these communities for decades, for a long time. I’m really lucky as, as a baby to that legacy to just be able to walk straight off the plane and start meeting some people and start connecting with the community. But those paths have been laid for many, many years for sure.
Adrian Plitzco – 00:17:12: Maybe Lou, you can give me the answer. Is there a, a special, a specific strategy in order to provide a service up there?
Louise Faulkner – 00:17:20: Oh, I think local solutions to local issues and partnering as we have done. With Wellways Carer Gateway partnered with an organisation such as North & West Remote Health, who are experts in their field at delivering service in these areas. So as someone from Brisbane, like Jannah said, I wouldn’t just go and step off the plane and think that I could have access to a community and start having conversations. I would need to be in touch with someone like North & West Remote Health and really lean on their expertise to go in and do that. And the relationships and the trust they have built over decades with this community or any community up that way.
Jannah Cruden – 00:18:00: And don’t get me wrong, for every individual staff member who starts entering those communities and building those relationships, it takes months, it takes three to six months minimum for community to trust you and remember you sometimes, and we gotta remember a lot of these services have very high turnovers, ours included, have very high turnovers. So that was one of the barriers that I experienced when I first started travelling to the Lower Gulf as a Carer Gateway person, you know, these communities had heard of Wellways before there had been access to it, and that stopped for a period of time. So for me as a new face representing the Carer Gateway program to go into these communities, it was like doing it all over again, starting from scratch and yeah, months, months of “I’m telling you I’m coming back in a month, I’ll be back”, and then in the month I’m going back saying, “Hey, I’m here”.
Adrian Plitzco – 00:19:03: But there’s still a, a cry out for more, for more and more frequent and consistent help.
Jannah Cruden – 00:19:09: For sure, I did want to mention listening to Gloria speak as an Elder. So, she’s an Elder speaking about caring for her sister who’s older than her. This is really common, this is a really general barrier that we experience. But there aren’t other local, well there are, it’s limited, it’s a limited amount of other local services who provide supports for the care recipients again. So, in this case, the care recipient does meet access to My Aged Care and NDIS, not anymore, does meet access to these other support services where she would be eligible for domestic assistance but with nobody on the ground to provide those supports, she is leaning on her little sister who’s also elderly to help her with those things. And not having a lot of trust in many services sometimes really hinders the ability of services who can provide that support, being able to actually, you know, be allowed to go into the home and do it for her. So, as far as caring goes, can be really difficult when you do know that your care recipient is entitled to support, but the limited access to support services able to do that is so strong that yeah, you have to pick it up for them.
Louise Faulkner – 00:20:35: I think Mossiearna spoke really well to that as well. She mentioned that, you know, it’s great to have the services when they’re here, but when they’re not here on the island, she said that’s when I step in and I help and I, you know, carry the grocery bags. And so, I guess again, it’s a little bit like in our other podcast around the regional areas as well, is people will step up and support community where that’s required.
Jannah Cruden – 00:20:58: Sometimes that can look very unconventional. Wheelie walkers going to do grocery shopping and kids having to run in and buy the meat for them. So yeah, for sure community does understand and does pull together where need be to help others out.
Adrian Plitzco – 00:21:16: Can you compare that to a peer support group that other carers all over Australia can participate in?
Jannah Cruden – 00:21:24: I like how they mentioned spending time out bush and going fishing and getting out and about and just doing small activities. So, in all of our communities in the Lower Gulf we have wellbeing centres, which are a hub, not very big buildings, small kitchens, bathrooms, things like that. We are able to run groups out of there, but I guess it comes back and we say it all the time to carer led, carer centered, that real, yeah, carer led approach. When we look at being a clinical service, when we look at our counselling and our approaches to actually delivering those supports, they have to get quite unconventional. And so in terms of our IPPS group, we could have that at the centre and we could all sit around the table and have a cup of tea, but a lot of our carers go, “no, we want to go fishing”, and you know what, you want to go fishing, let’s go fishing then.
Jannah Cruden – 00:22:25: And the conversations that we have in those environments are just so much more authentic. They’re natural, they’re organic, we can just sit in between everyone and have a yarn. So, the conversations end up being a little bit different to your standard in-person peer support framework. A lot of what we do is really just facilitate that conversation and make sure that we’re guiding it in the right direction and letting our carers do their thing. But even the content of conversation, all medical access, especially when you’re looking at specialists and your bigger procedures and your bigger need for medical and just services in general is done out of community. It’s done in Brisbane, they got to come to Brisbane or Townsville, Mount Isa. So, you are flown away from your community. So that’s usually a really huge topic when we have our groups, is how happy we are to all be home together doing these activities together. Because next week I’ve got to go meet who knows what for, who knows what in Brisbane City and that’s really scary. And our other carers go, yeah, I did it too.
