Having some training in epidemiology means that I approach all graphs and statistics with some degree of caution. But it has become clear looking at site stats that people like to read stories about my childhood. I’m trying to oblige just a little bit, mostly with the fear that there are only a finite number of years worth of stories, and once I run out, I’ll become a boring writer again.

Maybe one of the reasons why those stories are interesting is because I was just such a strange child. This time, I might tell you about a ridiculous tantrum of epic proportions that I threw when I was maybe five years old. I had recently started at primary school, and as part of getting to know new classmates and making friends, I went around asking people what their favourite colours were. My classmates kept saying either “red” or “blue”. I became increasingly upset that 1) nobody liked emerald green like I did and 2) people were so uncreative when there were so many colours in the colouring pencil box (mostly what we had access to at that point in China … crayons were a luxury and pastels were unheard of). They couldn’t even be specific about their favourite shade of red! How hopeless! I moved onto my teachers and they didn’t give me any better answers. I got home that evening and lost it at my parents, screaming about how I’ve had enough with the world and everyone was utterly boring. And I wouldn’t stop.

My poor parents didn’t know what to do. When other children throw tantrums about not having a new toy, you might consider relenting and buying the toy eventually. But what do you do when your child is screaming her head off about human conformity? I don’t think this is in parenting books anywhere. What is the youngest age to have an existential crisis?

Decades later, green is still my favourite colour. But I’ve diversified a little, and like a wide range of different shades of green. A beautiful scene of green things can always stop me in my tracks, like the following scene from the town of Bathurst (Wiradjuri land) late last year. Unfortunately the evening light was dim already, so my camera could not do it full justice.

I was in Bathurst just after Christmas last year as a locum general practitioner. I didn’t tell my blog readers at the time because it was a small town with not that many medical providers, and I didn’t want anything I put on social media to jeopardise anyone’s medical care seeking decisions. It was actually quite terrifying for me to put myself in that position. It was my first stint as a GP after the start of the pandemic (I had been far too busy with the public health response aspect of the pandemic to have clinical time). With all the changes to the healthcare system and to GP infection control procedures, would I still be able to navigate everyday clinical tasks? If I needed to look up guidelines on the computer all the time, would patients still find me trustworthy? I was so relieved at the end of the first day that I went to my car after work, sat down, exhaled and went into paralytic starfish mode where I just couldn’t move for a while, not even to put the key into the ignition.

Of course it would be unprofessional for me to tell you about the patients that I saw. But I can tell you about Bathurst. Bathurst has a whole collection of impressive landmarks, and is the home of Mount Panorama, where the Bathurst 1000 motor race takes place every year. That’s about as much as I know about motor sport, really. But the really important part of the history of Bathurst that I want to highlight is the part that it played in the Frontier Wars. For readers from outside of Australia, this is the name given collectively to the early conflicts between white colonists and Aboriginal people It was particularly bloody in Bathurst. There were several months of martial law 1824. This meant that white colonists were permitted, even encouraged, to shoot any Aboriginal person on sight, even the babies. Several organised massacres, now barely a mention in history books, occurred during this time.

The gold rush that started in the 1850s made it easy to obliterate this previous period of sordid history under opulent buildings (some of which are evident in the photos below). Bathurst was in the gold game early and became particularly wealthy, but like all gold towns, its heyday came to the end at around the time when it was being nominated as the new capital city of Australia in 1901. Luckily, Mr Edgell came to Bathurst at around that time and eventually opened up his iconic cannery. I’d say that most Australians would have deep familiarity (with or without appreciation) with vegetables from an Edgell’s tin.

Other icons in town are probably less well known to the rest of Australia. They include the Bathurst War Memorial Carillon, with its 49 bronze bells that have been rung daily since 1933. There’s also the Australian Fossil and Mineral Museum, home to Australia’s only complete skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. It wasn’t just gold that they dug up around here. Unfortunately, but obviously quite understandably, the real skeleton isn’t on display, but a replica that takes up most of a large space in a historic building. And there’s Annie’s, the local ice cream parlour. All the local kids know about Annie’s, which helped me quite a lot, in that sick kids were willing to see me with this expectation of receiving ice cream. Imagine the looks of utter betrayal when I gave them vaccines instead. And then the looks of confusion, distrust and disbelief when their parents tell them that they’ll go to the “other Annie’s” next. Still, all this paled in comparison to my tantrum about favourite colours.