Speaker 1
Many people live with disabilities. Some visible, others invisible but no less challenging. Jenny Wright, a 1RPH member and reader with lived experience, talks with Monica Short from Charles Sturt University about life with disabilities.
Speaker 2
Welcome Monica. In this series we are going to cover disability in rural Australia and to do this I've been looking at the book titled The Disabled God. By Nancy L. Iceland I love the quote on the inside of this page:
To Uncle James and Aunt Ruth who taught me by example that people with disabilities can live ordinary lives.
That is a very encouraging and powerful statement Monica. Reading a part of this book I've noticed that it sort of runs parallel with our last series on people's stories. The two narratives of Diane De Vries and Nancy Mears we can discuss as we go along. What do you think of that idea?
Speaker 3
I think that's a great idea and it's a wonderful book. I'm glad you're reading it Jenny, it's gorgeous.
Speaker 2
In your book, Monica, Anglican Church is engaging with people living with disabilities. You discussed elusive terms like rural, regional and remote. Now these words are how to define and there are many associated terms and labels such as the bush, the outback, countryside, country, bucolic, hinterland, and agrarian. So Monica would you like to explain what these terms mean please? What is rural Australia?
Speaker 3
Well you're right Jenny, terms like rural, regional, remote and all the other terms that you've just said are really, really very hard to define. And that's because they're not things that we actually physically see. They're kind of this invisible line that exists between urban areas and rural areas. Now there are lots of definitions out there and some of them are quite confusing. The Australian Bureau of Statistics refers to other urban, bounded locality and rural balance. Not terms that many of us usually would talk about. Like have you ever talked about your rural balance recently Jenny?
Speaker 2
No I can't say as I have.
Speaker 3
Well the Regional Institute of Australia refers to regional cities, connected lifestyle regions, interesting service hubs and heartland regions. Now I rather like the term heartland regions but again nobody kind of understands any of that language very much anyway.
Speaker 2
Well that's true, I mean height land, it is a nice word actually. It's a lovely word.
Speaker 3
In my work, I prefer the term rural and I tend to swap it with rural, regional and remote. And I use the term rural to mean populations outside capital cities and their immediate surrounding suburbs. So hopefully that's a little bit of an easier definition. And I think this is really important that we understand what rural life is and define it well because rural life, I believe and many, many others like me believe, actually differs from what an urban experience of living is.
Speaker 2
When I think of rural, I think of kangaroos and trees and all that sort of thing. But where I live, we get kangaroos and I'm not in the rural district, so there we go.
Speaker 3
Yeah, that's true. And see that's the whole point. That's why it's hard to define it.
Speaker 2
I agree and in your book you mentioned that people living outside of major cities are or were I should say significantly less likely to have access to disability support services and that's compared to those living in the major cities. Now this must impact these people in great ways. For me personally Monica I have to say I'm pretty ignorant about life in the bush. I have learned some things from watching some documentaries but it's not the same as actual experience and I believe that you and Mark that you've both had a lot of bush experiences at right and would you like to tell us a bit about your experiences?
Speaker 3
Well as you mentioned my husband Mark and I we've had periods where we've actually lived in the bush so we lived in Tamora for example for three years which is a country town of about 4 ,000 people and we absolutely loved every moment of it. We also loved living in Wagga Wagga which is a regional center about 56 ,000 people and a whole family have loved living outside capital cities we've thrived living outside capital cities.
We've had wonderful neighbors we've loved the churches we were attending we loved being able to drive to the shops and park in front of the shops it was and is a great lifestyle, it's a wonderful wonderful way to live and there's always a friendly smile Jenny down the street like you walk down and someone comes up and says hello and you feel safe and you can stop and have a chat it's wonderful.
05:15
Speaker 2
I guess that reminds me of the village I grew up in. I grew up in the UK and I never appreciated it, but we've lived in a real seaside country village. I was 10 minutes walk from the beach. We had the cliffs, we had the woods, we had everything. And I'd never think twice about going off for a walk through the woods or across the fields or around the cliffs late at night even, you know? And not when we were younger, obviously. We knew we had, how can I put it? We had no sort of time limit. We knew we had to be home by dark. Isn't that beautiful?
