here we are!!

Well day one is drawing towards meal time- phew! It’s been pretty hectic.
Yesterdays’ flight was uneventful but I wished I’d had the camera available for some photos while we were flying up Dunedin harbour in glorious sunlight (just to prove we have some of course), an hour in Wellington then off to overnight in Auckland meeting up with Pete one of the other exchangees on the way.
Five o’clock is DEFINITELY too early to be civilised but the taxi was at 5.45 so it haqd to be done (urgh!). At the airport we picked up first Bridget and then Claire- easy to pick toting her St John bag. Despite the other’s claims to excessive packing my bag is easily the heaviest so now I will have to justify that by doing some outdoor activities in my last week!
After last night’s 1 hour flight from Wellington to Auckland (which took 45 minutes) the 4.55 minute Auckland to Adelaide taking over 5 hours was a disappointment. The weather on arrival wet and windy but warm enough.
We were met by Lee and Chris- well Claire was then they had to wait for me and Bridget to pursuade the Maf brigade that we were not importing noxious species into the country- but we got there in the end.
Lee is in charge of the Western Rural region from Whyalla out to the Nullabor while Chris has the Southern Rural region. After dropping our bags at our accomodation they took us on a drive through the city for lunch then on to HQ for SAAS. He service runs out of a three storey building with the EACC on the top floor (that’s tomorrow’s visit), admin on the lower and various management folks in the middle. We were introduced to lots of people but by now being in a stupefied state (5.00am translates to 3.00am Adelaide time!) I can’t remember who everyone was. But Cindy (clinical quality management) introduced us to the Qcpr maniquin and let us have a play- the others had seen this beast before but for those that haven’t you can link a rescusi annie up to a defib and it will tell what you are doing wrong in your CPR- apparently it works on real people too- probably best to kick the family out of the room while it picks holes in your technique at a CA tho!
Neale then gave us our fitness test (no not climbing three flights of stairs- how to correctly fit a P2 mask), after sitting with our heads in a see thru bucket and having sweet stuff squirted on us we then had to fit a mask and make sure we couldn’t smell the saccharine with the mask on. Health staff in SA are tested on their ability once a year and have to pass.
Lee and Chris gave us an overview of the areas we’ll be heading out to- Pete gets the Nullabor and they burst out laughing when they found out who my host is going to be- hmmm! We also got a run down on how the service runs with their volunteer and career stations. All really interesting.
Tomorrow- is another day but there’s quite a few places to go to!