The Long Way To Medicine Eleanor Gregory James Cook University External Communications Coordinator
Growing up on farms in rural Victoria, Dr Megan Bates had no idea what she was going to do when she left school. She’s the first to admit her path into medicine was anything but straightforward. But as she starts her intern year at Mount Isa hospital, she’s also the first to admit the journey has been well worth it. This is her story.
I grew up in the high country before moving down to the Victoria-New South Wales border, along the Murray River. I came from an area where most of the kids were farm kids, and while some of them went on to university after school, a lot didn’t. There was a lot of pressure to go get a qualification, but I didn’t really have any idea at that stage of what I wanted to do. I got into nursing, but failed dismally. Then I just ran away. I decided I was going to spend my time driving around the country doing anything and everything. I went to work in the shearing sheds and worked as
a rouseabout. I worked in abattoirs, poured beers in pubs and worked as a cleaner. Then I took off to the Northern Territory and lived in a remote community, running the general store for a few years. It was only when I became pregnant with my son that I realised I had to pull my socks up and do something — noone was going to do it for me. In this way, there’s nothing like pregnancy to snap you into focus. By this time, I’d moved back south, so I saved up and enrolled in a Health Sciences degree. Photo by Sebastian Palomino on Pexels Page 05