Louise Faulkner – 00:23:38: That would be such a real thing and I know when I was lucky enough to spend some time with you in Mount Isa, Jannah, maybe about 18 months ago, and we met with some carers and we shared a morning tea and that was absolutely the topic of conversation. A lot of the carers were from Doomadgee and Mornington, and they had come down and it was all for health. It was all to access health. And one of the things I really remember the carers talking about, one lady in particular where she said, “well I don’t know when I get to go home”. And I just thought to myself, that’s a scary feeling. You know, you’re away from home, you’re away from your community, you’re away from your people with no idea when you’re going back. But in that morning tea, in that group, I saw people kind of gather around this lady and talk and I think it’s the storytelling, it’s the sharing, the sharing of experiences.
Jannah Cruden – 00:24:25: We had the exact same conversation in June where we had more visits from Wellways that were able, now carers are really open to it, which we were really excited about where we were able to just get out of Mount Isa for a bit and we had a yarning circle, we did a bit of fishing, we had a bonfire there. Yeah, the biggest theme of that was access to medical and being away from home. So, there’s I think maybe two dialysis chairs on Mornington Island and a whole lot more people that need dialysis than that. So, we’re, we are looking at hostels filled with people from these remote communities in Mount Isa to access dialysis. Some of them haven’t been home in three plus years, four years, no idea when they’re going home, no idea if they’ll even go home again, which can be the really hardest part.
Jannah Cruden – 00:25:17: So, things like Christmas time, we had a Christmas party at the local hostel just to kind of add that sense of normal, that sense of family. But yeah, a lot of carers have been misplaced sent to this new town with no natural supports. No family, no friends, their country, their rivers, their bush that they’re used to their whole life, their old ways that they grew up and they’re living in this little accommodation room just for the hospital. It’s, yeah, heartbreaking. It, it can be really hard. It has its challenges and we do, we have had a lot of carers pass away in Mount Isa and care recipients pass away in Mount Isa for medical.
Louise Faulkner – 00:26:03: I think a little earlier when we were chatting you mentioned that maybe you had met Mossiearna in a place that wasn’t her home.
Jannah Cruden – 00:26:11: Mossiearna, she cares for her daughter, but she also cared for, I might be wrong, her grandson who was an amputee. So, she had two children with her, both with a disability or medical condition. Spending so much time away. And I’ve had this conversation many times with Mossiearna and especially when we met, is how scary it is to go away to these new towns, these big hospitals with no family, no friends, nobody that you know, relying on local transport, taxis, buses, services, attending all of these appointments, especially with children, it’s, it’s really, you know, normal things, general things are difficult with children, but the amount of time that she’s spent in hospital over the past few years for a care recipient and just wanting to go home. But knowing that sometimes being in these regional towns or these cities are the best place for her and for their care recipients to access those health.
Jannah Cruden – 00:27:15: Knowing that if you go home and something happens, you’re either going to have to fly back out on a Royal Flying Doctor plane straight away, or it could be the end of someone’s life. That’s got to be a really hard thing to emotionally digest. And that is a conversation that we do have a lot with our carers, and it goes back to even just the beginning of this conversation is a lot of our carers and community in general don’t know services by services. They know us workers by name. And it can create a little bit of confusion sometimes where a lot of people don’t know North & West Remote Health. They don’t know Carer Gateway support. They don’t even sometimes know NDIS or My Aged Care, but they know Jannah or Lou or Adrian and they know the people. And you do end up becoming more of just a support worker or the coach or the counsellor. You almost end up being the cousin or the auntie. I’ve little kids that call me auntie or the granddaughter. You end up being part of the community and part of the family. And we spend, a lot of times we spend more time in these communities than we actually do at home with our families. We are there, you know, on a fortnightly basis for a whole week every fortnight. And it’s true, you end up building such strong bonds. So, a lot of people yeah know you by name, not by a service.
Adrian Plitzco – 00:28:37: Jannah Cruden, Rural and Remote Strategy Carer Support Officer, North & West Remote Health. Thank you for coming all the way long way down to here, to the east coast or southeast coast of Australia.
Jannah Cruden – 00:28:49: Thank you so much for your time. I spoke with my carers prior to coming just to get their blessing and get a bit of, you know, what do you want, what do you want to hear when you listen to it back. And I hope they’re happy.
Adrian Plitzco – 00:29:05: Lou Faulkner, thank you again. Thank you for being a big part of our podcast, Tune in to Care.
Louise Faulkner – 00:29:13: Thank you. It’s been lovely.
Adrian Plitzco – 00:29:19: A big thank you also to everybody, and especially to you for listening to our podcast. Tune in to Care – No two carers are the same. Tune in to Care is a podcast supported by Carer Gateway, an Australian Government initiative. If you are a carer in need of support, call Wellways Carer Gateway on 1800 422 737 and make sure you don’t miss out on hearing more incredible carer stories. Subscribe to the podcast on your favourite podcast platform or streaming service. My name is Adrian Plitzco and I’m looking forward to meeting you again.