Finally ready to go

Tasmania is a state of Australia, an island off the south coast of Australia's "big island". It's pretty rural - 37% is national Park and World Heritage site. It's the size of Maine, a bit smaller than Virginia and has 500,000 people in the whole place. I'll be working in Launceston, a city of just over 100,000 with a University. The hospital is 380 beds, the ER 23 beds, and has an Emergency Medicine residency. The residency is 8 years, so the "registrars" (the last 3-4 years) are more what we'd think of as fellows or junior faculty. They'll be a couple years younger though, since medical school starts straight after high school but last 6 years.

Medical care in Australia is nationalized in the sense that if you don't buy private medical insurance, you pay 1.5% of your taxable income and are automatically entered into Medicare (looks more comparable to our medicaid). So, there is 100% insurance coverage on a model very similar to Romney care in Massachusetts, or what Obamacare would be like if fully developed.

Although the latitude of Launceston is the same as Portland, Or, it's at sea level, so there's little snow. And, since the high point of the island is under 5300 feet, there's not too much snow even in the mountains (there is one little "ski field"). It's in the "roaring forties" - all water except for Tassie itself, south island of New Zealand, and the tip of Patagonia, so lots of wind and rain.

And, of great interest to me, there's an active cycling scene - both road and mountain biking (a shop in top runs a shuttle service to the top of a nearby mountain with a 3,000 foot descent on single track back into town!). For the race fans, Matt Goss the Columbia/HTC sprinter is from Launceston. There's a Facebook website for cyclocross racing in Australia which had its first year last year (both the racing and the website). One guy in Lonnie races 'cross by going up to the big island, but hopes to run a race or two locally this fall - our spring, when I'll be there.

So, I'll try to fill in the details in the near future. I'll write about the wind, and the rain and the flora and fauna, and the geology and society, and what it's like to live in Tassie, and the biking. But, most of all I'll write about what it's like to work in a system of nationalized medical care, how the system works, and what it's like working on the ground in the system. Maybe a little about the local humor, and the language.

I'll try to use headers so that folks that aren't interested in some of the stuff can skip to what they want.

I leave Tuesday march 8 and expect to be back June 20.