How Did I Find My Way Here? Rural Queensland
Dr Tanya Davies
1985 Melbourne
Started Medical School and graduated in 1991 (including a gap year with 4 months in Ghana, Western Africa)
Darwin
Rural Victoria
Rural Victoria (again!)
Whew! It sounds exhausting looking at it, but it was a wonderful journey of growth and learning (both in medicine and my personal life). Was it what I had planned? No. But I don’t think you can plan for the sort of work I wanted to do. My medical journey started when I was 15 and read a book called ‘The Ugly American’ by Lederer and Burdick. It talked about all the aid projects that different governments and aid organisations ran in a small, fictitious Third World country during the Cold War.
Adelaide
Finished GP training in 1998
Remote Northern Territory Locums
Utopia Community, Central Australia 2000 - 2002
2002 Wau in Sudan with MSF Numbulwar Community Eastern Arnhem Land
Needless to say, it referenced all sorts of different types of approaches — from big, government-level programs (both Western and Communist ones), to the different, idealistic approaches adopted by smaller aid organisations. I decided that I wanted to do this as a doctor (a GP, specifically), so that I know my patients when they are well as well as when they are sick. And, that I would do this in Africa.
2006 - 2012 Darwin Doing systems, policy and advocacy
1 year trip to the UK doing both clinical work and management/systems.
2012 - current: Katherine, Northern Territory
