RAN Remote Area Nurse (TV series)

RAN (Remote Area Nurse) is an Australian television program (drama series), filmed entirely on Masig Island (Yorke Island) in the tropical Torres Strait north of the Cape York Peninsula, the northernmost part of Australia (State of Queensland), and the border with Papua New Guinea.

This is an important series to Torres Strait Islanders, but also to the predominantly Anglo Australian community as it highlights the difference between Islanders and mainland Indigenous Australians and the interactions between Islander and Anglo culture. Islander actors and extras are extensively used.

The series was released on DVD on 20 February 2006.

First aired in early 2006 on Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) television, it follows the life of Helen Tremain (Susie Porter), the Remote Area Nurse, charged with providing medical services to the remote Torres Strait Islanders community.

The drama comes from the RAN's necessarily close association with the island Chairman, Russ Gaibui (Charles Passi), and his extensive and somewhat dysfunctional family of wife Ina and grown children Eddie, Solomon, Paul (adopted), Nancy and Faith (adopted) and their families and friends, and other characters on the island including some white Australians.

The season of six episodes covers topics such as: whites fitting into an Islander culture; alcohol misuse and smuggling in Islander communities; family hostility and love; outsider influence on island life; family tension, life and death; seasons in the tropics and the effect on people, marriage and family.

The series is portrayed as telling true stories. Many of the idioms of the drama come from local situations. Islanders speak among themselves in their local dialect with subtitles provided for the wider television audience.

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