Raro adventure of a lifetime

Kiwi pharmacist Neville Puckey can now add remote Pacific Island stapler technician to his CV.

Mr Puckey, who took up the position of chief pharmacist for the Cook Islands Ministry of Health in November 2008, was tasked with supervisory visits to several outer islands, looking at stock and asset management, prescribing systems and reporting on the general state of the health system.

Putting aside his fear of being out of the sight of land for days on end, Mr Puckey, his wife Jenni and representatives from various Cook Island ministries boarded an eight-seater plane in Rarotonga, bound for the northernmost island of Penrhyn, from where access to neighbouring islands was by boat. As well as establishing a stock management system at the hospital there, the former owner of Hamilton’s Pharmacy 547 was bemused to find himself mending a jammed stapler that had been out of commission for more than a year, and fixing a generator which had also been down for some 12 months.

The remainder of the journey was on board a 58-foot ketch and began with the island of Rakahanga, population 71, some 36 hours away. Like most of the hospitals Mr Puckey visited on the tour, Rakahanga’s three-bed hospital was spotlessly clean, with drugs ordered neatly by therapeutic category. A thorough stocktake was carried out and the nurse practitioner trained to use a computerised system.

During the three-week trip he also visited Manihiki Island, where he met the delightfully monikered nurse Mama Moeroa, a born and bred Manihikian with an encyclopaedic mind for detail – she was able to name the day, date, time and weight of the last baby born in the hospital.

Kumara, the local medical officer on the island of Nassau, was an equally intriguing character, cheerfully fulfilling the multiple roles of doctor, dentist, public health officer and nurse for a population of 78. Her most referred to texts were entitled Where There is no Doctor and Where There is no Dentist. These were arguably sufficient for the enrolled nurse as Mr Puckey found the people of Nassau to be healthier and happier than their counterparts on other islands.

From Nassau it was on to Suwarrow, an island so affected by the cyclone season that for six months of every year its only six inhabitants have to leave. It was here, he and his wife got up close with the resident Black Tip sharks. “It was everything I had conjured up in my mind – with the absolute isolation, the swirling birds and the cruising sharks,” Mr Puckey says of Suwarrow.

The journey wasn’t always plain sailing. Rough weather on the 190 nautical mile voyage from Manihiki to Pukapuka Island earned the crew a heroes’ welcome by the village chief and other dignitaries.

Arriving back in Rarotonga after a similarly difficult leg from Palmerston Island, the intrepid pharmacist was delighted to devour a beef burger after three weeks of eating vast quantities of rice and fish.

Mr Puckey is now back in New Zealand and living in Hamilton. For more on his Cook Islands adventure, click here Cook island tale.

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