I was born in Tennant and grew up at BB station. Go to school there to year six and then when to Alice Springs to Yirrara college year seven to ten. Then back to Tennant, lived in Tennant. Came back in 1980 lived in Tennant and then went back to Alice to live for, I was working in Alice with land council. I was a field officer. I wasn't sick yet that was in the 1980s. Then moved back to Tennant I spent one year in Alice Springs, not away from home but coming up here doing surveys and that with land council for the Warumungu land claim. I was working with Jane Lloyd. I was helping get the information.

In 1982 I went to the High Court in Canberra. I was seventeen or eighteen years old. We was just going down and listening to be there to actually be there. So that five judges could see all the people. Then we came back and then I resigned then after that from land council. I finished all my things there, noting to do so I said all right. I done all the survey and that, put all the names on the map with the old people and I was gonna live in Alice but I said ‘na, I'm going back.’

I came back and then started in 1985. Before that I started with Congress doing pick up as a field officer, a driver in 1985 when Congress opened. It was at the Pink Palace [now Julalikari Arts and Crafts Centre in Tennant Creek] then, that little thing area not where the big thing, where the house thing is there. We started there Congress, then we moved to the new building I think in '86, middle of '86 moved to that one down there then. We been doing translations and going out as field officers, health workers been working doing those sorts of things and getting. We get involved with lots of things when they have old people there.

In 1987 I went back to the land council in Tennant now. Worked there as a receptionist and then I got sick on that then in the middle in July of '87. I started dialysis in 1987, when I was in my twenties. I was living here in Tennant when I got sick and went from here to Alice and then they flew me from Alice to Adelaide, the same day I think, arrived in Alice that morning and then left Alice that that afternoon for Adelaide. They knew my kidney was failing, I just went straight to Adelaide to get on the machine. I was on my own. Before you get that thing you get sick, you get build up fluid and vomiting and sort of flu thing you have, but it's that kidney failing. You don't know. You're vomiting a lot.

I was in Adelaide four years. I had friends living there in Adelaide, not far from the QEH—Queen Elizabeth's Hospital—not far from there. Two weeks in hospital and then out of hospital—not working but doing things. I tried to find a job in Adelaide but it's hard in the city.

They didn't have any renal unit in Alice Springs, yet. It opened in 1989. Only a few patients come up from Adelaide. The first patients were there, I think I came up in 1991. Came up to Alice then. Once they had it extended to more machines, more seats and more nurses. There were a few people down from Tennant Creek, not many, four or five. They had no renal unit here, they had one in Darwin but most of the people from the Barkly were sent down to Adelaide.

They were fighting since 1987 for the renal unit to be set up in Tennant Creek but it didn't do anything, people wasn't strong those days, there were only a few people talking about the renal unit at that time. Dr. John Boffa was one, then. He was working here at Congress and Dr. Hickey, John Hickey and Dr. Helen Harney. They were the ones that were here that were fighting for the unit to be here. But they couldn't get funding or anything at that time. And when I had my transplant in 1992 in Adelaide stayed there three months. Two weeks in hospital and three months out of hospital to see if the kidney is functioning, to see if the kidney is doing what it is supposed to do, pumping all the rubbish out. But it was, when they first put the kidney in here I was carrying it around, it was heavy. I was lifting it because it was heavy. I was carrying it around. Walking around, I could feel it. Sister asked me, ‘why you doing that?’ Ah, that kidney's heavy. I had to get used to it there, it was no trouble then, it didn't bother me at all. I was hanging on to the side at first but then it got lighter and lighter then it felt like no kidney there.

I came back to Alice stayed in Alice for two weeks, then I came back up here to live then in 1992. Everything was done here like blood tests and to check how the kidney was doing. Doctor used to come up every six months to check other patients as well.

Now it's better. The renal unit here is set up now so we're trying to bring back more patients, some people in town, older people and young people they are refusing dialysis. They don't want to go to Alice Springs. They don't want to live away from here. So they gonna just come back when the new renal unit is built it will be bigger, more bigger, they gonna give that room back to the maternity ward. So now, six people [are here] now, Monday, Wednesday, Friday and some Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. People go on different days. I go three days a week.

So you have to live close by to the renal unit. You can only go for about four days without dialysis then you get sick, very sick. Unless you controlling yourself for the extra day, but if you go six days without dialysis you're sick very sick, they'll fly you out of here back to Alice.

My kidney is bad again it needs to come out. It's painful. Because it's not working anymore, it's paining. They are planning another operation. They just gonna get it out, it's not working too good, I don't know what they doing. It's been good till 1999. Eight years I had the kidney, then it started acting up. I went back on dialysis in 1999. I went back to live in Alice, I could come up for the weekend but not stay.

