Motivation to join the Navy
I joined the Navy as a medical student in my fifth year of a 6 year degree and I would have to say my prime motivation was that I had less and less time because my university holidays were contracting to earn money to support myself for the following year. And a friend of mine had joined the Army as an undergraduate and I thought, "They pay you to go to university. Perhaps this will be for me".
I do have an uncle who is in the Air Force and had served. BUTTERWORTH But really I've had not that much involvement with military. But, as I said, this friend of mine seemed to enjoy being an Army undergraduate. So I went down to the recruiting office and I looked to see which service would suit me the best and I applied for the Navy … I was probably ignorant and underprepared for the interview process that I went through, but I was prepared to, you know, do my best in whatever I did. So I thought, well, "This will be something interesting".
And at that time I thought, "Well, that's not for the rest of my life I've got a return of service obligation, and if I don't like it, I can return to my career in medicine" ... it was for two years plus one year after that. So for three years return to service obligation and um, and that seemed pretty distant at that point in time because I was just starting my fifth year.
I wouldn't have had to do that until I'd done two years working as in hospital. So that was four years away … at that point I just knew that that was an obligation that I had coming up but my life didn't change very much other than that I had a bit more money to support myself and I didn't have to work quite so hard on other jobs.
Early training
It was a big shock in many respects in that I'd been working at the Royal Melbourne Hospital in accident emergency doing night duty. So I'd be doing long shifts overnight at a point where it's really busy. There might be, you know, people with life threatening illnesses.
And I had to travel from that, directly drive to Cerberus to start my officer training at Jervis, at Creswell. So when I got to HMAS Creswell, you know, which is a really lovely setting on Jervis Bay, beautiful white beaches for a really much more relaxed working life than I've had in the hospital. It was just a bit of a shock to sort of go from that high pressure environment to a less pressured environment …
I did what was called a direct entry officer course at that point, and it wasn't made up of all doctors. It was a mixture of doctors and engineers, nurses, dentists, chaplains, all people who were coming into the Navy having already become professionals, if you like … We had to learn to march. We had to do the things one usually learns in the military. But they were talking to adults who were there really of their own free will, they didn't need that kind of yelling … we did how to be winched out of the ocean into a helicopter.
The navy does ship survival training which is on land in a facility that helps you plug holes in a ship should it be hit and learn to put out fires and that sort of thing and everybody in the Navy does that. So we did some of that training, but that was all.
Women eligible to go to sea
The year I came into the Navy, there was the Sex Discrimination Act was passed, and that meant that women were eligible to go to sea, but not in all roles but medical was one of those roles ... Because I joined, I guess, under a contract, if you like, where I didn't have to go to sea … there was a bit of a choice for people who joined at that point.
We did the same sort of fitness training as everybody else and, to be frank, I really enjoyed exercise and I did a fair bit of sport so I found that really good. I thought, "I'm being paid to do things I do on my own free time normally". So that was great.
Improved opportunities for women
When I did medicine, 30% of the students in my year were women, so we weren't an isolated group, if you like, in that setting. And that was the same across most of medicine, that there were more and more women doing medicine, so it wasn't so unusual, more unusual than every other role in the Navy though.
But as a doctor you've sort of got a different position than other roles in the Navy and I certainly didn't feel like my colleagues ever treated me any differently, apart from the fact when I first joined, because I didn't go to sea, I was told by my boss at the time, "Don't expect to go on any courses, don't have any special postings because you're never going to sea.
Your male colleagues though, they'll enjoy that because they will be going to sea. And I thought, "Oh, well, you know, only three years to go". But, as I said, that changed that year and then, indeed, I did go and do similar sorts of courses that they did.
Sea postings and learning about the ship
In those days you got posted to a ship for a posting and sea postings were often around two years. These days when doctors go to a fleet pool and they might go to one ship for a deployment and then come back and be put on another ship for a different deployment.
So, it was a different way of posting people in and out in those days … I didn't really get that much training. I'm trying to think if I got any. I learnt how to give an anaesthetic on my own and did some training for a doctor to be able to cope with emergencies at sea but I didn't do particularly sea training.
I remember I joined while the ship was waiting to dock. It was still at sea, so I got transported out in a boat, brought up into the vessel and then we came alongside, which I thought was a bit silly and, "Why didn't they just wait till the ship came alongside?" But I think it was probably to make a point and introduce me to the ship.
And it was a real learning curve because they'd often say, you know, "Doctor on the double" to a part of the ship and I'd have to go, "Where's that?". And I really didn't know and people would have to sort of take me to that part of the ship for a little while until I learned where I was.
