Natasha Tile: NT Health Senior Emergency Registrar runs Camino de Santiago for Remote Laundries
An NT Health emergency doctor, inspired by a cause close to her heart, has performed a feat of endurance few could match: running a famous 800km pilgrim trail, the Camino de Santiago, in less than two weeks.
Northern Territory
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With the experience of a single marathon behind her, a Royal Darwin Hospital doctor has performed a feat of endurance few in Australia could match: running Spain’s famous Camino de Santiago trail, the equivalent of 18 marathons, in just 13 days.
Natasha Tile, a senior emergency registrar who has been with NT Health the last six years, completed the famous pilgrim trail between Saint Jean Pied de Port, at the foot of the Pyrenees in France, and the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, in Galicia, Spain on Monday.
Originally budgeting 18 days for the trail – equivalent to about 42km a day, the length of a marathon – Dr Tile ultimately ran 781km in just 13 days, eight hours and 32 minutes (but who’s counting).
Speaking from Galicia on Tuesday, Dr Tile said she hadn’t ventured outside since completing the trail.
“I’m really sore,” she said.
“Every joint and muscle has hurt at some point along the journey.
“At the moment, my knees and feet are sore, but last night’s sleep was great.”
Dr Tile had only completed one competitive marathon in her life when the idea came to her to run the Camino de Santiago.
By the time her rigorous training regimen was over, she was running up to 60km a day – before even setting foot in Europe.
Soliciting donations at every step of her journey, Dr Tile has so far raised $23,000 for the Aboriginal Investment Group’s (AIG) Remote Laundries Project, which operates five laundries in the NT, providing local jobs and beating back the scourge of scabies.
As an emergency doctor, Dr Tile has seen first-hand the parasite’s ability to leave a legacy of life-sapping rheumatic heart disease (RHD), particularly for Aboriginal Territorians.
“I remember seeing a girl my age sitting there with heart failure from RHD,” she said.
“It seemed so unfair that I could go and run all these marathons and she has to sit there huffing and puffing while her heart is failing from RHD.”
The condition is described as an a “disease of disadvantage” by medical professionals because the conditions that breed scabies include things like overcrowded housing and lack of washing facilities.
Both are factors common in remote NT.
The rates of RHD in Australia are among the highest in the developed world, and nowhere is more susceptible than the NT, where the disease affects people at rates sharply higher than the two other northern states, Queensland and Western Australia.
The Remote Laundries Project, which opened its fifth laundry, at Gunbalanya, earlier this year, said it will use Dr Tile’s donation to pay more wages.
“Each Aboriginal Investment Group [AIG] Remote Laundry creates up to five positions for local Aboriginal people and the funds Tash has raised will go towards the wages for our magnificent Indigenous staff who work across our laundries,” said AIG chief executive Liz Morgan-Brett.
“Our flexible and sustainable employment model has injected more than $700,000 in wages into remote communities through jobs that otherwise wouldn’t exist without the laundry.”
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Originally published as Natasha Tile: NT Health Senior Emergency Registrar runs Camino de Santiago for Remote Laundries
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