ASSISTANT MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH
My Office was in Cathedral Close in a delightful setting.I was responsible,as a Senior Officer, for Child Health and Primary School Health within the City boundaries.
This meant hundreds of Child Health and School Health Medical examinations and immunisations from age 5 years up until 12 years.We had a team of Health Visitors, Child Health and School Nurses and Clerical staff.
Monthly statistics were compiled,annual reports submitted and every effort made to maintain immunisation rates above 95%.Follow up action was taken after all examinations to maximise best health practices for all aspects of a child’s health,whether at home,at Preschool or School or in the Community,and whether the child was able or disabled.
The detection and management of hearing disorders in infants and children was my special interest.During my initial months at Exeter, a generous sum of money was made available from Central Government to establish a Diagnostic Centre for Children with Communication Disorders from birth to age 12 years. Exeter had an excellent reputation for the highest percentage of babies and children, per population, tested annually for hearing loss. We were fortunate in having The West of England School for the Deaf near the City centre .
Our overall team, for detecting the more difficult disorders of communication, included a Paediatrician,Child Psychiatrist, ENT surgeon, Audiologist,Principal of the School for the Deaf, an Audiometrician, a Senior Health Visitor and myself.
In two large sound- proof rooms, with one way full walled observation mirrors, and excellent updated equipment, the team met together every two months to examine children specially referred to us from centres in Devon County.
In late 1967 I attended The Great Ormond Street Childrens’ Hospital in London, sat, and passed, The Diploma of Child Health of the Royal Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons of England.
I thank Professor Freddie Brimblecome for his,as always, helpful words of wisdom, when helping me to prepare for the DCH.
DAD AND MUM HAVE RETIRED TO JERSEY IN THE CHANNEL ISLANDS.
Yes, they had sold the farm in Devon,settled up with Ian, and bought a waterfront house in St Helier Jersey.
Mum’s local GP needed a partner in his three man practice in St Helier. Her GP was,it would appear, an honest bloke tied up with the local Methodist Church, and was willing to fly me over to Jersey,having seen my CV and references.
Now, Jersey is an incredibly difficult place to get into,what with criminals, undesirables and tax avoiding rich people, all over the world,desperate to take advantage of the tax advantages there, in a the mild climate close to the coasts of France and the UK. Most people are unable to muster the contacts who had the contacts who had the contacts to get you in.
My Mum’s doctor sorted it out in the time that it takes to say “caveat empor.’
What about the cost of houses there? ”No problem Doc! We need well trained, well skilled doctors. The Jersey Parliament will fix it up front for you. By the way, who is your sponsor Doc? Dr B? No problem Doc!”
SO WHAT DO WE DO?
This gets interesting, because, some months ago, I had had a chat and made some tentative enquiries with the Agent General for Tasmania, whilst I was in London.
He was the contact and organiser for family immigration to Tasmania and was keen to get doctors to come to Hobart.Since that time we had read virtually all of the information available about Tasmania and expressed an initial interest with him.
He had contacted me briefly just before my conversations with Dr B the Jersey GP, I was looking at two possibilities.I knew that an Immigration process would probably take at least 12 months to organise so that we could put it on hold ,if necessary, and spend the next year or so in Jersey.
There were many interesting features about Tasmania(Isle of Splendour) which had attracted us. It’s climate was temperate with tons of sun and fresh air and it neither had the extreme heat nor the high humidity of so many other Australian Capitals.
So,I fly to Jersey, get the job, see a suitably priced house and phone a happy family. We had often spoken about the 1960’s Cuban crisis and the possibilities of nuclear war with Russia.These concerns were worldwide at the time.We decided that it wasn’t worth staying in England to see what would happen.
Whoopee Do, we settled into Jersey as quick as a rabbit gets pulled from a conjurer’s hat.
Medical practice in Jersey, is uncomplicated, everybody has got money, probably every body else’s money, but most people are as tight as a cat’s backside in paying their bills.That is not to say that they don’t like paying their bills …they just don’t like paying their bills.
My ‘boss’ called me in, for a chat, about three months after I had started working with him. He said that he recognised and appreciated my immediate contribution to his practice and the noticeable increase,rather than a tsunami, of new people, who had elected to be regular patients coming to our Clinic.
He had some disconcerting news however.
At 42 years of age, his Angina Pectoris was causing him pain, anxiety, insomnia and fatigue and he was going to have to substantially reduce his workload ,which he had already reduced anyway.
He was happy to sign a contract with me, if I wanted to stay long term, but, because his personal expenses were high, he would need to receive his current income if he was off sick for anything up to three months at a time.
He had significant, established Coronary Artery disease and this was years before Cardiac Stents and Major Cardiac Bypass Surgical techniques were available.