A ship's emergency team
Jervis Bay used to be a car ferry, I think, before it became commissioned into the Navy. And I had my own cabin so it was very comfortable compared to lots of naval vessels.
The daily routine would be that we'd run a sick parade, a clinic, you know, first thing in the morning and see anybody who was unwell and then during the day there might be exercises just to keep everybody alert; Man Over board exercises.
We had a ship's emergency team. So that's where other people on the ship who aren't medics are trained to assist should there be a health emergency so that they could help you put up a drip, put dressings on, look after people if you needed more people in your team. So they sort of learnt some extra skills and we trained them up.
Battling sea sickness
I get quite seasick and I would just have to take medication and I remember a particularly rough crossing across the bottom of Australia, the Great Australian Bight, where I think three quarters of the ship was sick. And I was sick and I'd be told, "You have to go and see so-and-so", and they'd be three decks down and I'd almost have to lie on the bed beside them when I got there to stop vomiting and I'd see them and fortunately my medic, my chief medic, petty officer medic, rather, at the time, he didn't get seasick.
So he could come with me and I'd say, "Give them this". And then I'd have to sort of get my way back up to the sick bay again ... And not everybody suffers it but the rougher it is, more and more people suffer it ... It's one of those things you often get a bit more used to it as you are at sea. So it's often worse for the first two or three days, then it improves.
That particular ship did a lot of weekly running, meaning we would be at sea for a week and then we'd come into port, which was probably the worst combination because you'd just get used to it and then come back into port and then you'd sort of have to get used to it again each week. But, you know, in calmer waters, it was fun. It was really when it was rougher.
Naval clearance divers
In those days, and I don't think it's the same now, you had to nominate a spouse whose career took preference for postings … as a clearance diver, he was probably going to be posted to fewer places than I would, so we nominated him. And also there was a bit of a shortage of medical officers, so it usually meant wherever he was posted, there was bound to be a position that I'd be able to be posted in to.
Clearance divers, that's their full-time role. In the Navy there's what the Navy called ships divers and then its clearance divers. So a ship's diver could be anybody in the Navy who does a course on how to dive on scuba gear. And you're really there to help out should the ship have, you know, the propellers fouled so the people could go underwater and have a look and so it's a secondary skill, but a clearance diver that's their full-time role and they dove for a living.
Also he was a clearance diver and mine warfare officer, so they also learn mine warfare. Clearance diving can involve deep sea diving; It can involve just normal scuba air diving; It can involve diving on oxygen sets and it might be attack diving, it might be ship's repairs, so, underwater repairs, that sort of thing.
Underwater medicine
Underwater medicine is sort of a specialty area of medicine within the Navy just like the Air Force has aviation medicine and I just thought it was quite interesting. So I suppose, it wasn't that he said, ""Oh, you must go into underwater medicine.
It was more that it looked quite interesting and I liked the idea of doing it … we treated people in a decompression chamber and I often explain it to people saying, when you're diving at a depth and you're breathing compressed air, which is what's in an in a diving set, you're dissolving nitrogen into your body because that's what happens, it dissolves that gas into your body.
It's pressure and just like with a bottle of coke, so when you take the lid off a bottle of coke, they put the coke in there with the gas and it's compressed and they put the top on. When you take the bottle off, that gas comes out of the solution.
So if people rise too quickly, that gas comes out of solution and causes bubbles in their body and those, depending where those bubbles are, that can cause big problems or minor problems and that's the sort of thing that we would be treating in recompression chamber.
If you think about it, a recompression chamber, you've got someone whose, the bubbles have come out of solution, you want to squash those bubbles back down and that's what a recompression chamber does, puts a person back under pressure.
Bubbles get small again, then you let them up really slowly … and every now and then, there's an emergency when a diver comes up too quickly. Well, that's what you want to avoid, because obviously that could potentially be fatal to people. So you want to, you know, they're trained to come up slowly, but if there's an emergency, sometimes that's not possible.
Learning to be a new mum
When my daughter was born, I'd said to the obstetrician, "I need to have this baby now because my husband's posting to Western Australia on a ship and he'll be gone in three days". He said, "Sure'. So I was induced and I had my daughter and then my husband, indeed, posted to Western Australia.
I was at home in Sydney and my husband just said, "Make sure we do the inventory because we've got a removal in six weeks". So I sort of learned how to be a new mum on my own, but in many ways that was, you know, not too bad.
