“I always seemed to put up bar­ri­ers as to why I couldn’t fol­low my dream,” says Kathy. ​“I had oth­er pri­or­i­ties, I was get­ting too old etc etc.”

After 26 years hold­ing onto that dream, an RFDS oppor­tu­ni­ty was thrown at her over one week­end. On the Fri­day she was giv­en a name to con­tact. On the Mon­day she was off to Alice Springs on a three-month contract.

So began a work­ing life of three-month con­tracts in Alice Springs, at least twice a year for three years, until hus­band Stew­art sug­gest­ed she take a 12-month con­tract ​“to get it out of my system.”

That didn’t work. After the 12-month stint and eight months back in Bowral Hos­pi­tal, where Kathy worked for 28 years, in between her RFDS stints, she was off again. This time on a three-year contract.

By this stage she had added to her qual­i­fi­ca­tions, with a Grad­u­ate Cer­tifi­cate in Emer­gency Nurs­ing and a Bach­e­lor of Health Man­age­ment. That led to her appoint­ment as Senior Flight Nurse with the RFDS in 2013 – where she has been ever since. And hub­by Stew­art, an elec­tri­cian, now also works for the RFDS in Alice Springs as their Main­te­nance Sup­port Officer.

“I have loved every minute of nurs­ing,” Kathy says. ​“And work­ing for the RFDS: I can’t say I knew what it would involve, but it cer­tain­ly suits me.’

The con­di­tions that appeal to Kathy are being a sole oper­a­tor, spend­ing time out­doors, the peo­ple she works with, the clien­tele she helps, and the vari­ety of skills she has had to use.

“You can be deal­ing with a birth in the morn­ing, intu­bat­ing a patient in the after­noon, per­haps attend­ing a road trau­ma lat­er that night,” says Kathy. ​“I call it a mys­tery tour – you nev­er know what to expect.”

Raised in Wol­lon­gong and under­tak­ing hos­pi­tal train­ing to first qual­i­fy as a Reg­is­tered Nurse at the roy­al Prince Alfred Hos­pi­tal in Syd­ney and then imme­di­ate­ly launch­ing into Mid­wifery in Wol­lon­gong, it wouldn’t be until she returned from three years in Papua New Guinea that Kathy actu­al­ly start­ed work­ing post grad­u­a­tion as a nurse at the Bowral Hospital.

“I was giv­en lots of oppor­tu­ni­ties in that time for edu­ca­tion and career moves, both clin­i­cal­ly and man­age­ri­al­ly,” says Kathy. ​“My atti­tude was to take every sem­i­nar, every course, every train­ing and oppor­tu­ni­ty offered to me. And it stood me in good stead. 

“That’s one thing I advice nurs­es I work with today. Every oppor­tu­ni­ty you get, to advance your skills, take it. You nev­er know when you’ll fall back on them. It got me to where I am today.”

Kathy became a facil­i­ta­tor with CRANAplus in 2009 . ​“I knew about CRANAplus as a vital part of the remote area nurse’s life,” she says. ​“It’s so need­ed and so good at what it does. I love its phi­los­o­phy and the edu­ca­tion it provides.

“I thor­ough­ly enjoy being a facil­i­ta­tor. I feel I learn as much if not more than the par­tic­i­pants. I take my hat off to them. The major­i­ty of Aus­tralians just don’t under­stand how remote some of those com­mu­ni­ties are. And these nurs­es are on call 24/7. They can’t just walk down to the local café for a cof­fee, they do an amaz­ing job. They need to have a wide skill base and to have edu­ca­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties like the CRANAplus cours­es to help them keep up to date.”

Kathy most­ly facil­i­tates in the REC, pre hos­pi­tal and ALS cours­es and the Abo­rig­i­nal Health Work­ers’ courses.

“One of my pas­sions is to encour­age nurs­es to con­tin­ue to edu­cate them­selves and explore all nurs­ing options. There are so many on offer, and with those extra qual­i­fi­ca­tions and short cours­es under their belt, they’ll be ready to take advan­tage of that per­fect oppor­tu­ni­ty that comes along.

“Per­haps a lit­tle quick­er than I did,” she laughs.