{"id":1703,"date":"2025-02-06T23:16:57","date_gmt":"2025-02-06T23:16:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/?p=1703"},"modified":"2026-01-07T11:06:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T11:06:11","slug":"a-countryman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/a-countryman\/","title":{"rendered":"A countryman"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>On the long flats north of the river<br \/>\nAn elder in a leather jacket<br \/>\nIs hitchhiking to his daughter&#8217;s funeral<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>From: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.carcanet.co.uk\/cgi-bin\/indexer?product=9781857546095\"><em>Poems the size of photographs <\/em><\/a>by Les Murray.<em><br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<h3>Commentary<\/h3>\n<p>This short poem by Les Murray gives us an image of an Aboriginal elder in the Australian outback. Aboriginal peoples suffer from poverty, very poor health and low life expectancy. Murray\u2019s word picture captures this succinctly. The elder is wearing a leather jacket, probably his best outfit. Why is he hitchhiking? Perhaps he has no car or access to a car. Perhaps there is no public transport, or he can\u2019t afford the bus fare. His daughter has died before him, which every parent will view as a tragedy.<\/p>\n<h3>Further info<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Les Murray ( 1938-2019 ) was a distinguished Australian poet. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.poetryfoundation.org\/poets\/les-murray\">Les Murray &#8211; The Poetry Foundation<\/a> shows a dozen of his poems and a summary of his life and work.\u00a0 <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Les_Murray_(poet)\">Wikipedia on Les Murray<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thelancet.com\/journals\/lanplh\/article\/PIIS2542-5196(21)00354-5\/fulltext\">Lancet series on <em>indigenous health and healthcare<\/em><\/a> in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific explores and summarises many of the underlying causes of the poor health of indigenous peoples.<\/li>\n<li>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thelancet.com\/journals\/lanplh\/article\/PIIS2542-5196(21)00354-5\/fulltext\">very different view of many indigenous peoples<\/a> on the determinants of planetary health, including land use and ownership are set out in another Lancet article.<\/li>\n<li>Photo by\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/unsplash.com\/@dylanshaw?utm_content=creditCopyText&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_source=unsplash\">Dylan Shaw<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/unsplash.com\/photos\/brown-dirt-road-between-green-grass-field-under-blue-sky-during-daytime-4LJh9TAcImw?utm_content=creditCopyText&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_source=unsplash\">Unsplash<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Contributed by<\/h3>\n<p>John Gillies<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On the long flats north of the river An elder in a leather jacket Is hitchhiking to his daughter&#8217;s funeral From: Poems the size of photographs by Les Murray. Commentary This short poem by Les Murray gives us an image of an Aboriginal elder in the Australian outback. Aboriginal peoples suffer from poverty, very poor <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/a-countryman\/\">Read More &#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1705,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpupg_custom_link":[],"wpupg_custom_link_behaviour":["default"],"wpupg_custom_link_nofollow":["default"],"wpupg_custom_image":[],"wpupg_custom_image_id":[],"yasr_overall_rating":0,"yasr_post_is_review":"","yasr_auto_insert_disabled":"","yasr_review_type":"BlogPosting","footnotes":""},"categories":[19,68],"tags":[14,77],"class_list":["post-1703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-death","category-international-medicine","tag-poetry","tag-social-determinants-of-health"],"yasr_visitor_votes":{"stars_attributes":{"read_only":false,"span_bottom":false},"number_of_votes":0,"sum_votes":0},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1703"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1735,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1703\/revisions\/1735"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}