I didn't have to worry about anything else but the baby and me, but I certainly hadn't done the inventory by the time my husband got back. And then we moved to the West and then he went back to sea again … My mother-in-law lived not that far away, but she didn't visit that often. But fortunately, my daughter was pretty easy and I didn't need that much support at the time …
I think you blur those sorts of things in your memory because otherwise, if it was difficult, you'd never come back and have another baby, I think ... I was on maternity leave for six months but fortunately in Western Australia at Stirling was some friends from the Navy and, in fact, one was a doctor who joined the Navy at the same time as me and his wife had just had a baby as well. So I sort of had some instant friends when I moved over there, which was really great because otherwise it's a bit isolated being in the West.
Tri-service roles
I did a range of roles in that period, including, in probably the last five years doing more tri-service roles in Canberra, looking after joint health in what's now called Joint Health Command, so looking after Army, Navy, Air Force in a number of roles which were all really enjoyable. At that point there was only one one-star head of health and I was a captain at that point, a Navy captain, like a colonel. So to become a Commodore, it was sort of on rotation for each service and I might have had to wait ten years for my turn to come up. So I thought, "Oh, there's not enough jobs I really enjoyed doing to wait ten years for that opportunity." So I thought, "Well, I'll do something different"
Being a reservist
As a reservist, I've got a full-time job somewhere else, and I don't do Navy work unless the Navy posts me to a position or gives me reserve days to come and do some work. And I did a lot of, if you like, part time work for Navy, things that weren't postings to an establishment, to put my uniform on and go and do work.
I did clearance of medically discharging people, things like that. So I did lots of different small things because I was skilled to do it. At that point I was working at Defence Force recruiting as the Chief Medical Officer, so I still had a fair bit to do with Defence because I was there managing the doctors who did medicals on people who wish to come into the Defence and all three services and looking at the standards we applied and liaising with Defence about people they might want to take, even if they didn't quite meet the medical standards, that sort of thing.
So I did have a fair bit of involvement with them. Occasionally I did a sea posting if they needed a doctor for an additional sea posting, but it was really intermittent and part time work … and over time they've changed how they post reserves.
Now there are, there is a category of reserve service that is more regular, you know, each week postings. And I've certainly done that both in the Navy and when I was the Surgeon General.
And the difference in doing reserve work compared to full time is that when you're full time, you can achieve a project, you might say, "I'm going to do this particular project", and you've got a timeline of how long that might take you.
But when you're a reservist and you're doing it part time, that timeline spins right out and you have to sort of adjust what you think you'll achieve when and how because you're there in a part time basis.
Being Director General
I really didn't think I'd ever get promoted because promotion to senior rank in the Reserves is quite hard and I think I was just fortunate, my timing was good and the DG four Navy health reserves became vacant and I was nominated for that and recommended for that role and promoted.
So I was very fortunate to do that. I had to look after all the Navy health reserves. So it's all the health professionals who are in the Reserve for Navy and help them be sure that they're prepared to do their role for Navy should they be called in to do postings at sea or tri-service postings that they've trained, they're ready to go that we know their situation as to whether they're ready to go, because obviously, as a reservist, there's stages of life and their family situation will change over time.
And sometimes there's periods where going away on a posting for a period of time might be quite difficult. Other times it's much better. So it was, "How do we know that everybody's trained, that they're right to go?" Navy would regularly say, "We need two doctors and a surgeon to do this task, who can you find for us?"
We'd have a really good feel for who is ready to go and who would be available, and we'd be able to give them a number of names of people who might be ready to go … I had staff and remembering everybody's part time so it's not, you're not managing a full-time burden of people doing that. So they're all part time as well. But, as I said, I had staff who were full time, but I was part time.
The Navy as a good source of organisational training
I was at the Department of Health at that point, working in the, what's called the Office of Health Protection, looking after communicable disease threats and health emergencies … Health, was really understanding and they would say, "No, absolutely, you should be doing this".
I personally think that the work you do in Defence, not just the Navy, is a really good way of preparing you to manage lots of things and to manage lots of people. Not all doctors do the same sort of development as they go along in their careers and have the same number of people to manage and have to do the same sort of leadership training.
So I think the Navy work really helped me think about how to do things at an organisational basis in the whole of the organisation. Rather than thinking about a small medical team, I've got to think about the whole, and that's really useful for planning at the government level as well.
Understanding veterans
I'm still in the Reserve probably for a little while longer and really I can come in to assist Defence if they wish me to … but I don't do very much Reserve work these days and that's probably a combination of working here at DVA and, of course, COVID and how that's affected everybody …
I work part time in general practice and always have done and I often think when I see a service person, there's an element of trust. I know what their job is. They know what my job is. I respect their job.
When you're at sea, you have to respect everybody who's on the same ship as you as one day they might save your life and that's quite different relationship than there is in the civilian setting where you might not know about that person in their life to the same degree of detail. And certainly you wouldn't see them as someone who one day may save your life.
