It was lunch time at one of the outstations on a typical hot day and I was on a "sit and wait" with some physiotherapists. I love sit and waits as its a good opportunity to actually sit and chat with the locals until my passengers are ready to go. Unfortunately it doesn' t happen that often, but on this day I was going to be waiting around for about 3 hours. Anyway, while the physio's were doing their thing, myself and the school teacher went to the river with the kids. After quickly checking for croc's in they went. A few minutes later, one poor little kid started to cry and crawled out clutching her foot which was bleeding. We carried her back to the village thinking that she had just stepped on a sharp stone or stick.
About an hour after that the physio's had finished and we were just starting to head back to the plane when word arrived that the little girl was still in a lot of pain. It turned out that she had actually been stung by a fish (a member of the sting ray family) and now needed reasonably urgent travel into hospital. Praise the Lord that we were already on hand and ready to go, and a 5 hour trip by jeep (assuming the roads are open) was done with the plane in 35 mins. God is good.Just another day at the office in Arnhem Land ;-)
