“ Kim came up as a student in her last year of medicine to do a term up there. I was a second year doctor at that stage. We met, fell in love and married. Kim wanted to come back to this area and I had no ties anywhere. By that stage I had been 4 years in Townsville. Kim always came to Northern NSW for holidays growing up and thought is was so beautiful plus Lismore was the biggest town with a hospital. We came down in my 4th year for an interview at the hospital. We both got jobs and started work in 1985. We bought a house in Eureka. I worked at the Base for about a year. Kim worked in Emergency in the morning and general practise in the afternoon then we went overseas for 6 months. It was meant to be 12 months and we knew we would come back to Lismore. I had arranged with Dr John Rawle, a very well established family of doctors in Lismore to buy his practice at the end of the 12 months.
John got very sick and in those days communication was really bad. We were somewhere in Europe. He had written to my sister in London who joined us half way through the trip with the letter. In the letter he said he was very sick and that we should return. He couldn’t wait another 6 months so we came home. I took over the practice here in Conway St. Adrian Johnson and Johnny Rawle were the doctors there. Johnny retired as soon as I came in which just left Adrian and I. The rooms were really small and we didn’t really like it there. The building is gone now.
We bought a house close to the hospital and we worked out of there for 35 years. It was hard with just Adrian and I because we had to cover each other. I used to take 6 week holidays and he hated that which is understandable. We eventually sold the building and went our separate ways. I called Andrew Binns and ended up moving to his practice where I’ve been for 8 years. It’s been fantastic.
During those years we had 4 children, all at Lismore Base. Dr Steel was our Obstetrician. All the kids went to St Carthage’s and Trinity High. Nick who is now 33 was the only one who in Grade 10 decided he wanted to go to boarding school. He was really good at tennis so he got a partial scholarship at Churchie. He’s now a Lawyer in London. Rachel is 30. She’s a Lawyer too and works for Legal Aid. Eliza is 25 and studying to be a Lawyer. She wants to work with refugees. They are all very different. Nick is into finance, business and property. Rachel and Eliza are into humanities, low socio economic people. They love helping people. Eliza was home for 6 months due to Covid. Alex is 27 and he did an Environment Degree. He works in Bio Security for Rous Water but prior to that he was doing bush regeneration which he loves.
I’m into running. I did a 30 km run this morning with a 73 year old man who wants to keep running marathons till he’s 84. We started at 3am this morning. I also do painting with water colours and I play guitar. I made a recipe book with my recipes and I painted bits of the recipe. If I used cauliflower I would paint it. Mirror Images in the Star Court Arcade are making it into a book for me. I play golf. I’ve got a lot of things going on.
I think Lismore is the best place in the world. Kim and I have done a lot of travel. My patients have done a lot of travel and they all tell me we are in the best part of the world and that’s true. Fantastic climate, the people here are all very different and all very accepting. Kim likes working in emergency for that reason. Each one has something to add and now I think Lismore is becoming even more eclectic and more interesting. I love the Lismore connections pages where people help each other out. You don’t get that in the cities. We really saw it in the floods. We have a really solid community.”
John got very sick and in those days communication was really bad. We were somewhere in Europe. He had written to my sister in London who joined us half way through the trip with the letter. In the letter he said he was very sick and that we should return. He couldn’t wait another 6 months so we came home. I took over the practice here in Conway St. Adrian Johnson and Johnny Rawle were the doctors there. Johnny retired as soon as I came in which just left Adrian and I. The rooms were really small and we didn’t really like it there. The building is gone now.
We bought a house close to the hospital and we worked out of there for 35 years. It was hard with just Adrian and I because we had to cover each other. I used to take 6 week holidays and he hated that which is understandable. We eventually sold the building and went our separate ways. I called Andrew Binns and ended up moving to his practice where I’ve been for 8 years. It’s been fantastic.
During those years we had 4 children, all at Lismore Base. Dr Steel was our Obstetrician. All the kids went to St Carthage’s and Trinity High. Nick who is now 33 was the only one who in Grade 10 decided he wanted to go to boarding school. He was really good at tennis so he got a partial scholarship at Churchie. He’s now a Lawyer in London. Rachel is 30. She’s a Lawyer too and works for Legal Aid. Eliza is 25 and studying to be a Lawyer. She wants to work with refugees. They are all very different. Nick is into finance, business and property. Rachel and Eliza are into humanities, low socio economic people. They love helping people. Eliza was home for 6 months due to Covid. Alex is 27 and he did an Environment Degree. He works in Bio Security for Rous Water but prior to that he was doing bush regeneration which he loves.
I’m into running. I did a 30 km run this morning with a 73 year old man who wants to keep running marathons till he’s 84. We started at 3am this morning. I also do painting with water colours and I play guitar. I made a recipe book with my recipes and I painted bits of the recipe. If I used cauliflower I would paint it. Mirror Images in the Star Court Arcade are making it into a book for me. I play golf. I’ve got a lot of things going on.
I think Lismore is the best place in the world. Kim and I have done a lot of travel. My patients have done a lot of travel and they all tell me we are in the best part of the world and that’s true. Fantastic climate, the people here are all very different and all very accepting. Kim likes working in emergency for that reason. Each one has something to add and now I think Lismore is becoming even more eclectic and more interesting. I love the Lismore connections pages where people help each other out. You don’t get that in the cities. We really saw it in the floods. We have a really solid community.”