Tue,May,2018
At just 35 and one of the very small team of Heart of Australia veterans, Dane Corowa reckons he’s “too easy-going” to be labelled as a competitive bloke.
He might be right, but then there are the simple facts that he worked his way up – by early morning starts and back to it in the evenings – as a professional personal trainer through years of tertiary study to ultimately reach his goal of accreditation as a cardiac sonographer.
And in every sense, he’s still doing it – working full-time in Brisbane on the staff of Queensland Cardiovascular Group (QCG) and using accrued holiday and other leave to join our truck-based clinics into the Southwest.
Dane left his Kingscliff (NSW) home and family, including his three sisters to, follow his fascination with fitness and human movement through studies at QUT in Brisbane for his undergraduate science degree and a graduate diploma in cardiac ultrasound.
His key time came when, in his final year of studies, he worked at The Prince Charles Hospital in cardiac investigation – “and I loved it”.
And he’s been doing that now since our kick-off in 2014 – the first sonographer to go on the road with Heart of Australia.
“I’d had no bush experience before Heart of Australia, but (working the truck clinics) I always put my hand up to see the towns. It gives me a buzz and there are so many interesting stories out there”.
And no, he’s not planning to get off our truck anytime soon. “There’s a shortage of sonographers in Australia and I want to help Rolf” – HoA founder and CEO Dr Rolf Gomes.
But what about competitiveness? Dane this month completed a 200klms beach ride, Surfers Paradise to Byron Bay and back – “fat-tyre bikes on the sand; it was tough” – to raise funds for the Stillbirth Foundation and he’s currently preparing for a triathlon, again in support of a charity.
And the worst experience Dane’s had on our truck?
Dane was a passenger, just he and our driver on board – “we had a flat tyre and we were already behind time to get to our next town; there was no mobile phone service in the area … but we changed the wheel (one of 18 on the rig) and we made it”.
Thu,Apr,2018
The country names – Austria and Australia – aren’t worlds apart although, on a global map, they might well seem to be that way.
So … you’ll forgive us a touch of pride we share in the fact that Austria-born Associate Professor Karam Kostner, Director of Cardiology at Brisbane’s Mater public and private hospitals and Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Queensland, has been working right alongside our Heart of Australia on-the-road specialist medicine bush delivery team.
His CV describes Dr Kostner as “a general cardiologist and lipidologist with an interest in “imaging” who has “extensive clinical and research experience in lipid management and primary prevention of cardiovascular disease”.
For the record lipids such as cholesterol and triglycerides are important risk factors for coronary artery disease and Dr Kostner runs the biggest lipid clinic and research programme in Qld.
Dr Kostner, a married father of three, trained in Vienna in the 1990s in a range of medical specialties, from infectious diseases to intensive care, gastroenterology and cardiology.
He retains membership of a long list of medical training and research groups in Australia and Austria, as well as the Austrian and German Societies of Cardiology (he was President of the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand 2012/2015) – and even the Australian Egg Research Council advisory board.
As if that’s not enough, Dr Kostner has been or is currently a member of no fewer than 12 medical editorial boards, plus his long list of formal teaching roles for medical and nursing students in Vienna and in no fewer than four Brisbane hospitals.
He’s now well-established in Brisbane with his “local girl” wife, Michelle, and their two teenage sons and one teenage daughter.
After his recent time joining the Heart of Australia rolling clinic team, Dr Kostner plans to stay involved at least “a couple of days a month”.
He wants to follow up on issues he encountered in his first bush venture, including building on research into cardiac risk factors in the bush.
Wed,Apr,2018
You’re invited to meet our Heart of Australia operations manager – Chris Wilson.
Forty-four-year-old Chris has the deceptively simple job of keeping the HoA travelling specialist medical clinics rolling – on schedule – thousands of kilometres a month across Southern and Central Western Queensland.
He’s the go-to man for problems that arise as the clinic-on-wheels is pushed to meet patients referred by GPs based in more than a dozen rural communities – patients who are often travelling long distances from homes, businesses, mines, farms and grazing properties across the West.
“It’s simple in one way,” Chris says. “My job is all about keeping things going, ensuring that our truck is there where patients will be waiting for their specialist doctor appointments”.
“One way to describe what I do is that I oversee the mechanics of Heart of Australia.”
“And I can tell you that we’ve had our share of what I call interesting scenarios. But you just get in and get it done.”
Chris, an IT man to his bootstraps, has been with HoA almost from its beginning, having been “on board” from just a few weeks before the service was launched in October 2014.
And his introduction was unplanned. He was for a time a neighbour to Heart of Australia founder, Dr Rolf Gomes, and was intrigued by Rolf’s description of his “dream” of taking specialist medicine to the bush via a specially-outfitted semi-trailer.
“I was impressed by Rolf’s determination and I got very interested in somehow being a part of a groundbreaking idea,” Chris remembers.
Some might think that strange for an IT man but he joined Rolf in “the dream”, helping to put IT equipment into the road rig, then boarding the truck to help keep the electrical equipment up and running – along with admin work for the roadside clinics – and more mundane issues such as airconditioning breakdowns.
Born in Papua New Guinea, where his Dad worked for decades, Chris – the youngest of six children in the family – started with horses.
With a Bachelor Degree in Equine Business and an Associate Diploma in Horse Management from Orange in NSW, Chris started on a career anchored on horses.
That’s where the trailriding comes in. Chris loved trailriding and started teaching children in the wonders of riding and equine management.
One day, on a students’ ride, a tree fell on the trail and in helping to extricate a student, Chris suffered a serious knee injury.
So … in recuperation, Chris decided to study for professional IT qualifications through QUT in Brisbane and was then offered a job by one of his tutors.
Now, less on-the-road but just as busy with Heart of Australia, Chris is working with Dr Rolf on plans for expansion of the service across the state.
Although a bit cagey when asked to nominate his favourite town on the HoA bush clinics regular schedule, Chris says: “We meet wonderful people at every stop … there’s something about the people and the place – I really like Goondiwindi”.
Tue,Apr,2018
Two Toyota Landcruiser wagons have joined our modest fleet to help keep our staff on time (and in the right places) for our town-by-town patient consultation clinics.
We greatly appreciate the new wagons, along with sponsored running costs for them, provided by Toyota Australia and a large contingent of Toyota bush dealers.
They’re the latest addition to our list of sponsors who all have committed to helping us to provide an essential service that literally is saving lives across Queensland’s Southern and Central West.
That’s certainly a Good Feeling!
