maybe he tested women with a kiss.
Maybe he’d tested her and she’d failed.
The thought made her so depressed she remembered she was going to Wygera so she could see something of the countryside, and she looked out the window at the canefields through which they were passing, seeing nothing but a green blur, while her mind wondered just what the man beside her might have expected from a kiss.
Kissing ineptitude—was that why Daniel had chosen Lindy?
‘Aboriginal community.’
Kate tuned back in to Hamish’s conversation but it was too late. Not a word of it could she recall.
‘I’m sorry, I missed that,’ she said, facing him again, although that was dangerous when he might smile at any time.
‘Canefields are fascinating,’ he said, eyes twinkling to let her know he knew she hadn’t seen them.
He knew too damn much!
‘I was saying that as well as a swimming pool, Wygera needs some kind of industry. Perhaps industry is the wrong word, but a number of aboriginal communities like it are self-supporting. They run cattle stations, or tourist resorts. In the Northern Territory there are artists’ colonies. The problem is Wygera’s close enough to Croc Creek for some of the men to be employed there, but there’s not enough employment in town for all of them. Nor does everyone want to drive fifty miles back and forth to work.’
‘So kids grow up and leave home,’ Kate said, understanding the problem of the lack of employment in small towns.
‘Or don’t leave home and get into trouble,’ Hamish said, sounding more gloomy than she’d ever heard him.
‘You sound as if you really care,’ she said, thinking how different he was from some city doctors she had known who felt their responsibilities ended when a patient walked out the door.
‘Of course I care!’ he snapped. ‘I’ve worked with these people for two years and become friends with a number of them. Just because I’m going home, it doesn’t mean I’ll stop thinking about them. But until something happens to change things at Wygera, these clinic runs—well, doctors and nurses will go on treating symptoms rather than the problem.’
They’d turned off the main highway onto a narrower road which ran as straight as a ruler towards a high water tower.
‘Wygera!’ Hamish said, nodding towards the tower, and gradually, beneath it, a cluster of houses became evident. Dilapidated houses for the most part, with dogs dozing in the dirt in the shade cast by gutted car bodies. Kate recognised the look—there were suburbs in Melbourne where car bodies were the equivalent of garden gnomes in front-yard decor.
Beyond the houses, the ground sloped down to where thickly grouped trees suggested a creek or a river.
But if the town had a creek or river, why would it need a swimming pool?
HAMISH PULLED UP in front of a small building with a table and three chairs set up outside and a group of people lounging around on logs, chairs, or small patches of grass.
‘Medicine, Wygera-style,’ he said to Kate. ‘If the weather’s good we work outside, although there are perfectly adequate examination, waiting and treatment rooms inside the building.’
He nodded towards a stand of eucalypts some distance away, where more people lay around in the shade.
‘They’re your lot. We come out a couple of times a week, and today’s well-baby day, but if you see anything that worries you, shoot the person over to me. Eye problems are the main worries with the kids, diabetes with the mums. They’ll all have their cards with them—the health worker sees them before we arrive.’
Kate accepted all this information and advice, then, as a young man opened her door with a flourish, she stepped out and looked around her.
The place was nestled in the foothills of the mountains that divided the coastal plain from the cattle country further inland. The ground was bare and rocky, with grass struggling to grow here and there, mainly in the patches of shade.
‘Your bag, ma’am,’ Hamish said, handing her a square suitcase from the back of the station wagon. ‘Scales, swabs, dressings and so on all inside, but Jake here will act as your runner if you need anything else.’
Kate took the bag, but the young man—presumably Jake—who had opened the car door lifted it out of her hand and led her towards the trees, where the shapes became women and children as Kate drew closer. Another table was set out there, with two chairs beside it, but Kate wondered if she might be better sitting on the grass with the women.
‘Sit on the chair, then the women can put babies on your knee,’ Jake told her, while another woman who Jake introduced as Millie got up from the grass and took the second chair.
‘I’m the health worker here,’ she said, unpacking the case and setting up the baby scales. ‘I do the weighing.’
‘Thanks,’ Kate said, but she glanced towards the clinic building. Strange it didn’t have its own scales.
‘People take them to weigh fish and potatoes and bananas, not so good afterwards for babies,’ Millie said, while Kate wondered if people in North Queensland had a special ability to read minds or if she’d always been so easy to read.
Though Hamish was a Scot, not a North Queenslander.
She almost glanced towards him, but remembered Millie and caught herself just in time.
‘I’m Kate,’ she said to the assembled throng, then she took her chair. ‘Now, who’s first?’
Some of the women giggled, and there was general shuffling, but Millie called a name and a pretty girl in blue jeans and a short tight top came forward, a tiny baby in her arms.
Kate looked at the girl’s flat stomach, complete with navel ring, and decided she couldn’t possibly have had a child, but Angela was indeed baby Joseph’s mother.
‘He just needs weighing and I’m worried about this rash,’ she said, putting the baby on the table and whipping off his disposable nappy. ‘See!’
The angry red rash in his groin and across his buttocks would have been hard to miss.
Kate delved into the bag, assuming she’d find a specimen tube and swab. Yes, it was as well equipped for a well-baby clinic as the equipment pack had been for Jack’s retrieval. She wiped a swab across the rash, dropped it into the tube, and screwed the lid shut and completed the label, taking Joseph’s full name from the card.
‘Nappy rash, I told her,’ Millie said. ‘Said to leave off his nappies or use cloth ones on him.’
‘I did leave his nappy off,’ Angela protested, ‘and it didn’t get better, and I tried cloth nappies.’
‘Actually, the latest tests seem to find that disposable nappies are less irritating
