Loved-up Pip & Michael’s family trip!
Dr Kiri Oates reckons the real-life outback version is just as action-packed and exciting as the popular ’80s drama series
Perhaps keen to avoid a run run-in in with Kyly, Pip and Michael jetted off to Queensland last week for a family holiday, where the couple were spotted finally embracing each other publicly.
Pip was joined by her son Justice,
13, while Michael had his daughter Kelsey Lee, four, by his side. The happy group appeared to get along swimmingly as they enjoyed the Sunshine Coast’s cafes and warm beaches, even hiring a jetski for the day.
Pip, who only months ago denied talk she was dating the cricket star, took to Instagram to flaunt her holiday with Michael, 39, sharing several selfies with him along with snaps of the relaxing getaway.
When she was growing up in England, Dr Kiri Oates’ family were huge fans of The Flying Doctors, and religiously watched actor Andrew Mcfarlane as he flew in to save the day as handsome Dr Tom Callaghan.
“The show gave a level of expectation – I would be like, ‘No, I would be removed if I chose to amputate on a kitchen table,’” laughs the real-life hero, who moved from the UK to Dubbo with her partner Jason two-and-a-half years ago to join the world-renowned Royal Flying Doctor Service.
But reality proved fiction was closer to fact than Kiri had ever imagined with several call-outs, where early prognosis included plans to perform amputations on patients trapped in car wrecks and on badly injured young boys in remote communities.
Based in Dubbo, the emergency medicine and retrieval registrar spends some of her time in the local hospital’s emergency department and her other shifts on site at the service’s base at Dubbo Airport.
Kiri, 33, can be put on retrieval duty, where she may fly across the state – and even interstate – for jobs. It includes day and night shifts.
NO SHIFT IS THE SAME
Then there are the overnight radio shifts, where she may cover a massive expanse of NSW responding to queries and problems regarding patients at remote sites.
Or the shifts at Broken Hill, where Kiri is not only on retrievals but also on an emergency phone line where anything can crop up, whether it be a car crash, farm injury or a child lapsing in and out of consciousness.
It really is flying-by-the-seatof-her-pants stuff.
“Anyone can call. It can be a nurse in Wilcannia or Menindee or Tibooburra who has seen a patient and they’ll present it to me,’’ says Kiri.
“I might look at them on virtual cameras and decide this is just a nasty chest infection and they need antibiotics,
or have they had an accident and we need to fly out there.
“So I manage them on the camera while getting ready to fly out.
“Or it might be a call from a mum on a station: ‘The kid’s not right, doc,’ and we try and pick it out from the phone calls.’’
She later adds, “You can be having a coffee and you get the call for an eight-hour retrieval, especially for Broken Hill.
“Those can be pretty hectic, because technically you’re managing them and then you’re going on a two-hour wo-hour flight somewhere, trying to stabilise the patient and then do another three hours down to Adelaide. And it’s just you and the nurse – that’s a job you would normally have a couple of doctors and nurses working on in the emergency department.
“Those are the ones that are a real pinch.’’
Wherever you look, it’s a far cry from west London, where Kiri was born, or Dundee in Scotland, where she graduated with her medical degree.
Kiri had experienced Au Australia before getting the j job – albeit as a 17-year 17-year-old backpacker never far from the east coast. “I wanted to experience a different country. I wanted to expand my skill set, and it wasn’t that hard to convince my other half that Australia was nice and sunny,’’ she says.
That was February 2018, and the plan was for a year in the skies. She still can’t see the end.
Kiri’s a team player and the flying doctors need to be, especially when it’s just you, the nurse and the pilot in charge of saving someone’s life.
But there are still moments of downtime.
“If you can get the flight home when the sun is going down, you can just put your feet up and it’s just beautiful. And personally I love flying around Broken Hill because it’s such a stark landscape. When I’m looking at local artworks, that’s the one I’m holding out for.’’
‘I wanted to experience a different country’