16 | Vicdoc August / September 2019 The flying doctor August / September 2019 Vicdoc | 17 I was introduced to flying by chance. It was 1963, my second year after graduation. I had moved out of my Melbourne home for the first time to take a job with the University Department of Surgery at Royal Perth Hospital. One night on duty, the nurse in charge, Sister Hicks, asked me how I was enjoying living in Perth. I replied, "I love it, but I'm at a bit of a loose end when I'm off duty." She responded, "Well, you'll have to learn to fly". Somewhat shocked, I asked why and received the simple reply, "Because my husband's a flying instructor" and she organised my introductory flight that week! Phil Hicks, being a good salesman, arranged the next lesson and it wasn't long before I was hooked on flying; something that went on to transform my life. The flying school was at Perth International Airport, which was the only airport in the Perth vicinity in those days. No pilot forgets their first solo flight. Sitting alone at the controls of the school's single engine, two-seater, fabric-covered Piper Colt, I was joined in the circuit by an Air India Boeing 707. As they say in aviation, only my laundryman and I will know how I felt! I managed to land uneventfully and received my unrestricted private licence the following year. By then I was a registrar at Royal Perth Hospital. Somewhat reluctantly, I left Perth to commence my obstetrics and gynaecology training back home at the Royal Women's Hospital (RWH) in 1965. I kept my flying current, taking several of my RWH colleagues flying and managed to purchase my first aircraft, a second-hand Piper Colt, similar to the one in which I trained. One of my fellow registrars in Perth was in the Air Force Reserve medical branch based at RAAF Pearce. When he landed an overseas job and asked me if I would like to take his place, I jumped at it, excited by the thought of flying military aircraft. I managed to do this on several thrilling occasions, including flying supersonic in a Mirage while working at the No. 4 RAAF Hospital in Butterworth, Malaysia in 1983. Apart from the flying and the extra income, I enjoyed the professional aspects of 30 years in the Air Force Reserve, until compulsory retirement due to age in 1994. I retired as the consultant O&G to the Air Force with the rank of Group Captain. The Air Force trained me in aviation medicine, which I consider my second specialty. I have been able to maintain currency in it with the help of the Australasian Society of Aerospace Medicine, the Civil Aviation Safety Authority and the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS), on whose council I served. I remain associated with the RFDS in the position of Emeritus Councillor. I would like to see RANZCOG create a similar position for its Fellows who, like me, have served on Council. We can learn a lot from aviation medicine with its emphasis on procedural safety. I continue to derive much from this aspect of my professional life (apart from the personal need to keep fit and pass my annual aircrew medical) because it keeps me in touch with general medicine. For example, I can boast that I am one of the few O&Gs who knows much about ophthalmology. My first opportunity to mix business with pleasure (apart from the air force) arose in 1968 while completing my training at RWH. The hospital informed me that Devonport Hospital on the north coast of Tasmania was desperate for an O&G locum. It was prepared to use me even though I was not yet officially qualified. I duly departed Moorabbin Airport in my little Colt for my first Bass Strait crossing, with the bonus of being paid for it! My first experience as the only specialist O&G in a major rural hospital was certainly memorable. In my first week I delivered a baby with severe erythroblastosis foetalis from an Rh immunised mother. The nearest paediatric service was in Hobart, so with a nurse holding the phone to my ear connected to the paediatrician on call at RWH Melbourne, I successfully performed the only exchange transfusion of my career. I completed the two weeks without any significant untoward event and managed the return Bass Strait crossing very happy indeed. I subsequently upgraded my pilot’s licence with an instrument rating permitting flight in all weather day and night. This provided the option to seriously (and safely) use it for work. After starting my own practice, I called a few rural practices with hospitals and airfields and Kerang (north of Bendigo, close to the NSW border) took me on. Initially, I would operate under the direction of the local GPs (a couple of whom were excellent anaesthetists), but I soon realised that I needed to see the patients myself in order to choose the optimal procedure. This meant organising consulting as well as operating visits. I subsequently extended my flying visits to Echuca, Cohuna, Kyabram and most recently (in locum capacity) Port Augusta Hospital in South Australia. I have enjoyed them all and appreciate the patient gratitude as well as the challenge of neglected pathology that I rarely see in Melbourne. Flying enables access to interesting places that might not otherwise be practical. This ability to fly anywhere also prompted me to become a cattle grazier on the side. I acquired the grazing lease of Passage Island from the Tasmanian Government. This 600-acre paradise is the south-eastern member of the Bass Strait Furneaux Group, of which Flinders Island is the largest. It provided me with 38 years of pleasure (and extra income) until I had to finally admit that 600 remote acres and 60 head of cattle was too much to manage for a septuagenarian without regular assistance. I can thank the RFDS for the acquisition of my current aircraft, a Cessna Bird Dog – a Vietnam War veteran operated by the United States Army for forward air control. At the annual general meeting of the RFDS in 1994, in Kalgoorlie WA, the councillors were shown the RFDS fleet in their hangar and I was fascinated to see the Birddog at the rear. It had been imported from Thailand and restored by a local engineer, who had recently died. The RFDS chief engineer was a close friend and undertook to sell it for the widow. I bought it originally for enjoyment, but it proved to be such fun and so reliable that I had it upgraded to instrument flight. It has since been the aircraft I have most frequently used to do my rural work. Every now and then, I sit back and reflect on a long career in medicine, which has been more enjoyable than I could possibly have imagined, thanks to the night nurse in charge at Royal Perth Hospital. ` Dr Graeme Dennerstein RFD, MBBS, FRCOG, FRANZCOG Do you have a dispute with a colleague or manager that needs resolving? AMA Victoria’s Workplace Relations team now provides a mediation service. Call (03) 9280 8722 AMA Victoria Mediation Service "Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings." – John Gillespie Magee Jr, World War 2 pilot. If you would like to tell us about an achievement in medicine or a personal interest you believe other members might enjoy reading, please contact
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