Pioneering Mount Isa equality and bush advocate Pat Fennell has been awarded an OAM (Member of the Order) in the Queen's Birthday honours announced Monday.
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The 86-year-old won the award for service to women's health in rural and remote Queensland.
Her achievements are many and legendary reflecting an extraordinary lifetime of activism.
In the field of health she was a member of the Women's Council for Rural and Regional Women in 1990s, on the working group for the establishment of the Mount Isa Centre for Rural and Remote Health. a board member of the North Queensland Rural Division of General Practice, a member of the National Health Council. on the working group to establish the Rural and Remote Women's Health Clinics (now RFDS Women's Health Clinics) and helped found the Diploma of Enrolled Nursing Program in Mount Isa.
In agriculture she was the first woman elected on to the board of the Cattlemen's Union and a president of the Mount Isa Branch as well as being a grazier for many years and also led the Mount Isa Landcare Group. She was even instrumental in starting the live cattle trade in the 1990s.
Ms Fennell won a Queensland Great award in 2015 (an honour matched by her parish priest Father Mick Lowcock on the weekend).
She grew up in Charleville and has been married to Mark for 62 years.
"I was born in 1933 in the depression and I vaguely remember my father coming home with the rabbits because we were limited for food," Pat said.
"When Mark and I married we came up to the North West to live on cattle properties. We moved out to a very bare block called Linda Downs 300km south west (of Mount Isa) and it needed a lot of work, that's where our children were born."
In almost 40 years on the land, Pat and Mark had one boy and three girls and now have 16 grandchildren and 24 great-grandchildren.
While on the land she was the first woman to be elected on the Cattle Council.
"I didn't stay with them very long, I went down for Melbourne for meetings but it was a different kind of committee then what I wanted to be on," she said.
"There were a lot of very wealthy and great guys on it but they had a different perspective than where i was coming from, which was a big area and hard to run properties, lots of problems with distance and communications whereas in Melbourne, without being rude, they were fairly spoilt."
Pat fared better as the northern councillor for the Cattlemen's Union in Mount Isa "among the real people".
"I understood them and they understood me," she said.
After buying and selling up to 11 properties they retired and moved to Mount Isa where they got back into business by buying Ray White Real Estate.
"We had to study for our licences at age 64," she said.
Her experiences living on isolated cattle stations - including often calling upon the flying doctor for an injured stockman or a sick child - inspired Pat's passion for improving remote health services.
"I do believe a healthy family makes a healthy community and a healthy community makes a healthy country," she said.
When the Fennells moved to Mount Isa, Pat did something about it with Professor Dennis Pashen of the National Health Council.
"We could see what was happening, our young people in tertiary education were no longer training on the wards, we were losing our young people who wanted to be nurses, they'd go to the big city and they didn't come back," she said.
"It was my dream and his that young people could get their training here, and stay with their families with the support they needed."
With Professor Pashen's medical contacts and Pat's lobbying and communication skills, together they helped found the Centre for Rural and Remote Health in Mount Isa as a place where medical students could train locally and affordably and "it gradually grew from there".
"If you've got an idea and share it, it's amazing how many people will come on board and help you," she said.
"I went up to the Centre the other day and it was wonderful to see how many people have taken that little idea and grown it into something that is really special."
In 2014 Pat published a book about her life called What You Can do with 20 Quid.
"I made 600 copies and I sold them to cover the costs and they were gone in three or four weeks. So I got another 600 done and I sold them in the next few months, so I got another 300 and they'll mostly gone too," she said.
"I self published it, it is about me I suppose, it was mainly for family because when you get old and have great-grandchildren you need to remind them you weren't always that way and it's inspiring them, 'if granny did it, why can't I." she said.
There's no doubting granny did it.
Pat Fennell is an inspiration not only to her family but to all of us who live in a better North West Queensland because of her efforts.
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Derek Barry
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
