IN DEFENCE OF GLEAMING SMILES
THE army is pulling teeth right now up in Pormpuraaw, formerly known as Edward River, up on the western side of the Cape York Peninsula. Army dentist, Captain Tim Hiddins, along with two dental assistants, are part of a 150-strong deployment to this remote Aboriginal settlement.
It is a deployment that sees the army’s health specialists including a doctor, nurses, medics and ambulance driver, integrated with engineers. Sounds like an unlikely amalgam of disciplines, but it is one that is achieving great things.
This merging of the diverse teams from 2nd General Health Battalion based at Gallipoli Barracks in Enoggera and engineers from 6 Engineers Support Regiment, RAAF Amberley, is known as AACAP (Army Aboriginal Community Assistance Program). The job they are doing is one of those things that Defence does and has been doing since 1997, with very little fanfare.
Usually the job is done, mostly in some remote part of Australia and no one, apart from the participants, knows too much about it.
About a decade ago the army built a number of houses up on what is known as Reservoir Hill on Palm Island. It was a project aimed at relieving the chronic overcrowding in houses on the island.
And now up at Pormpuraaw Captain Hiddins and his team, as well as pulling teeth that have seen better days, are saving chompers that can be saved and educating the population, especially children and parents, about dental care.
The engineer group, made up of a cross-section of trades, including carpenters, plumbers, mechanics and plant operators, has so far built a Men’s Shed and has cleared a subdivision on which 10 houses will be built.
“A lot of other tasks are done as well, a lot of community related activities,” Captain Hiddins said.
For Captain Hiddins, becoming an army dentist happened in a roundabout sort of way. He left school and joined the army. In 1998 he enrolled at the Australian Defence Force Academy and later at the Royal Military College. In 2003 he became a Black Hawk pilot, flying out of Townsville. He saw service in East Timor and Afghanistan. In 2012 he started dentistry at James Cook University’s Cairns campus, graduating in 2017.
I asked him how he came to make the switch from pilot to dentist.
“It was a lifestyle choice along with the need for a new challenge. We had
been spending a lot of time away in East Timor and Afghanistan with no end in sight and I was looking at
having a family so needed something fulfilling, meaningful and challenging that allowed me to be home a bit more,” he said.
“There are a lot of common qualities between pilots and dentists, surprisingly. I still get the same level of satisfaction, but am
more involved with the end user of my skills. It is a very satisfying career.
“People who think dentistry is boring probably don’t fully understand what the job is about. I am very happy I got to be a pilot, but even more glad I’ve had the opportunity to switch careers and become a dentist.”
Captain Hiddins said it was “amazing” how many JCU dentistry graduates made their way into the army. “There are probably two to three dentists recruited every year and at least one will have come through JCU,” he said.
And what are they finding at Pormpuraaw in terms of dental care?
“It’s stereotypical of any rural community. There is quite a bit of advanced disease and quite a bit of pulling out of teeth in order to make people more comfortable.
“We are going to the school and talking to the kids, showing them how to brush their teeth so we don’t have to do extractions in 10 years’ time,” he said.
And like any rural community, Captain Hiddins’s team had to establish trust with local people, especially the older people, in order to make them feel confident about sitting down in the chair in the army’s temporary hospital or in the Queensland
Health building in the centre of town. “We had to establish that rapport and trust and now they are coming in. We are seeing from anywhere between six and 12 people a day in the dental hospital. We go to a lot of briefings and we spend a lot of time with the community, building that trust. It is the same with the engineers. They have to build that same trust,” he said.
For the soldiers like Captain Hiddins, this deployment to this isolated pocket of Northern Australia is something that gives them enormous personal satisfaction. They know they are doing something worth
while for their fellow Australians. At Pormpuraaw, they live under canvas in a self-built camp.
They generate their own power, supply their own water and have their own staffed kitchen. They work six days a week.
“The big thing we all feel here at Pormpuraaw is satisfaction with the job we are doing. Most of the soldiers here have served overseas, particularly Afghanistan. We all find it really enjoyable doing the work we do on our own turf, helping people in own community. It is a great experience and we feel privileged to be doing it,” he said.
When the soldiers pack up and leave Pormpuraaw in two weeks they will not only leave behind structural improvements that will benefit to the town, but there will also be a plenty of big, happy, healthy smiles and in 10 years there will be a lot less tooth pulling.
(Point of interest: Captain Tim Hiddins is the son of former two-tour Vietnam veteran and forward scout, Major Les Hiddins, also known as the Bush Tucker Man).