Your Lifestyle
Still Inspiring: January - Sally Goold, OAM
I’m outspoken, I suppose. I don’t know when I got the confidence to be like this. How it happened. It just grew for me. Education is the key word. Education is always the key. I’m active in this world because I thought things needed to improve. And I thought I could play a role in that.
I was born at Narrandera in South Western NSW, the youngest of seven. I used to always say I was going to be a nurse when I grew up and the adults humoured me. But when I was fourteen and it came time for me to make my application to Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney, the adults all said: ‘Well, you know you won’t get in, don’t you?’ And I said, ‘Of course I will.’ And they said, ‘No you won’t because you’re black.’ These were Aboriginal as well as non Aboriginal people: teachers. I don’t know why I kept going.
My parents were so excited when I was accepted - no-one had done anything like this before. They rallied around and bought me nice undies and new pyjamas - you lived in the Nurses home then. And my eldest brother, who had three children, went to the races and had a win and came home and gave me that money to buy my textbooks. I still have those books to this day. I was the first and only student Aboriginal nurse at RPA.
When I did my Masters degree many years later, I looked at why Aboriginal nurses accounted for just 0.05% of the registered nurse population in this country. Which is really just a spit. So in 1997, with the assistance of the Australian Nurses Federation we had a meeting of 32 registered nurses from around the country and that’s when CATSIN was born (The Congress of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nurses).
I work full time as Executive Director of CATSIN now. Our main objective is to increase the recruitment and retention of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people into nursing. We do some good work. We support Indigenous students and we provide mentorships for student nurses in Universities throughout the country.
When people ask me, ‘Why do you need a separate organization for Aboriginal nurses?’, I say ‘I hope one day we won’t need one.’ Aboriginal nurses don’t always get the support they need in the health care setting, particularly from the profession. Rascism is alive and well in this country despite what people say.
Not long ago I came across reports on me from when I did my preliminary training. You used to do six weeks in a hospital setting first, learning basic skills and socialisation and whatever and when I was there, I failed an anatomy and physiology exam and had to go to Matron who was away and the Deputy was there and she said, ‘I’m not going to contact your parents. Just you work hard.’ And I did but years later, only about four years ago, I came across what the tutor had written on reports that are with you for life… “This nurse is totally incapable of learning.”
When I read that, I cried and cried and cried. As an educator, that someone could make such a statement. And as a person, that such a terrible statement had been made against me. I tell students when I speak to them, ‘As an Aboriginal, you can’t just be as good as the others, you have to be better. Because there are people out there judging you.’
A couple of years ago I put in an application with the Status of Women to write a book of nurses stories. They are wonderful, powerful stories. I had a young woman, an Aboriginal journalist from South Australia and she interviewed twenty three Indigenous registered nurses and we sent their stories back to them for their editing and their changes and they sent them back to me. I bullied them, harassed them and threatened them with acts of terrible violence if they didn’t get them into me on time. But we did it and it was published in 2005 in September. We knew we needed to have this book done. We need these stories told to pay tribute to the trailblazers - so people can see the struggles that they had. Of course, it’s true our struggles are our own struggles but the young ones need to see what these people went through to get there. And what can happen if you keep your eye on the prize.
Retirement is not a word I use but I have been thinking that it’s time for me to organise some sort of succession planning because you know, the time comes for the oldies to step aside and let the young ones have a go. When there’s someone there who says ‘Step aside old girl, it’s my time now’, that’s when I go. I don’t see myself as old though. I’ve been married for forty three years and I say to my husband, ‘How come what I see in the mirror is not what I see when I’m on television or in the papers?’ Because in the mirror, I see a young girl still.
It’s interesting. Our son did a DVD of his father’s birthday and we watched it last night and there I was dancing and singing and I thought, ‘Oh, I don’t think that’s appropriate behaviour anymore. Now that I’m Senior Australian of the Year, I don’t know that I should be doing these sorts of things!’ One day I’m going to learn that song - If They Could See Me Now ...
In Our Own Right, Black Australian Nurses' Stories edited by Dr Sally Goold, OAM is available on the CATSIN website.