So I think lots of ex-serving people and veterans when they go to see a health professional, relax when they see a doctor that understand things, what they've been through, understands that trust relationship, if you like. And the same thing happens here when we talk with veterans. Veterans want to know that you understand everything about them.
Naval Health Service and Health Practice
The Naval Health Service and Health Practice, it seems much more professional than it was when I first came in and that's a reflection of health in general.
And I used to find that at sea I would have to rely on my clinical skills completely to diagnose and manage someone and I would have a limited inventory of medications to the point that when I returned from sea, I would often not order many investigations because I got so used to not relying on investigations, whereas these days those sorts of things are more readily available and there's digital X-rays and things like that which never existed back then, and portable ultrasounds and all sorts of things.
Acceptance of women in the services
All the services have their traditions and cultures, which you might think, "Why are they doing that?" And I'm certainly no naval history buff to understand the history that might come to that, but that's part of the culture and you just accept it, move on.
I think early on, occasionally I'd hear, often it might be a senior sailor outside my door saying, "I'm not going to see a woman." But that would rarely happen these days and, in fact, if I look at the services completely for a while when I was in, there weren't that many women in senior ranks in the services, so I was often the only female in a room.
But these days, for health, for instance, the senior leadership is all female. So the Navy and the services have moved on, just like the rest of society has.
Respect for doing your job well
I saw a lot of female patients in the Navy because they want to see a female doctor often. In those days people understood that that's part and parcel … Everywhere I worked, if you did your job well, the fact you were female mattered very little. If you did your job badly, it might matter more.
But most people respected a team member who was prepared to do their job well and contribute to the team. And that would be male or female and I think absolutely there would be instances of bad behaviour and I was in a quite different position as a doctor on board compared to a junior sailor and I'm sure instances of bad behaviour happen everywhere and are still happening but, as I say, most people would respect you to do your job well.
A unisex future?
They had a mess for sailors that was for women only. It was interesting, during that time my husband was looking at some mine fare vessels that Australia was thinking of purchasing and he visited the Swedish navy and he came home quite surprised at the time.
He said, "We've been out on these Swedish vessels", and he said, "and they don't have any separate accommodation for men and women or separate bathrooms, it's all the same and they just share and nobody even thinks twice about it".
And he said, "I suspect, given time, that's what we'll be like as well". But that was Sweden. Even so, it was quite confronting for him at the time. But these days, more and more, that's not an issue.
Doctors as a captain's confidante
When you're at sea, the captain isn't part of the wardroom mess. So the captain eats in his cabin and has a sitting room there. If you think about it, everybody on the ship's dependent on what the captain thinks and does and their good rapport depends on that.
It's sort of a bit less so as a doctor. I remember the movie Master and Commander with Russell Crowe. The Doctor and the Captain sort of have a slightly different relationship and I think that's the same because the captain doesn't have many people to confide in, and doctors are there to maintain confidentiality.
Missing world events while at sea
I do remember, it always struck me, when we moved to WA and my husband was at sea on a patrol boat. I think that's when the Berlin Wall came down and I remember he came back from sea and something came up in conversation.
I said, "Oh, that's like when the Berlin Wall came down" and he said, "What do you mean?" And they'd been at sea. They'd missed that. And that was a, you know, a quite momentous event in history that they'd just missed. And it really struck me that you are quite isolated in those boats. That's what it was like.
Reflecting on a long and interesting navy career
My career in the Navy offered me heaps of opportunities, lots of different experiences. Over time, I've gone to some reunions of my year in medicine and it's really interesting the journey of how my career was perceived by my friends at the time because in the first reunion I went to and I can't remember how many years that was, a number of people felt a bit sorry for me that I hadn't gone on to become a specialist at the Royal Melbourne Hospital.
And at that point I'd done quite a few other things, been to sea and I thought that was really quite interesting. I certainly wasn't earning the same income as they were. And then, you know, another ten, 20 years would go by and people were a bit more sanguine about their own careers and said, "I wish I'd had the opportunity to go and do different things." And now they all say, "You were so smart doing that. That was a much better thing to have done".
So I think it's sort of, with the wisdom of years and your expectations, you perceive what you've chosen in terms of your career in a different light. You know, I think I was fairly fortunate, my timing was excellent and I had great opportunities and a really interesting time in the Navy and they were really supportive of me the whole time.
Anzac Day
I think it's an important day because we remember in Australia the contribution of service personnel and I'm sure many service personnel will say the time that they served was one of the best parts of their life and they really enjoyed it. But they do it at a cost, you know, some a lot more than others.
