04/07/2026
♥️
The Price of Living in the Bush
This isn’t a photo of cancer.
It isn’t a photo of medicine.
It isn’t even a photo of a hospital.
It’s a photo of a pair of boots, sitting on a hospital floor nearly 800 kilometres from home.
And if you live in rural Australia, you already know the story.
Because before we even reached this waiting room, there were sheep to move, cattle to check, waters to inspect, dogs to organise, work to postpone, bags to pack and a family to reshuffle.
Nobody talks about that part.
People tell us Australia has one of the best healthcare systems in the world.
Maybe we do.
But only if you can get to it.
For families west of the Great Divide, healthcare doesn’t start when you walk through the hospital doors.
It starts days earlier.
With diesel.
Accommodation.
Meals.
Time off work.
Finding someone to keep the farm running.
Missing birthdays, school assemblies and family dinners.
Cancer doesn’t care if you’ve got lambs hitting the ground.
Heart disease doesn’t wait until harvest is over.
Chemotherapy doesn’t stop because the river is up.
Yet somehow, we’ve accepted that this is simply the price of living in the bush.
We even joke about it.
“Just another Brisbane trip.”
As though driving hundreds of kilometres for treatment is no different to ducking down the road for a blood test.
And yes… we’ll still laugh.
We’ll argue over whose shout it is for the $8 hospital coffee that somehow still tastes burnt.
We’ll say, “Might just duck home for lunch,” knowing home is an eight-hour drive away.
Because that’s what bush people do.
We laugh through the hard days.
But underneath the humour is a truth that shouldn’t be ignored.
The LNP conference is being held in Brisbane this week.
To every politician there, and to every politician in Canberra regardless of the colour of your tie, I have an invitation.
Don’t come west for a photo in an Akubra.
Come for a week.
Better yet, come for a month.
Drive the kilometres.
Sit in the waiting rooms.
Sleep in a bed that’s not yours.
Watch your savings disappear into fuel tanks, accommodation and takeaway meals.
Leave your family behind.
Wonder who’s checking the waters.
Wonder if the sheep are right.
Wonder how much annual leave or income you’ve lost this time.
Then tell us healthcare is equitable.
Question Time has become theatre.
Australians don’t need more rehearsed one-liners.
We need leaders who stop performing and start listening.
Because people are hurting.
The divide between metropolitan and rural Australia isn’t imagined.
It’s lived.
Every.
Single.
Day.
Successive governments have promised to close that divide.
From where these boots are sitting today, on a hospital floor hundreds of kilometres from home, it doesn’t feel like it’s closing.
It feels like it’s getting wider.
And to every rural family reading this…
I know we’re not alone.
Every waiting room is filled with another pair of boots, another packed overnight bag and another family quietly carrying the weight that distance brings.
We see you.
Not because Australians in our cities deserve less.
But because Australians in the bush deserve better.
The Graziers Daughter 🫶🏼