I done a little bit of work at CAAMA doing promos and also I did a study at Batchelor of nutritionist health, I'm still doing it here this is my last year, then I get a certificate, finish up then I do another three years. I can get a job with Congress, or anywhere else with my first certificate but with the second one I can get a higher grade one.

We got to eat not the normal food, we have to watch the potassium, it's good for you but not for me. Hot chips either or chocolate. I just eat now and then. We can eat some banana and mandarin orange got too much potassium. We have to control our fluid, we got to control what we eat we got to have a balanced sort of meal. We can't drink orange juice, we can drink water, tea, cool drink, but we can't have too much but not orange juice, apple juice, grapefruit all them juices they'll, they got acid and potassium, high in potassium, high in fat some of them they make low fat.

Lot of kidney [problems] can be caused by diabetes, high blood pressure, not eating the right sort of food. It can run in families, normally there is one person in one family, in town here there was she gave her mother the kidney, they said you could only have one kid but she has three. She gave her mother the kidney. But she's still kicking, still going. Doctors say good healthy kidney is from a person that is an alcoholic, because they drink alcohol and the kidney work fast to like ya know, because it works a lot, it's been overtime, people been urinating a lot, they reckon its good. It keeps just pumping, pumping, getting all the junk out. They reckon it's stronger. People not supposed to drink and we not supposed to get their kidneys but doctors say it's good to get that person's kidney!

Last year, in August that renal unit opened here in Tennant. There was three of us who done self care, three of us, we came up first, we set up our own machine, put our own needles in. We had a nurse, but, we have to have a nurse, because when we on the dialysis someone has to take our blood pressure. Walking around keeping an eye on us.

It takes maybe five hours some of us go on for six hours, four hours (three times a week). We go over weigh ourselves, take our blood pressure, set up our machine, set our little tray up. Warm the blood, or cold in the winter we get a lot of blankets. And while it's going we have a good nights sleep. Morning we go. There are three nurses now that are trained. One is a trainee and two are fully trained. Well we should be having more patients at the end of this month or next year.

Well they want the whole 32 patients up here by 2005, or by sometime, for all of them to come up. They gonna build on the next street on Memorial drive. Right there near the Memos (club). Where that old hospital is, but next to it there. Hospital here they gonna make that big block, they have the money for that, I don't know when they gonna start work on it. Elliot McAdam went and had meeting with us a couple times in Alice about the renal unit to be set up here and how the Minister for Barkly gonna fight for where people can stay and where people can live for that renal unit in Tennant Creek, most of them said we get our own houses or we live in a flat or a hostel. They reckon it might cost 5 million, but I don't know. It was 1987 when they started doing all the talking about it, but it's not till 2005 we have the renal unit set up here.

There are a lot of old people that do it in Alice. They not up here yet. They need the people that are self-care first and the reliable ones then the old people come up later on. When they get more nurses involved and trainees, health workers so the health workers can communicate with the old people. Like what I been doing down in Alice, like if someone like a sister or the liaison office or the social worker or the nurse that let people know they gonna be on the kidney machine, I go in and talk to them. They pay me for interpreting and explaining what sort of food they gotta eat, what this machine do to you, what the machine does.

Well we go and have a look at the machine and how they put their needles in have a look at the catheter how they do it and we just show them lot of pictures of the artificial kidney the dialyzer how it works and what it does all this and that so they feel, so they feel its been explained and what it does to me so they don't feel frightened.

Well, in Adelaide in 1987 when I went down there, this Arrernte woman from Santa Teresa, she was in hospital, she was drinking water from the sink. They [the hospital staff] said to me can you explain to her. I knew water…I said you can't drink kwaty [‘water’ in Arrernte] anymore. Then she did understand. I showed her half one, not full one I told her. Two cup same size them paper cups. I filled one up full and one up half and told her you can't drink this full one, this half one you got to drink that.

That other time, one old lady she was there she couldn't understand anything, no one couldn't talk to her, I was in hospital for my boil then I was sleeping up to and sister come up, ‘you know how to speak her language?’ ‘No,’ ‘oh.’ She was a bit mad and walks around all over the place and when she has to be on the machine she has to sit in one place not walk around. So they got someone who could speak to her.

Now they are using, now in the renal unit they use interpreters to go in and interpret for people. Like they get one old girl she can't understand what the doctor says so they get the interpreter in there now. I'll be helping out doing things with the patients and that here now in Tennant.