I flew overnight from Canberra, via Melbourne to Darwin. I was extremely glad to get to my hotel room at 2am. The next morning, I was picked up by Jan Allen ( AMRRIC) and taken to the local markets. They were vibrant markets with lots of fresh food being served. After that, it was back to the airport to catch an Air North 30 seater aeroplane to Maningrida. When I checked in, it was the first time I have ever had to get on the scales. I have to admit to being just a little bit nervous about flying on a smaller aircraft. It was a fairly rocky flight but the scenery was new and exciting.

 I arrived in Maningrida and Ted picked me up and took me back to the motel. To my surprise, the motel is quite a modern looking building, with a room to myself and air conditioning. I met the three students that I would be working with for the next week. Sacha is from University of Queensland, Alex and Abbie from University of Melbourne. I did enjoy an afternoon siesta which set me up for the week.

 

I went for a walk with the girls on the first evening through part of the community and down to the river bank. This was my first introduction to the dogs in the community. There are definitely places where you do not walk and other areas that are fine. I was quickly instructed that if a dog approached us in a not so friendly fashion that I was to bend over and pick up a rock. Usually this action alone is enough to warn off the dog. If absolutely necessary, you can through the rock. If there is no rock to be seen, just pretend to be picking one up. The next creature to be careful of was the crocodile. We stayed well away from the water's edge. Some follow the 3-metre rule. That is, never go within 3 metres of the water. I gave it 3 metres, and the rest!! The week before I arrived, a dog had been eaten by a crocodile. The last challenge of the gentle afternoon stroll was to get home before we got carried home by the mosquitos and other biting insects.

 

After breakfast, the routine was to make the lunches, organise the supplies for the day and pack the ute. 

We took everything over the shelter that was our clinic. Everything is then unpacked and the surgery tables set up. The next step was to head out in to the community with Ted, Sacha and Frank ( who is the local indigenous Environmental Health Officer). We visited many houses and administered ivermectin soaked bread to all the dogs whilst documenting their colour, body condition score, scabies score and whether female/male, entire or desexed. At each of the houses, the question is then asked, either by Ted or Frank, as to whether any dogs are for “operation”. This means desexing. If we get the nod from the owners, the dog is then sedated. The combination used is acepromazine, atropine and butorphanol. We leave the dog to become heavily sedated and they are picked up after about half an hour. Over the course of the week, there were a few dogs that were sedated that then went for a walk and were not found for the duration of their sedation. It was assumed that they slept it off under a tree somewhere.

 

The next phase of the day was all about the surgery. I did a lot of castrates and a tail amputation. I had never done a flank spey on a dog before and only ever a few on cats. I was as prepared as possible and just a bit anxious about getting that first one under my belt. Well, I got my chance, at 5:30pm without Ted around on a very juvenile dog. Normally this makes things easy but through a flank incision, it is quite hard to find the bifurcation of the uterus and therefore the far horn. I struggled for a while and had to take a few deep breaths. Finally, with great support from the girls, I finished my first canine flank spey and we were able to pack up for the day.

 

After we returned to the motel, we discovered that Ted had organised a fishing trip for us with his mate “Steady” who normally takes him out when he is in Maningrida. We bundled into a fairly sturdy looking boat with a few supplies and headed down to the boat ramp. It was already 7pm when we left. We had a “satnav” which was handy given that it was very dark. “Steady” took us to a few fishing spots. We didn't have a lot of success, only catching a crab and an inedible fish. Ted loved the “time out” though and it was a great experience for the rest of us. We spotted some crocodiles which made us really want to stay on the inside of the boat. We did not get home until after 10pm when we all ate some leftovers for a quick snack then off to bed.

 

There was much of the same the following day and I did a few more speys. I saw my first Transmissible Venereal Tumour ( TVT) on a dog's penis. This is fairly common in Maningrida but generally a fairly rare condition. Samples of the tumour and also of a healthy piece of skin from the dog were taken for research purposes. We also gave some vincristine ( a chemotherapy drug) to the appropriate candidates. The fuss associated with giving this drug normally is enormous so the contrast in this situation was notable. A quick intravenous injection was all it took.

 

The most interesting case the following day was a male dog that was brought in with bleeding from the prepuce which was thought to be a TVT. I extruded the penis only to find several nasty penetrating bite wounds. It was concluded that whilst in the act of creation with a female dog, another male dog became extremely jealous and had done his best to bite off the offending organ!

 

It continued to strike me how many of these animals were in such good condition. There were very few animals that were “leatherbacks” meaning that they were completely hairless with black, thickened skin due to scabies. A large proportion of the dogs either had no evidence of scabies at all or were only very mildly affected. This state of affairs can be attributed to the great work that Ted and his local helpers have done over the last 8 years. It was also really obvious how much of a presence Ted has in this community. People had learnt to trust him and will quite willingly trust anyone associated with him. This made me feel quite welcome and it was great to have the locals not be suspicious of you once they knew you were with Ted. I expect that my experience was as good as it gets and imagine that going to a new community or one with no history of sustainable intervention would be quite different. It is great to have in mind though, how much can be achieved and what a difference you can make.

 

There were not many cats visible around the place but we did have a request from one particular household to desex some of their cats. We decided to try and do the male cats at their house. Sacha and I went to do it at the end of the day. They could be caught but not easily given an intravenous injection. It was a bit of a circus with repeated intramuscular injections and getting some of the members of the household to help us hold these cats. Eventually we successfully castrated two cats on the cement verandah with many onlookers, adjacent to a new Simpson washing machine whurring away. Fortunately the female cats could not be caught over the subsequent days and we were saved from having to deal with them on this trip.