In essence, he had a guarded medium term prognosis, even with the best medications, a large mortgage and a wife and kids to feed.
I said that I would discuss it with his 39 year old partner who had been with him for four years.
I did discuss this with Bill(not his real name) and his wife Sandra(not her real name) who was the practice nurse and general manager.She was a brilliant nurse,lovely person, of great talent and the person who had held the practice together well.
You know, how you get that feeling ,sometimes,that things are going to hit the fan, and quickly spread the contents very far and wide? Of course you do, and this was just that time.
Bill, it seems ,despite his wife’s knowledge and awareness of his habits, had been caught by the Jersey Police ”drunk driving”(rather than just ”drink driving”) and was also found to be a Pethidine injection drug addict.Not just once, but twice,and,despite all of the Senior partner’s contacts on the Island, he could not stop the power of the Press exposing Bill’s problems.
Bill disappeared from our working environment to seek help, then had a car accident and got disqualified.This totally destroyed him professionally.
ERIC BURDON &THE ANIMALS (1965),PRECISELY EXPRESSED OUR
DILEMMA, WHEN HE BELTED OUT HIS RAW VOCAL.”WE’VE GOTTA GET OUT OF THIS PLACE IF IT’S THE LAST THING WE EVER DO.”
The Tasmanian Agent General estimated that he could fix us up in Tassie
leaving Southampton in about 7 months,travelling on the Fairstar,20,000 ton ship to Hobart, via The Canary Isles,Cape Town, Fremantle and Melbourne.
During the ensuing months we had plenty of family oriented time,work was never dull,was satisfying and plentiful and we met a much travelled Surgeon and his wife.
Russell was a semiretired, South African, general surgeon ,operating, from a Jersey Private hospital.He was a Stock market expert,and a great story teller.
He who had worked,among other places,as a Royal Flying Doctor retrieving seriously ill surgical patients from the “bush” in Western Australia in the late 1950/60’s.He, a nurse and a pilot, would take them to Perth for Tertiary Hospital treatment.
It was Russel who, stimulated and whetted, my appetite so thoroughly for Australian medical adventures.He opened up a whole new and exciting journey ahead for us in Australia.
Strangely, as fate would have it, in 1994 , I started working in Katherine and Alice Springs,in the Northern Territory ,as a Remote and Retrieval Doctor with Air Medical Services. A year later I flew with The Royal Flying Doctor Service as a Remote Health Doctor based in Alice Springs. Subsequently I worked altogether in 56 Remote Indigenous Communities in Central Australia for various short or long periods until 2017.
I feel that Russell sowed, in me, the seeds of his experience and enthusiasm and I thank him for allowing those seeds to grow and flower into far greater things for us all as a family.
Shortly before we left Jersey I recall being called to a small apartment near my house at mid- morning ,one day.The 15 year old daughter had been a pillion passenger on her boy friend’s motor bike since 9 am. They had sped around the Island on a joy ride.
She had had severe lower abdominal pain bouts intermittently for 2 hours and was crying in bed when her distraught mother called me.
On examination she was 40 weeks pregnant ,in labour and needed immediate transfer prior to the delivery of her baby in the local Maternity Hospital.This was, she stated , her first knowledge of being pregnant, and she had not attended any ante- natal examinations or had any routine blood tests. Clearly her motor cycle’s bumpy ride had reminded her uterus that the time had come to cause contractions and, of course, it had. A big, bonny ,bouncy boy had arrived in this brave new world.
Jersey had a happy ending for us as a little family, but what about Bill and Sandra?
Bill was from a wealthy London family. He never conquered his social habits,and spent many weeks in and out of Specialist Rehab Units in London and Wales. A friend ,whom I contacted, when I was back in England in 1973, last saw him approaching the end of his life sitting on a park bench at a North Wales seaside resort,unkempt and unaware of his surroundings .Bill died some days laterm a seemingly unknown vagrant.
Sandra struggled as a nurse at a hospital near London.I travelled to see her there, in answer to a distressing call from her when I was visiting London in 1974.Despite treatment in a Mental health facility she ended her life by drug overdose some weeks later. I was unable to track any information about the whereabouts and health of my Senior colleague from Jersey.
Mum and Dad, age 63 and 65 yrs, spent a further couple of years in Jersey, enjoyed good health, and travelled by sea to visit us in Hobart about six months after our arrival.They stayed initially for 3 months.. …they loved it.
Visiting Australia revived memories for Dad, who, at age 17, came to Australia with his brother and a mate and worked as a Jackaroo in Albury and Narrabri for a couple of years, 1920 to 1922, before returning to the small family farm in North Devon.