Don's Study Tour

I haven't posted anything since February 18 as the next day the Health Study tour started.  Our group gathered together in Sydney - there were 7 of us from across Canada and one from Australia who organized the events.  We got to meet with the Consul General for Canada - see the Group photo at this office complex. There are also a couple of other people from Australia in this picture.

We spent our first week in Australia visiting people across the health system - Government, hospitals, clinics, and many health related agenices first in Sydney and then we flew to Melbourne to finish off the week. While in Melbourne Rose and I had a chance to tour the new Royal Children's Hospital that was just opened by the Queen before Christmas.  Quite an impresseive building as you can see from the pictures below.  One striking feature is they have a fish tank that goes up two storie  and is 8 feet in diameter and it is full of colour fish and coral.  I took a picture of the biggest fish in there.

At the end of the first week, the group had Saturday off do what they wanted.  However, most of our time was spent in the hotel as I had to write up a report on the previous week and that is the day Rose and I went to the new Children's hospital and at night we went to a live theatre show - Chorus Line.   On Sunday we flew to Auckland New Zealand.  We had a  great hotel in Auckland and the whole group was on the 27th floor and the on the top floor - 28th there was a lounge where we could have breakfast, wine at the end of the day and we could plan our next steps.  The views of Auckland were striking as you can see:

As in Australia we met with a wide range of people in the health system.  One big difference though is the attention that is given to the Maori people.  The approach has been quite different than in Canada with our First Nations people and it is working  much better.  While there are still many poor Maori people, you  find many prosperous Maori as well.  We visited a major clinic called Whanau House  where they are working with disadvantaged Maori families.  This is a brand new facility - see picture below.

We ended the Study tour on Thursday with a final wind up dinner with the Group. Rose participated in all the social evens and even in some of the study sesions.  She took some of the picutres so that is why you don't see her.

I had final meeting on Friday and then Rose and I toutored around Auckland.  The rest of the Group left to go back to Canada except for a couple who decided like us to stay on for a little longer for a holiday.