GIDGEE Healing’s full time doctor Aaron Davis has returned to Mount Isa to help make a difference.
Dr Davis is from the Kalkadoon tribe and has moved back to the city he was born to help his people after 20 years away.
Dr Davis was a Healy State Primary School student before going on to high school at Mount Isa High and then starting work as a wardsman at the Mount Isa Hospital once he completed year 12.
But he was embarrassed to tell anyone he wanted to make something of his life while growing up.
“I was too ashamed to tell anyone that I wanted to be a doctor,” he said.
“It was more a social thing, you kind of got lost as an Aboriginal.
“Once I went to a school guidance officer and said I wanted to go to the university.
‘‘He laughed at me and talked me out of it but I still knew I wanted to achieve something.”
After school, Dr Davis said he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do – only that he wasn’t going to work in the mines, after his father had told him that he was never to work there.
“In 1990 I started a traineeship as a wardsman at Mount Isa Hospital,” he said.
“This was the era where nurses just started going to university and I had to go to TAFE.”
“I used to get the nurses’ textbooks and read them, and they sort of made sense to me.” Dr Davis said he would follow the hospital interns around and empty bins while listening and learning as they did their rounds around the hospital.
After finally going to university, Dr Davis worked as a nurse for six years before he decided to become a doctor.
He was then knocked back a number of times by universities to get his medical degree but Dr Davis kept applying and finally, after about the sixth time he had tried, was accepted to James Cook University in Townsville.
Dr Davis said he had always wanted to move back to Mount Isa and help his people – but admitted it was not always easy being an Aboriginal doctor.
“The hardest thing about being an Aboriginal doctor is people think we are role models but we want to be more,” he said.
“I’m more than an Aboriginal painting on the wall.
“I have passion, we see the problems here because we are on the front lines.”
“Being in Mount Isa people know who I am, so it makes it easier.
“The biggest challenge is we get doctors from overseas to fill the void in remote areas because Australian doctors don’t want to work in rural areas.
“The biggest health issues in Mount Isa are diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and it all has to do with lifestyle.”
Dr Davis said he had been back in Mount Isa working at Gidgee Healing for about a year, but he found it challenging because his family still lived in Western Australia.
For Dr Davis, work is his life and coming back to Mount Isa has helped him to reconnect to his family and his people after being away for two decades.
In the future he hopes to be able to help not only his own tribe, but others in remote areas and to continue his work as a doctor.
