Jack Thompson and Rotary 

Jack Thompson, Rotary and Purple House and Bus

If you watched Australian Story in February you heard of a "Purple Bus"..., that is...a mobile dialysis machine that is helping great Australian actor Jack Thompson recover from renal failure.
 
What you may not know is that Rotary has played such a huge part in getting the Purple House Project off the ground. This particular project was one that Rotary embraced, and I recall it also being a passion of Bo Morse from Brisbane. Here's snippet of information.
 

Kintore

Kintore or Walungurru is 550kms west of Alice and is where it all started.

 

Concerned by the alarming number of their people and families having to dislocate from community to Alice Springs for dialysis treatment, Pintupi people from the Western Desert region of Central Australia started the Western Desert Dialysis Appeal to raise money for on country dialysis services.

Their passion and perseverance paid off – from the funds raised they purchased a dialysis machine which was installed in the Kintore Health Clinic. The first dialysis in Kintore took place on the 25th of September 2004.

In 2010, due to the amazing support and hard work of the Woden Rotary Club, we opened the Kintore Purple House, increasing our capacity to two chairs and providing much needed accommodation for our nurses. This amazing team of compassionate and industrious people took on the overwhelming job of transforming the ‘blue house’, an abandoned building, into the ‘Purple House’ dialysis unit. This was a huge job and many Rotary teams travelled to Kintore from the Eastern states to work on the project. 

These days we are able to have significant community elders Hilary Japaljari and Maurice Gibson at home in Kintore full time and provide other patients from Kintore time at home on country.