Helping to develop Mildura’s private hospital, advocacy for improved air ambulance services in the town, and a campaign for better regulation of unflued gas heaters are just some of the reasons Sunbury’s Dr Barry Dowty will receive Australia Day Honours.
The now-retired physician has been awarded a medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for his service to medicine in a range of roles, and he said he feels grateful to his country for the honour.
“I also feel fortunate in that there are a lot of people who could be given this honour… I feel fortunate that somebody has taken the effort to nominate me,” he said.
Dr Dowty’s resume is impressive, as one might expect.
After becoming a fellow of the Royal Australian College of Physicians in 1975, he went on to be a federal councillor of the Australian Association of Consultant Physicians, between 1989 and 1995.
As a fellow of the Australian Medical Association, he advocated for life education drug programs in Victoria, and was a branch councillor of the Mallee division from 1987 to 1995, and then again from 2006 to 2008.
He was a founding member of the Mildura Private Hospital steering committee, as well as a life governor of the Mildura Base Hospital, where he advocated nuclear medicine investigation facilities.
In his professional career, Dr Dowty worked in multiple roles at the Alfred Hospital between 1966 and 1971, including as an assistant physician. As a consultant physician he worked in Wagga Wagga for a year before heading to Mildura in 1974, where he retired in 2006.
His advocacy for an air ambulance to take intensive care-type patients from Mildura to Melbourne is something the Dr Dowty believes underpins the recognition he has received.
“When I first went to Mildura… I experienced difficulties in transferring patients who were sick to Melbourne, having to travel with them to make sure they got here,” he said.
“So I started to try and improve it.”
Through a special committee organised by the Australian Medical Association, Melbourne hospitals were organised and experts would be sent to pick up intensive care patients and treat them in the air ambulance.
For about six years during his time in Mildura, he was the only physician in town.
“Gradually, we got up to five, the situation there is different now,” he said.
Dr Dowty said he couldn’t have done what he did without his wife, Lisa.
“She did most of the parenting, taking kids to sport, going to the schools, helping out there… we saw it as our duty to provide service… but it meant I’d often miss their birthday parties,” he said.
“That’s the way of service, I’m sure they are [proud].”
