David Stanley has travelled the world, working in some of the most challenging environments imaginable. Now he has put those experiences down on paper. 

An Associate Professor in the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Indigenous Health at Charles Sturt University, he came to Bathurst from Perth University 18 months ago. 

Assoc. Prof. Stanley was approached about co-ordinating the international program at the university as a result of the extensive work he has done in the nursing and midwifery field overseas.

Through his efforts, selected CSU students are gaining experience in India, the Philippines, Thailand, Bangladesh and Tanzania. 

Assoc. Prof. Stanley believes this is an important part in their journey to becoming nurses and midwives. 

Born in Liverpool, England, he grew up in Whyalla in South Australia. 

Assoc. Prof. Stanley began studying to be a teacher but dropped out and took up nursing in 1980, completing his hospital-based training in Whyalla.

A desire to travel saw him take up a position teaching nursing on Thursday Island. 

Assoc. Prof. Stanley said this proved particularly challenging because race relations were so volatile at the time.

“It was a difficult place to live, with the expat community forced to live behind locked gates,” he said.

Assoc. Prof. Stanley stayed  there six or seven months and then it was on to Zimbabwe, where he served as a volunteer in a mission hospital for the next two-and-a-half years, teaching and practising midwifery. 

He said it was the 1990s and AIDS was decimating populations in Africa.

“At the time 40 per cent of pregnant women were HIV positive,” Assoc. Prof. Stanley said. “We saw seven or eight births a day and of those cases at least three mums were HIV positive.”

As a result of his experiences in Africa, Assoc. Prof. Stanley wrote a book called Pangolin Diary. In Zimbabwe a pangolin is an anteater. 

He said in that culture if you found a pangolin, you gave it to the chief as a sign of respect.

“When I left, my students gave me a carved pangolin,” he said. 

That was a beautiful moment, however, that time in Africa was an incredibly lonely time for Assoc. Prof. Stanley. 

It was before the internet, when letters took weeks to arrive and he was living as the only white person in a rural community. He never went home, but occasionally volunteers would pass through. 

“It was pretty rudimentary – no water, no electricity, no heating. All the teaching I did was carried out sitting under a tree talking because there were no electronic aids,” Assoc. Prof. Stanley said.

He said there was a high mortality rate because a lot of babies born in Africa were delivered by untrained women in the community.

By training women to deliver babies he was able to make a difference but, in the end, he couldn’t stay because of the toll it was taking on his finances.

He accepted a job in England. 

“They say there are four kinds of people who go to Africa – misfits, mercenaries, missionaries and madmen. I think I was a madman,” Assoc. Prof. Stanley said.

“But I had skills I wanted to share with the world,” he said.

Assoc. Prof. Stanley believes it is important for Australian nursing students to experience working in another culture very different from their own.

“Their horizons get wider,” he said. “Many of the students have never been outside Australia. It blows their minds – the cacophony of noise, the animals, the smells.”

Assoc. Prof. Stanley said when he arrived in England he co-ordinated children’s services in York. 

He said it was easy to get a really good job at the Princess of Wales Community Hospital because Australian training was so well respected overseas.

While in the UK he took the opportunity to study for a Masters Degree and then a Doctorate. He was the first person in England to become a Doctor of Nursing. 

Assoc. Prof. Stanley has just self-published a second book, Jill And Terry. 

The book examines an experience he had while working in the largest residential facility for people with disabilities in the Southern Hemisphere, based in South Australia.

He said it was a very progressive centre in every way, except when it came to sexuality. 

Jill and Terry, the central characters in the book, were severely disabled. 

They fell in love, got married and wanted to live like a normal married couple, and that included having sex.

Assoc. Prof. Stanley was part of a team that worked with them to assist in that objective.

The book is available through e publishers lulu.com