The distant Australian city looking for a doctor offers $ 400,000 wages, free rent

A distant Australian city that will soon lose its only doctor offers a salary of up to 680,000 Australian dollars, or $ 428,000, to attract a new candidate.

The city distant from Queensland from Julia Creek, 500 inhabitants, also offers free rent and a car. The salary concerns double what a family doctor would gain in state capital, Brisbane.

The take is that the main closest city, Townsville, is seven o’clock. Brisbane is more than 5 p.m. Potential candidates must Also Kiss the hot heat and tropical insects.

But the outgoing doctor from the city, Dr. Adam Louws, says that his replacement will also find a quieter pace of life and the possibility of learning the skills they have never used before.

Louws was recruited in Brisbane in 2022, when Julia Creek made the headlines by offering a salary of $ 500,000 in, or about $ 315,000.

“My mother-in-law sent me a link to this press article saying:” The work of half a million dollars that nobody wants “, said Louws. “My first thought when I saw him and I watched it was:” Where’s Julia Creek? “”

Julia Creek is a romantic and romantic edge of the Australian outback with wide open spaces and orange sunsets. Children play sports and go up horses. But it is distant – the high school means a boarding school in the city and the nearest hospital is almost three hours by car.

Before the arrival of Louws in 2022, the city had not had a permanent doctor for 15 years, with a list of visiting doctors who spanned short stays. This is a problem that upset rural cities in Australia and Around the world for decades.

Australia has a deficit of general practitioners of 2,500 doctors across the country, according to a government report in 2024, with the shortage of rural areas and should grow. Attracting doctors in rural Australia is made more difficult by the attractive distances between the most remote establishments; The vast country is one of the least densely populated in the world.

In neighboring New Zealand – where 5 million people live in a country the size of the United Kingdom – distances between distant cities have aggravated disparities in terms of health. In the United States, 65% of rural areas Had a shortage of primary care physicians in 2023, official figures showed.

For Janene Fegan, the mayor of McKinlay Shire – who includes Julia Creek – it meant that the city needed a good sale argument. Fegan was involved in the local health service campaign which recruited Louws and proposed to promote the city again when the work was announced in March.

“We actually have a very, very good lifestyle and a very safe lifestyle,” she said. “Yes, there is sometimes the distance to go, but how many people do you now intend to want to escape and go out out of network?”

The city did not add it, she added, literally out of the network: Julia Creek has electricity and wide-band Internet.

“You don’t have to stay forever,” said Fegan. “Give him right.”

When the work was announced in 2022, some health care analysts said that the reinforced salary was still not enough to compensate for the workload of a solo doctor.

But Louws, the outgoing doctor, said that solo work had encouraged him to learn from medical skills he would have sent patients “two minutes from the road” so that another practitioner occurs when he lived in the city. He also had a childhood dream to learn how to milk dairy cows.

“The money is sufficient. It is,” said Louws. “One of the things I think that people do not necessarily consider it enough in this work, these are the other things that this city has to offer.”

Louws applied for the post three days after hearing Julia Creek for the first time, following the study on Wikipedia. Soon, he and his wife and his four children were packed to move.

When he had been at work six months, he said Louws, he knew “nine out of 10” in the city by name. “It’s a bit like going back in time about 60 years,” he said. “Everyone knows everyone.”

At the end of his two -year contract in Julia Creek, however, the distance from his extended family had wreaked havoc and he planned to return to his practice in the city. Louws leaves in May; Requests for his position close on Sunday.

He’s sorry to leave the city “incredible”.

“It’s much closer,” said the doctor. “You can really make a difference.”