An Outback Nurse by Thea Hayes are the author’s memoirs of her life on a remote cattle station in the Northern Territory of Australia. It was obvious from the start that Thea had an adventurous nature. After working as a nurse to save money, she travelled the world by backpack for a year. She returned to Sydney, Australia and added midwife training to her resume. She then applied for jobs in remote areas, and in 1959, took a job offered in the Northern Territory, in the heart of the Outback. The book tells us about the land, the day to day activities on the cattle station, the Aboriginals, and the social life in the Outback but unfortunately she doesn’t go into much detail about her actual nursing. As she met and married one of the employees at the cattle station and so raised her family there as well.

The book was an easy read and felt much like reading a letter from a chatty acquaintance. While not overtly racist, her dismissive talk about the Aboriginals who were mostly in secondary or servants positions was disconcerting. The lifestyle of the white people on these stations read much like colonial life in the earlier part of the century, with the white people overseeing the work that was done by the natives. As they did live a rather remote life, their social lives were important, so a fair amount of drinking and partying were a regular part of their lives.

An Outback Nurse was interesting and informative about the life style of white people living in the Australian Outback but I felt that the author kept her personal emotions firmly in check and only gave us a look at the surface. ( )