Nick’s mum gave him a card­board shoe­box filled with let­ters before she passed. The hand­writ­ing looked like his, and they were addressed to his mum (whom he would have no rea­son to lie to), but the con­tent was so far-fetched, he could bare­ly believe they were his own, true stories.

“My ear­ly years were piv­otal to my life. Dur­ing those years, I was an enthu­si­as­tic writer of let­ters, and my moth­er kept them all,” Nick explains. 

“I start­ed read­ing them and I was trans­port­ed back 35 years.” 

Nick knew he need­ed to do some­thing with the mem­o­ries these let­ters revived. So he start­ed Proof of Life – named after the kid­nap­ping pre­cau­tions tak­en while work­ing on a human­i­tar­i­an mis­sion in Pak­istan with the Red Cross. 

“I had to fill out a ​‘proof of life’ form, which involved writ­ing down three ques­tions the nego­tia­tors could ask your wife or close rel­a­tive that only they would know the answer to, that would prove that you were alive,” Nick recalls.

“It made me feel like, ​‘Oh my God, I might die’.

“I realised that the three ques­tions I put down were real­ly sig­nif­i­cant moments in my life and I framed the mem­oir around them.”

And so the sto­ry unfolds that Nick worked as a doc­tor in rur­al Africa in the 80s, which led to a career in First Peo­ples’ health in remote Aus­tralia. It was a stu­dent elec­tive in the South­ern high­lands of Papua New Guinea, how­ev­er, that deter­mined the direc­tion of his career. 

Hav­ing grown up in coun­try South Aus­tralia, Nick had inten­tions of becom­ing a coun­try GP. 

“I was a typ­i­cal, mid­dle-class, white guy in my fifth year of med­ical school,” he confesses. 

“I might have stayed like that for years if not for the Papua New Guinea experience.” 

It changed every­thing. It was there that Nick found him­self dan­gling from a plane, star­ing down into the real­i­ty of what a career in remote med­i­cine would entail. 

“I’m fly­ing into Tari in the south­ern high­lands, and there’s a gap between two moun­tains, hid­den by clouds. It was dan­ger­ous because the pilots had to cir­cle quite a few times until there was a gap in the clouds that they could go between,” Nick remembers. 

“I was sit­ting next to the pilot in the copilot’s seat. As he cir­cled round, he said, ​‘It’s open!’ and he thrust the nose of the plane down. At that moment, the door on my side of the plane flew open, and one of my seat­belt clips came undone, so I sort of dan­gled one arm and half my body out of the plane. I thought I would die. About a minute lat­er, the plane lev­elled out and the door closed.” 

Nick can laugh as he recounts the sto­ry now, but this expe­ri­ence set the tone for the seri­ous and chal­leng­ing nature of work­ing in remote and iso­lat­ed envi­ron­ments that he would dis­cov­er through­out his career. Through it all, it was the peo­ple he worked along­side who sup­port­ed and shaped him.

“The theme of the book is how much I learned from nurs­es and health work­ers through­out my career.” 

Nick paid it for­ward by becom­ing a vol­un­teer facil­i­ta­tor on CRANAplus cours­es for over 25 years, as well as a Board mem­ber for 12 years. 

He hopes that by read­ing the book, any­one work­ing in the rur­al and remote work­force will feel val­i­dat­ed in what they do, and that oth­ers will find the courage to have a go. 

“In the end, the book is a homage to those work­ing in chal­leng­ing, iso­lat­ed sit­u­a­tions. I real­ly respect peo­ple who are up for that.”