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practical skills but had also completed her nursing degree. The next step for her was a graduate nursing program and Aaron suggested that she apply for the program run out of Alice Springs. She did this, and from there spent three years working around the Territory.
    â€˜I used to work night shift, then I’d finish that, go back to my unit, shower, and drive out to the station. Once I was there I’d find Aaron wherever he was on the station and I’d go blow for blow with him, whatever he was doing—thinking I was such a hero. When we got home I’d get dinner ready and he’d just put his feet up. And I’d get cranky at him.’
    Very slowly Robina realised that her own expectations—that she should, in addition to her own work, help Aaron on the station and also provide him with house-cleaning and cooking services—were not Aaron’s expectations.
    â€˜I was putting it on myself. It was a really screwed-up perception. When I dropped those expectations of myself—surprisingly and unsurprisingly—everything became easy between us.’
    It was the first time, although it had been hiding in plain sight, that Robina had caught a glimpse of her demon. She didn’t have a name for it yet but she knew that she would sometimes shut away who she truly was in the endeavour to be someone else, another Robina, who would be more acceptable to the critic within.
    She hadn’t realised yet that this one victory in loosening the grip of her own expectations around what a woman on a rural property does, of asking, ‘who says that?’ and ‘is that even remotely reasonable?’, was only the first battle she would need to fight. She didn’t realise she was travelling through life with ‘should’ sitting on one shoulder and ‘must’ sitting on the other, each looking for an opportunity to whisper in her ear a message that would unleash anger and resentment within her, and then an inevitable self-hatred for harbouring these feelings. Why she was listening to the ‘shoulds’ and ‘musts’ was the real question, and one she would not think to ask for many years.
    Aaron continued to manage Epenarra and Robina continued to work as a nurse, always returning to Aaron on the station as she could. She loved nursing.
    â€˜The remote experience is so good because you have to make do with what you have. I imagined, when I became a nurse, that I could fly around solo delivering nursing care in an ultra-light to remote people.’
    She was to realise that this was what the Royal Flying Doctor Service did—but that dream of taking journeys to remotely located clients would never quite leave her. She loved the physical aspects of nursing, the suturing and the bandaging, but most fascinating of all to her was care of mothers.
    â€˜I had done a double shift at Tennant Creek and a young girl in labour came in. She was seventeen and this wasn’t her first child. The ambulance had brought her from the post office, but she’d walked from the other side of the town to reach the post office. She was too far gone to get her to Alice and she was on her own. I played the role of father, I stood up at her head and she was reefing at me—pulling me in towards her with each contraction. I was just on a high. It was as if the oxytocin high of delivery overflowed into me as well, it was incredible. The girl delivered the baby safely and then we transferred her to Alice Springs.
    â€˜I learnt a lot about mothering and breastfeeding from the Aboriginal people. The children I saw were “on” their people all the time. I remember on night shift seeing one lady in bed with three children—one sleeping on one breast, another who had just come off, and one more further down the bed. They were all just sound asleep, loving each other.’
    However, Robina’s contact with the Aboriginal people she was living alongside was mainly limited