BBQ stories

I was going to write a blog about the musical the girls were involved in last week - but I can't get the awesome photos up of a jellyfish, a pirate and a pink dancer, and the story is not the same with the visual illustrations.

So here is another story I might tell at a BBQ when the conversation turns to driving in the outback, getting lost, crying, and auditory processing difficulties.

One of my first speech pathology jobs was working in Longreach for both Education and Health.  So pretty much everybody in a large swathe of Queensland.  I had to travel by plane to some schools, and one trip I made was to Hughendon and Richmond.  I had visited Hughendon SS one day, slept overnight at the pub, and was due to visit Richmond SS the next day.  An hour's drive west.

The guidance officer gave me some directions about how to get out of town and on the right road to Richmond.  I kinda listened, but mostly heard the last part of the directions when she told me to get petrol on a particular road.  So off I set down this road in the government 4WD, tidybox packed full of speech therapy assessments, games and stickers.

East.

I drove for about an hour and a quarter with no signs to Richmond anywhere.  I optimistically drove another 20 minutes, then thought 'surely this town must be soon'.  Spotting a property on the side of the road I pulled in to ask directions.

This was before mobile phones, GPS, you know, stuff that might help you know where you were. (And being a city girl I didn't read the stars, sun etc).

The very kind lady at the property sat me down, put the kettle on, and possibly even gave me a lamington (memory hazy on this detail), and explained to me that Richmond was now 260km in the other direction. 

I think I might have cried a little.

I rang the school and apologised, explained I was still close to three hours away, and did they still want me to come.  Of course they did, it was their one speech pathology visit a term, and I was going back on the plane that night to Longreach,

So I go back into the car, thanked God that I hadn't run out of petrol or hit anything, and drove to Richmond SS where I did an assessment on a poor child that had been waiting for me all day.  Then drove back to Hughendon again where the Guidance Officer had the police on standby on the lookout for a lost Speech Pathologist.

Life lesson learned - draw a map when people give me directions.  And Richmond is west of Hughendon.