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I was born in 1948 in Adelaide. From the age of one, we moved to the rural town of Mindarie and lived there until I came back to the city for high school. It’s so small it doesn’t have a pub. I have one brother and two sisters, all younger. Dad was a farmer, mum looked after the house. When we came to Adelaide my dad worked as a labourer, laying stormwater pipes. I had polio as a four-year-old. My parents were told at one stage that I would never walk again – there was a bit of a battle going on in the medical profession about the best treatment. Luckily I got to someone who believed in active treatment and physical therapy. The standard treatment was to put people in plaster to keep their legs straight and not do anything else. The only thing now is I wear orthotics.
I attended Salisbury and Elizabeth high schools. I was very interested in science, maths and physics. I wanted to become a physicist. I wasn’t a straight-A student, but as long as it wasn’t English or language I was fine. I went to the University of Adelaide and did first-year science and then got into second-year medicine. I had a fascination with how the body works – it just took over. I was the first one in my extended family to go to university. I think my parents were pretty proud.
I graduated in 1971 and did my internship at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Adelaide. It was very hard work, long hours and could get stressful, but overall quite rewarding and confirmed I was in the right job. After that I went into the air force because I had been called up for national service. I enjoyed my three years in the RAAF, it was quite rewarding. I was a medical officer at the Amberly base in Queensland and then Point Cook, Victoria. A lot of it was routine general practice but we also did medical evacuations. It got me interested in emergency medicine and trauma surgery. It was stressful but rewarding when you resuscitated someone and brought them back. I went back to Queen Elizabeth Hospital and did two years as a resident medical officer.
After a lot of soul searching I went into general practice – six months in Adelaide and then I went to Naracoorte, near Coonawarra, for 4 years. I enjoyed my time there. I came back to Adelaide to work for the Family Medicine Program, training young doctors to be GPs. I was interested in education. I had taken a lot of students when I was in Naracoorte. I combined that with general practice in the city. I was interested in how you go about maintaining the quality of medical care. Because of my interest in psychiatry, it allowed me to help develop the ability of the younger doctors to communicate effectively with patients.
I did 10 years in general practice full-time in St Agnes, Adelaide, but I was also heavily involved in the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners both at a state and national level, as the censor-in-chief. I spent 2 years as the state director for training in the RACGP. I was invited to join the University of Adelaide. I spent six years there in medical education and GP research and teaching. I was appointed the Foundation Professor of Medical Education at the University of Western Sydney in 2005. They were setting up a medical school at the same time as the University of Wollongong. My role at UWS was to get the first two years of the program up and running. We did a good job.
In 2012 I was approached about coming to UOW Graduate School of Medicine and the program here is quite exciting and novel, so I jumped at the chance. I was Associate Dean Learning and Teaching, then there was a restructure and I became Dean of Medicine. This is a small school, which has huge advantages. You get to know the students. The quality of our graduates is excellent and the feedback we’re getting from the hospitals is positive. We have a focus on rural, regional and remote medicine – 70per cent of our intake are rural students. I have been acting dean for the last six months. It’s hard work but very rewarding. My goals are improving the integration across the different phases of the course and increasing the amount of research. I am married with two children and a granddaughter. My wife is a retired physiotherapist.