Honour for Christine’s caring work
THREE Far Northerners are being recognised on the Australia Day honours list for their outstanding achievements and services to the community, children and medicine.
A total of 571 Aussies will be celebrated for their efforts nationwide. They include former foster carer Christine Fairbrother from Yungaburra, community volunteer Robert Slater from Herberton and doctor Michael Humphrey, who moved to the Far North from Victoria in 1990.
Mrs Fairbrother receives a Medal of the Order of Australia for her service to children and to the community since the 1960s.
She was in her early 20s when the Anglican Church said help was needed in Aboriginal communities on Cape York, so she and her husband packed up their lives, with their toddler and newborn in tow, and headed for the Cape.
“I often had to run the school or the hospital or the baby clinic, because there weren’t people there to do it, so that was a bit challenging,” Mrs Fairbrother said.
“We taught everything at the school. Sometimes I was the only teacher … At the hospital we’d just do anything that came up, any emergencies.”
Despite simultaneously caring for her own children and not being trained as a teacher or nurse, Mrs Fairbrother said “you’d just do what needed to be done.”
“We had an exciting time up Cape York with the Indigenous people. I learnt a lot from them,” she said.
After three to four years, the couple moved back to Cairns, where they heard foster carers were needed to care for deaf children as they attended school in Cairns, which led them to foster one girl for four years until she returned home to the country.
“So we thought ‘well, be better see what else we can do’,” Mrs Fairbrother said.
Over the next 30 years, she and her husband, Bill, cared for more than 100 children, some for a few days, others for several years.
After deciding they were too old to be looking after infants, the couple moved on to Lotus Glen Correctional Centre, where they spent the next 18 years conducting courses for people who wanted to “change their lives around”.
“It’s kept us pretty busy,” said Mrs Fairbrother.
She said she felt humbled to receive the award, and that “it couldn’t have been done on our own without the support of so many”.
“We feel that we need to use our life caring about people,” she said.
Robert Slater will also receive a Medal of the Order of Australia for his service to the community of Herberton.
Mr Slater has served as member and president of the Atherton-Herberton Historic Railway and the Herberton Lions Club.
He is a founding member of the Herberton Men’s Shed, and is a committee member of Associations of Tourist Railways Queensland.
The only Far Northerner to be appointed a Member of the Order of Australia this year, Michael Humphrey, was nominated for his significant service to medicine.
Dr Humphrey founded the Far North Queensland Obstetrics and Gynaecology Service, through which he gave medical assistance to Indigenous communities.
He has worked significantly with the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, a not-for-profit organisation that establishes high standards of practice in women’s health.
Dr Humphrey has also chaired and advised the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, was clinical CEO of Cairns Health Service District and has been a professor at JCU and the University of Tasmania.