In the tiny community of Toomelah, everyone knows the nurse with the red lipstick.
Since she was 16, Ann-Marie Thomas has rarely left home without it.
“I just love red,” she says. “It cheers me up.”
Her signature look makes her easy to spot in the remote town in north-western New South Wales, where she is the only full-time nurse for a population of about 250 Aboriginal people.
It’s a role that extends well beyond the community’s medical needs. On any given day she’ll be writing letters to a housing department or arranging food for people who come to the health clinic for help.
The Budjiti woman makes a 60km round trip to work each day from her rental home over the Queensland border in Goondiwindi – usually getting back just in time to take her sons to footy training.
Thomas dropped out of high school in year 9. She worked as a waitress, washing dishes and peeling potatoes, before she became an Aboriginal health worker and “fell in love with caring for people”. At 30, she enrolled in university and became a registered nurse – the first person in her family to earn a bachelor’s degree.
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Now 55, she has spent her career working in rural and remote health, while single-handedly raising three boys, aged 13, 18 and 38. For the last nine years she has worked at Toomelah, a “magical, spiritual place”.
“I think the people there have helped me heal,” she says. “They’ve supported me through some of my darkest times. I think that’s why I’ve stayed there so long.”
But she doubts anyone in Canberra even knows the place exists.
I work full-time at Toomelah – beloved, beautiful Toomelah. Working in remote communities is a different kind of nursing. You’re the receptionist, you’re the first responder, you’re the person that does all the dressings, takes people in for X-rays and specialist appointments. There’s a lot of suffering out there. There’s lots of trauma, lots of chronic disease.You don’t stay at places like Toomelah for money, because there’s no way up the ladder. But I love what I do, and I love those people. It’s the most challenging job ever, but the most rewarding job that anyone could ask for.
At the beginning, I was taking phone calls and texts on weekends. Then fatigue set in. Now on weekends I try to have one whole day where I’m just doing something for me. I read a lot and I cook. My kids love my homemade chocolate slice. I can cook anything and everything if you give me the recipe.
I rent. I’ve got three sons, but two that live at home. There’s no housing available in Goondiwindi. By miracle, we got this [three-bedroom] house. It was $450 a week two years ago and today we pay $490 a week.
We struggle to do anything together as a family because of the cost. Our groceries – I reckon they would have gone up at least $70 or $80 a week over about 12 months. I’ve always had a single income. I don’t go out. So the money we have is for electricity, food, rent and a personal loan. By the time you pay all that, you’ve only got a couple of hundred dollars left.
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I had dreams of travelling, and I had dreams of owning my own home and living near the beach. I can tell you with what my superannuation looks like now, I’m not going to achieve that unless I win the Lotto. I do hope that something happens around the rental situation – because even if we could go on more holidays to where the beaches are, that would be something.
I’m really concerned. I don’t think my kids will be able to afford to leave home. I even have my eldest son living in Toowoomba and sharing a unit with someone because he can’t get his own place – and he’d love his own place because he’s got three children. Everywhere you go, people are sleeping in tents. There could be up to 20 people living in a three-bedroom house. We’ve got people addicted to ice. I don’t see it getting any better. I always try to be positive and be optimistic, but jeez, it’s bloody hard.
I’m so angry with all the politicians. Every time you turn the TV on, the first thing you hear are all these things like “let’s abolish welcome to country”. Why? I don’t understand what it’s costing. I think it’s beautiful. Is it only me that sees the beauty in it because I’m Aboriginal? I don’t believe the LNP. And I don’t believe that the LNP or Labor have done anything for me as a single mum; for me as a woman living remotely.
Personally, all I would ask is some rent support. We seem to take care of doctors, because we’ve tried to lure doctors into rural areas, but I think we really need to look at Aboriginal staff. But for my people, there’s so much that they need to do.
Our teenage boys, they are the ones that are most likely to commit suicide. And what have we got for them at Toomelah or Goondi? Nothing. My own son had mental health issues at 16 years of age. We ended up having six different counsellors. I work in the system and I would just cry in frustration. I set my alarm every two hours to get up to see if my son was still alive.
[Politicians] have never stepped foot out here. They don’t know about people like me or people at Toomelah. But there are 250 people out there and they’re Australians – they’re First Australians – and they deserve better.
I definitely won’t vote for Dutton. I never wanted to vote, ever. But it’s true – if we don’t have a voice, then we don’t get a say. So I’ll probably vote Labor. I’ve voted for Labor most of my life, probably because I’ve been a working mum.