From coal miner to doctor: The extraordinary career of Professor Peter O'Mara

Professor Peter O’Mara is one of those doctors who took the road less travelled.

A Wiradjuri man, after leaving school he started out as a machine fitter in a coal mine.

Today, he is a GP in rural NSW and an impassioned campaigner for Indigenous health.

Here’s his story.

In his younger days, Professor Peter O’Mara imagined his future lay in the bowels of the Hunter Valley.

A Wiradjuri man, he grew up in a small rural town called Paxton, where in the ‘70s your career prospects did not usually extend much further than the local coal mine.

“Well, if you were lucky. The jobs in the mine paid well and they were secure,” he says.

A bright child, keen on science and on understanding how things worked, after leaving Cessnock High School he secured an apprenticeship as a mine mechanic.

His ambition was to work his way up and, maybe, make it as a manager.

Initially all went well, but then aged 19 his life took a turn for what seemed like the worse.

“I was out driving and a fella jumped the medium strip and hit me head on,” Professor O’Mara says.

“I injured my back. And I really struggled.

“I was physically fit; I did martial arts, kickboxing, I was bodybuilding, I was running 70km a week, but then suddenly for six weeks I couldn’t do much at all. It was a road of rehabilitation.”

When he returned to work, he was in considerable pain.

“I’d throw my tool bag over my shoulder — it weighed 25 kilos — and it was not unreasonable for you to walk for a kilometre in the mine through the mud with gumboots.

“I tried to go back to doing that stuff but it was very hard.

“And I realised at that point that I was going to have to find something where I would use my brain not my body.”

He took a matriculation course at University of Newcastle and began studying psychology.

He was considering a career as a clinical psychologist and then fate intervened again, and in a way, its impact was more dramatic.

“I was at home preparing for my exams and I had been studying all morning until my eyes were burning,” he recalls.

“I took a break for lunch and turned on the television and it was Ray Martin. He was interviewing the first two Aboriginal doctors to graduate from the University of Newcastle on the Midday show.

“I was taken aback by that. My first thought was: ‘What? There are Aboriginal doctors?’.

“I just hadn’t thought about that before. But there Ray was talking to Dr Louis Peachey and Dr Sandy Eades and they just seemed like normal people to me.

“It sparked something.”

A week later Professor O’Mara went to the university’s school of medicine to collect all the information packs.

“I was quite daunted but I was determined,” he says.

“I remember when I was being interviewed to get into medicine, looking at the people who were interviewing me and thinking: ‘If you just let me in I’ll prove to you that I can do this’.”

They did. He said during his years at medical school, he couldn’t shake the feeling of disbelief. And even years later he says he still has moments — usually on his drive into work — where he catches himself thinking: ‘Wow, I’m a doctor’.

Medical training wasn’t a completely alien to his past life.

“I realised the cardiovascular system is just a hydraulic circuit,” Professor O’Mara says.

“Hydraulics systems was something I learnt about in my previous job and I know how they worked. My teacher, an ICU doctor, was impressed.”

He gradated in 1998, going on to work as a GP at Tobwabba Aboriginal Medical Services on the NSW midnorth coast.

“I often think about what a privilege it is to be involved in peoples’ lives in the way we are as a doctor, especially as a GP because patients really do take us into the deepest parts,” he says.

“I’ve done a fair bit of emergency work and when you see someone walking around and you know you’re directly responsible for them still being alive, that is just mind blowing.

“But just in the same way, so is when you see someone who was at the darkest moment in their life go on to living a really good quality life — that’s also incredibly rewarding.

“I once had a young lady come to talk to me for a consult and I asked her: ‘What can I do for you today?’

“She said: ‘I just want to thank you for giving me my Dad back’.

“I still get choked up when I think of that.”

Today, Professor O’Mara is chair of the RACGP’s faculty of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health. He is also director of the Thurru Indigenous Health Unit at the University of Newcastle and was recently appointed professor.

He says he has had many discussions over the years with Indigenous medical students who, like him, said they never saw the possibility of a career in medicine until they’d met an Indigenous doctor.

There is a long way to go, but he says a corner has been turned with young Indigenous kids at school including a career in medicine as among their ambitions.

“Back in the day, they would have been the few; the rare exception.”

There are nearly 600 Indigenous doctors in Australia — 0.4% of the workforce. Professor O”Mara says it’s important that the numbers grow, not least to help improve Indigenous health outcomes.

“As an Aboriginal doctor there is a natural connection that you have with your patients and there is a level of trust that just occurs naturally, which is really important.”

He adds: “What all the old guys are hoping for is that the day when it is no longer special, when it’s just like: “Oh, this is just another Aboriginal doctor …”

“At that point I think we know that we’ve really made it; we’ve probably changed the system enough.

“The other thing is that we will also not be putting pressure on those doctors because once you’ve graduated and you become an Aboriginal doctor, you’re under a lot of pressure.

“You’re meant to be the font of knowledge with all things Indigenous, and all things Indigenous health-wise, and you’re dragged from pillar to post: ‘We want you to come here; we want you here, we want you there.'”

Does he feel Indigenous doctors have a moral obligation to work in Indigenous communities after they graduate? That seems to be the unspoken expectation.

“I have two views.

“I have a head view that an Aboriginal doctor should have the right to do whatever they want and not feel pressured into anything.

“But then my heart tells me I know the difference that we make in our communities, and I’d love if our doctors knew that and had shared that feeling that I get every day, that they’d want to be a part of that.

“That is going to make a huge difference to our communities.

“So the head and the heart decision, and they’re both different.”

His passion for social justice remains undimmed. Asked about the things that can be done to improve Indigenous health, he says that as a young man, his response would have been framed in a biomedical perspective.

“Now I would say: ‘Stop racism’ as the first thing. The second thing I would say is: ‘Stop racism’ and, of course, the third would be the same.”

While his own life might have followed an unexpected route, there are still some constants.

He lives with his family in Barrington — a small town still in the Hunter region, just two hours north of his childhood home, where he continues to kickbox and lift weights.

He is also a singer and drummer in a rock-and-roll band and restores old cars with his son.

“Those things are part of my wellbeing — they are the great therapy,” he says.

“And you could say that I still have a job where I’m fixing things, but the things that I fix these days are far more important than anything that I ever fixed in the days gone by.”

His message to Indigenous people considering medicine is to “give it a red hot go”.

“You might surprise yourself and thrive in ways you never thought possible.

“I’d say also say look after yourself and be true to yourself.

“Have a yarn to those more experienced Aboriginal doctors.

“They love catching up with the new doctors and there’s often a bit of wisdom there to help them through what can be a bit of a tough road.”