 

One of the highlights of my time in Maningrida was the trip to the outstations. It was a nightmare to organise as we needed 2 good quality vehicles that all the equipment could be put inside and that would be likely to make it there and back. Ted had made many phone calls trying to get the vehicles organised, find out if the roads were open, find out if anyone would be home and to get a local guide. Even on the morning we were due to go, it still took hours to get on the road.  The first truck we went to get had a flat battery. The second truck had no petrol and there was then a dispute over which organisation should pay for the petrol. It was then found that that truck had no equipment to change a tyre so we changed to another truck which also needed petrol putting in it. We had been hoping to take Frank with us but he had been in Darwin for a 3 day course. He had been due to arrive early on the Thursday morning but the plane ( not unusually) was very late. When we heard the plane fly over, Ted raced to the airport and managed to convince Frank to come out for the day with us. He said a quick hello to his wife, had some toast, a Coke and few cigarettes and finally we were off. We still didn't know whether we would be able to get through the road blocks. This time of year is the height of the “ceremonies”. It is a bit vague what all the ceremonies are for but different sectors of society have ceremonies for different reasons for different lengths of time, sometimes for one particular gender and ceremony takes priority over everything. Sometimes people come and go from ceremony over many months. The weekend after my time in Maningrida was a full moon and the big final weekend of many of the ceremonies that were going on. Many people were heading out of town to attend one. Some of them are quite close to town, others are very remote. What is normally a public road is blocked off by the ceremony attendees and access can be denied to foreigners. This said, we were not sure how far we would get and had to be prepared for the fact that at any point, we may just have to turn around and go home after achieving nothing.

I drove the Maningrida “Child Protection Service” truck with the girls and Ted drove the other truck with Frank. Not long out of town we came across the first ceremony road block. There were “western” signs warning us of it then trees and bushes pulled across the road to achieve it. Fortunately we were able to slowly pass through the road block without causing any problems and we continued on. After some pretty careful driving along some pretty marginal road, we came to the first outstation which we had tentatively arranged to visit and do some work on. As we arrived, everyone from the outstation was piling in to their truck to go to ceremony. They were sorry but there was no work that we could do there today. It was pretty disappointing given that we could so that many of the dogs could do with some attention. Anyway, there was one more outstation that Ted and Frank thought we could try.

The next outstation turned out to be a successful stop. After Ted had a chat with one of the senior men, we were given permission to treat the dogs with ivermectin and to desex a bitch. This was a big breakthough for Ted as he had never been allowed to desex a dog at this outstation previously. This added a little bit of pressure to the situation as we really wanted to make sure that there were no complications. Fortunately, the procedure went well and there was no faith lost. 

There were quite a few other things that stuck in my mind about this visit. There was an obvious attempt to be somewhat self sufficient. There were many different fruit trees ( banana, mango, pawpaw) and even a cashew tree. I had never seen a cashew in its shell before and had no idea what it was. There had just been a hunting expedition as well where they had caught many magpie geese. These had all been smoked in 44 gallon drums cut in half. They smelt delicious. Ivan, whose outstation it was, gave us a few minutes of his time which turned out to be almost the most enriching time for me culturally of the whole trip. He explained that he tries to take all the young members of the family out hunting and gathering to try and explain how he learned to live out of the bush. He said it is hard to get them to engage in this but he is persisting. He also explained how important his dogs were to him and that he needed a fair number of them so they could hunt in a pack. You need quite a few dogs to bring down a buffalo! The dog that we desexed was one of his most important dogs but he conceded that she had been a hard worker and produced him a lot of good pups so he was happy to let her have the operation to give her a rest. 

Ivan is quite a renowned indigenous artist and attends exhibitions regularly. He was due to fly to Melbourne in a few weeks to show some of his work. When I got back to Maningrida I bought one of his bark paintings which I am about to hang after giving it time to acclimatise under my bed.

 

One of the other lasting memories will be of the Maningrida latte. This is the coffee sold at the local cafe. There is a proper espresso machine which the coffee is made in and at this stage it all looked fairly promising. The issue was with the milk that was then scooped on top of the espresso from a boiling pot on the stove ( which apparently starts boiling early in the morning). It was drinkable but I wasn't there bashing down the door the next morning to get another one.

 

On the final day we were able to get quite a few more operations done but had to finish early so that Alex, Abbie and I could catch the 5pm flight back to Darwin. The coolrooms that we operated next to had been filled with alcohol from the last barge and were humming away to keep them cold. The following day heralded a “wet weekend” where anyone with an alcohol permit would be given their allocation. Apparently the social situation is a little different on these Saturdays. 

 

I was ready to go home after 6 days, mainly because I was missing my family, but had thoroughly enjoyed my time in Maningrida. It was refreshing to have no mobile phone reception and no access to the internet. I read two books and had at least 8 hours sleep every night. I would have no hesitation in returning to Maningrida to help Ted again or assisting in a different community. My current goal is to organise a weekend in Canberra to train any interested veterinarians to be able to attend a community an contribute in the best way possible. AMRRIC and the AVA are helping me to do this. After this, I would like to combine giving vets in the ACT the opportunity to have the great experience that I did with making a valuable contribution in a sustainable way to dog health programmes in indigenous Australia.

 

If you are interested in helping all this to happen, please consider joining AMRRIC. It is run by some great people who I am really enjoying working with and your contribution will definitely go towards helping a significant problem that is in our own backyard. The health of the dogs is not only a welfare issue for the individual but has massive implications on human health too. Skin disease, gastroenteritis and dog bites are just a few of the problems that we are trying to address by attempting to improve the health of the dogs that live so closely with the humans in their family.

 

 

Alison Taylor

Kippax Veterinary Hospital