And that's what we used to do. We'd be home by dark and we'd have no dinner. We'd have to wait for the next day type thing. Not quite that bad, but you know what I mean. And so it might not be rural as in the sense of, you know, bush in kangaroo, but it was rural in the way of being country and having the ocean. I had the best of both worlds, the country and the ocean. And we were nine miles from the city, which obviously in Australian terms is not far. I could walk it, which I had to do once when we were cut off by snow, but then, not knowing any different, it was a long way.
So I guess that's how I can kind of compare it to. In a way, we had no cars. We had a bus that came every hour or hour and a half or something. And I don't know if you've ever ridden in a double-decker bus going down a hill like this and sitting up the front upstairs in the front. I felt like I was going to fall out.
Speaker 3
Oh, really? It was that steep?
Speaker 2
That steep yeah. Wow. Yeah anyway I digress, sorry. I've got a couple of questions for you Monica. What do the stats say about life in rural Australia? Do many people live in Australia? And what about people living with disabilities? And okay so that's three questions but who's counting?
Speaker 3
So if we start thinking about some of the statistics, Jenny, in 2016, 33% of people in Australia resided outside of capital cities. Proportionally, there were slightly more people living with disabilities in areas outside than within the major cities, which surprises people. People often tend to think it's the other way around. In 2009, about 22% of people living in a regional Australia reported living with disabilities compared to 20% living in outer, regional, or remote Australia. And about 17% of people living in major cities. So you can see there's a slight difference there.
Now, there's not always a lot of statistics about the rural experience, but we do know in 2005 and 2006 that people living outside of major cities were significantly less likely to have access to disability support services compared to those living in major cities. Further, Jenny, in 2011, the statistics are telling us that were taken at that time, that Aboriginal people were more likely to live with disabilities or long-term health conditions compared to the general population. And that two-thirds of Aboriginal people were living outside of major cities.
So you can see that there's a lot of people living outside cities. And there's a lot of people living outside cities who are living with disabilities. But unfortunately, it's not easy for people who are living outside the cities to have the access to the services that they need when they need them.
Speaker 2
Well I hope it's improving. I mean, no, that's becoming more, people are becoming more aware of it. The government departments, are they becoming more aware of it? How are they reaching out to the government?
Speaker 3
These people... so it tends to be a bit of a mixed bag. So in some towns, yeah, things have improved. For example, I keep hearing stories about people who are working quite hard to improve access into buildings and make sure that there's easy access for people in terms of providing transport so that people can get to different services. I know that people have been setting up services online so that people living with disabilities can access services through their computers.
However, there are still other places in Australia where services have been contracting. Services have closed down or they've moved into regional centres and people have been in those situations finding it quite hard to access what they need when they need it.
Speaker 2
What about the real remote areas? You know the ones who I don't know I can't for me it's high to fathom I see it on these like documentaries on back roads or something you've got real real remote where they have to travel miles they haven't got a neighbour or they might not even have a phone I don't know how the mobiles work out there or how do they cope?
10:24
Speaker 3
People do live very happy lives all over Australia. You will go around anywhere in Australia and you will hear people laughing and see people smiling. So people do cope, there is no doubt about that. However remote areas do have their own personal challenges. It is very isolating when you're out by yourself in a remote area that you do not have easy access to getting two services or even getting into town can be quite difficult. Especially if you have any sort of transport mode that's not reliable you can be in a very awkward position.
Speaker 2
Well I can hope, of in a very very vague way relate to that because I am in suburbia but I also feel isolated because I don't have a car now. I'm very blessed with people like you and Sandra and other people who pick me up and help me get to appointments or whatever it may be. But I suffer with isolation too which sounds silly but I can wake up in the morning and you can't get it in my mind logically.
Speaker 3
And I think you're onto something there Jenny. People like me call it rural isolation and I think if you've experienced any isolation at all anywhere in Australia it does allow you to have empathy for people who are experiencing rural isolation because you can understand that it's not easy sometimes to mix with people. It might be difficult for people to even get to talk to their next-door neighbour because it's a long drive to the next-door neighbour.
Speaker 2
It's not like you can just pop off to get a cup of sugar.
Speaker 3
Yeah, pop over for a cup of sugar. So yeah, we need to really think very deeply about the issues that people living with disabilities are experiencing in rural Australia and how they overcome rural isolation.
Speaker 2
Thank you Monica for reminding us about the rural Australia and how difficult it can be for people with disabilities and we will continue this conversation next week. Thank you all for listening.
12:58
Speaker 1
You've been listening to Jenny Wright and Monica Short talking about life with disabilities. This program has been produced by OneRPH Canberra.
