Kayte Evans

Medical Educator

Contact Kayte
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or T:  02 6681 5711

I am so old I have just been to my 30 year Uni of Q’ld  Med  school reunion and noticed my career was markedly patchy compared with those of my counterparts.

I started as an intern at Royal Brisbane after Cyclone Tracey blew Darwin off the map and Darwin Hospital would not take female interns, how backward!

After this rude shock, I thought  I would blissfully settle into being a  long term country GP in Maleny, SE Q’ld only to find 5 years and one baby later the lure of the north too strong.  I went to set up the Gagadju Aboriginal Health Service in Kakadu in 1983. Politics got me in the end and I defected to  the NT Health Dept doing Airmed on call and working at Bagot, an Aboriginal  community in Darwin, where I spent 8 years and did my Masters of Public Health  thesis,

Suitably inspired by a Public Health career I then became a public health physician at Royal Darwin in Alcohol and Other Drug programs. I was waylaid by the formation of the NT Clinical School in the mid 90’s and the NT GP training program and became a senior lecturer there for the next 6 years.

The call of SE Asia wooed me to the Indo China Peninsula and our family of five moved to Phnom Penh where I worked with the Australian Embassy for five years.

My youngest daughter made a unilateral decision to move back to Darwin  to complete gr 12 and I meekly followed and started back in my very old job as a District Medical Officer for NT Dept of Health and Families. Visiting remote Aboriginal communities, doing more Air Med on call and running an education program for the other DMO’s were my chalenges. I also supervised two overseas trained doctors for the Rural Vocational Training Scheme .  

Then daughter number one moved here and  had baby Hudson. So God’s own country, with sea I can actually swim  in and grandmotherhood finally lured me out of the NT. Working with NCGPT and Bullinah Aboriginal Health Service involves  yet another career move.  I figure I am mutliskilled enough by now to add a little bit of interest to these areas.