Nursing graduate Stef Wickes crossed the Tasman with a zest for adventure and desire to learn. She does admit she was surprised by the heat, arriving in Mackay at 10pm in January.
“The muggy conditions hit me as soon as I got off the plane– it’s still hitting me every day since,” she said.
“I didn’t really know where Mackay was – being from a small town in New Zealand, I didn’t realise how big Queensland actually is. My friend got a job on the Sunshine Coast and I thought ‘cool, we’ll be close’. Turns out it’s only a 10-hour drive!”
Stef is one of 32 nurses in the January graduate intake who have started their careers at Mackay Hospital and Health Service (HHS).
Originally from Greymouth on the west coast of the South Island in New Zealand, Stef did her three-year nursing degree at Ara Institute of Canterbury.
“At the start of my third year there was a lot of publicity about the lack of nursing jobs in New Zealand as the government had put a freeze on hiring staff,” she said.
“I was on my last my placement in the Greymouth Hospital and my friend had gotten a job in Melbourne and thought I’ve always loved Queensland as I’d been to the Gold Coast on holidays.
“So I decided to apply for a post graduate program here in Queensland.”
The Mackay HHS recruitment team helped cement her decision to bravely ‘cross the ditch and work in Australia’.
“We’re very lucky as a New Zealanders that we’re treated as Australian citizens essentially because of the Trans Tasman agreement, which is amazing,” she said.
“The Mackay nursing recruitment team were just so lovely and really supportive,” she said.
“Yes, I wanted adventure and to expand my skills in a different community, but it was really their encouragement to come over and how very easy it was to communicate with them and how responsive they were to emails and phone calls which really sealed it for me,” she said.
Stef has now completed her orientation and is looking forward to the challenge and ‘adrenalin’ of working in the emergency department at Mackay Base Hospital.
“So Mackay is quite a big hospital for me but I really liked that the health service here also offers rural hospitals as part of the graduate program,” she said.
“I’m from a from a rural town and that’s the aspect I like. My last placement was in the ED in Greymouth and I loved it – but there was only four nurses there and seven beds, so it’s going to be very different experience here in Mackay.”
Stef is also hoping to spend some time in the health service’s rural hospitals.
“I love that in nursing you are building a rapport with your patients and you also get to see a lot of different stuff in the ED, so it’s all going to be a great experience for me,” she said.
“People really aren’t aware of the new grad program here in Australia and how it offers us the opportunity to get so much experience on the job, but also experience a different country.”
For now, Stef is focused on finding her feet in nursing, gaining more skills and acclimatising to a new country.
“I really like it here so far and everyone has been really lovely.
“Although on my first day of orientation I walked in not knowing a soul here which was a bit overwhelming,” she said.
“I introduced myself to the group and said my name is Stef. Some of them said ‘what?’ I said ‘Stef’. They said Stiff? I said ‘No Stef’.
“Guess I can’t escape my Kiwi accent here.”
