Dr and Lyndy Ronan, with speakers Matt Holgate and Anne O’Bryan.
Photo by
Les_Garbutt
“My rural affiliations began 72 years ago with a miraculous birth in the Tallangatta Hospital, followed later by the giving up of my tonsils and appendix in that order in the same place. All in a small rural hospital with legendary doctors and nurses. I left the bush for a while to get educated, got lost, then returned, arriving in Yarrawonga in 1983. You can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy.”
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This is how retiring Dr Clyde Ronan began his valedictory speech last Thursday evening on Mulwala Water Ski Club’s Malibu Deck, in front of an estimated 100 people.
Dr Ronan saw his last patient on February 8 this year, exactly 41 years after coming to Yarrawonga, working as a general practitioner in an overall total of 47 years in the medical field since graduation.
He transferred the proprietorship of the Yarrawonga Medical Clinic to Ayon and Wen last year but stayed on and assisted in a respectful transition.
Insights into Dr Ronan’s career in the country’ enthralled and fascinated attendees. There was the important, serious side of medical life in Australian rural areas and in London, and lighter moments which were included in a speech by long time working colleague, nurse Anne O’Bryan.
Mulwala Water Ski Club President Matt Holgate welcomed Dr Ronan’s friends. “The number here is testament to the respect we’ve got for Dr Ronan,” the former star ruckman for the Yarrawonga football team said.
“He was a doctor for the Yarrawonga Football Club. He was a very community-minded person, involved in a lot of organisations around the community. He was a great asset for our football club. Thank you for all what you’ve done.”
Dr Ronan graduated in 1977, Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery, Monash University. It was the start of a career instead of becoming a fifth-generation Australian farmer.
He did another five years of postgraduate training and personal development in obstetrics, anaesthetics, rural general practice; a realisation that general practice is front and centre of clinical medicine and community health.
Dr Ronan took up a student elective in Wilcannia out on the Darling in 1976, under the auspices and distant supervision of the NSW Flying Doctor Service, operating out of Broken Hill.
“As it unfolded, I was to be the nearest thing to a boots-on-the-ground doctor that these poor folk were going to have for six weeks, but mercifully there were some experienced nurses there to save me, and all of them,” he recalled.
“Then it was five years of postgraduate training, and somewhere in there getting married. Here we are 44 years later, tomorrow. Yarrawonga gave us three great kids. And now we have four magnificent grandchildren.
Medical professionals and clinic staff from around Yarrawonga pictured with Dr Clyde and Lyndy Ronan.
Photo by
Les_Garbutt
“I mentioned the postgraduate training: obstetrics at the Women’s Hospital, anaesthetics wherever I could but eventually 18 months in London. General Practice in Hopetoun where I learned more about doing the best with what you’ve got.”
Dr Ronan said he had been trained by some terrific doctors, learning more about people.
“Great country folk, warm hearted. The thermometer at the pub showed how warm it really was in a mallee summer, before the rest of the world caught up with us, with global warming.
“There was a mouse plague running and jumping at the time and I thought the bride might leave, but instead she muscled up and learned better ways to catch more mice. I was driven to be more skilled in procedural general practice, in preparation for rural Australia.
“I did anaesthetics training in London at Red Hill General and St George’s, and although not rural or isolated it could be quite lonely working in the operating theatres at night while all the smarter people were at home in bed.”
It was at a Christmas function in Albury in 1982 which led to a big gain for Yarrawonga. At Vin Thomas’s radiology clinic, Dr Ronan met a cheerful young obstetrician, Colin Pill, who was able to advise that a doctor was leaving Yarrawonga without a suitable replacement. Dr Ronan swooped.
“Duncan Jefferson went out one door and I came in the other never meeting each other, on the 8th of February 1983, with a persisting heat wave, and then bushfires across Victoria with only the smoke reaching Yarrawonga,” Dr Ronan said.
“This was to be the beginning of a long partnership with Frank Lyons, and his delightful nurse-wife Terri, noted for entertaining. I could see many other benefits of Yarrawonga- a hospital where I could practice procedural medicine, and a lake full of water. The clinic was at 52 Belmore Street where Canning Arts are now. It was a quaint old building and convenient.
“General Practice and hospital were closely linked, and we looked after our own inpatients - meaning already in a bed, and casualty patients, and theatre and labour wards, and aged care.
“We needed two labour wards as was proved when I had two on the go at the same time more than once. We whipped through some amazing surgical lists and felt that we were achieving something.”
In Dr Ronan’s first week, he delivered three babies.
“People ask how many, over 34 years? I wasn’t counting but it’s about importance not numbers and some of them went on to play for the Pigeons, where I was the club doctor. Thousands of anaesthetics. I must have had a lot of energy early on and did lists in Cobram, Berrigan, Finley, and Tocumwal.”
At age 65 Dr Ronan retired from procedural work and after-hours work at the hospital. “It felt like I was on extended holidays, but they found more for me to do at the clinic, and my Skin Cancer Clinics were further developed, and so it went on,” he said.
The new clinic in Hume St which I opened in 1992, and extended in 2005, all to accommodate growth, with seven consulting rooms and three treatment rooms makes Dr Ronan proud.
“But it’s the remarkable line up of management now in layers like a lasagna, efficient and engaging reception staff, hot and cold running nurses, and hard-working doctors (but not like in the early days of course) which along with the building represents the full package of a viable practice that I have handed over to Ayon and Wen to take into the future that also makes me proud,” he said.
When Dr Ronan first arrived in Yarrawonga in 1983, Yarrawonga GPs had a much wider scope of practice in a small rural community than now according to long-time nurse Anne O’Bryan.
“They had to admit their sick patients to hospital and supervise their care while they were there which meant early morning ward rounds before starting at the clinic,” Anne said.
“Some of them like Clyde were also obstetricians and were called out for deliveries. Babies have a tendency to want to enter the world at 4.00am. We nurses were used to Clyde turning up looking decidedly worse for wear. But Clyde was happy that a new little one had entered the world.
“Clyde loved caring for his mums and bubs. He took great pleasure in seeing them when they came into the clinic for immunisations watching them grown into adulthood and sometimes delivering their babies, a complete cycle of care.”
Anne said a country GP has to be more than a clinician. “I have seen Clyde on numerous occasions be a shoulder to cry and a sympathetic and practical help when needed to those who turned to him for advice,” she said.
Clyde also had a way regarding food during work hours which meant an effective working relationship with Joyce Torpy in the kitchen.
“At lunch time a large plate of sandwiches was delivered to the tearoom for nursing staff, anaesthetists and surgeons however Clyde would be tucking into a large plate of roast or his favourite crumbed cutlets!” Anne advised.
Dr Ronan wants to be remembered for ‘being useful.’ His greatest medical achievements have been turning around a few smokers, doing some hard yards with childbirth, extricating things from ear holes and nose holes in noisy kids.
“My advanced skin cancer surgery showed what can be done in a clinic with the patient still wide awake and helping me solve some of the world’s bigger problems,” the long-standing member of the Australian Medical Association, Fellow of the Australian College of Remote and Rural Medicine, and member of the Rural Doctors Association of Victoria, said.
“But I think that my contribution to addressing the COVID -19 pandemic response stands out as useful. My wife, and the entire clinic responded without hesitation. We vaccinated hordes of people while still keeping the other doors open for general practice. Over 30 columns on Page 3 of the weekly Yarrawonga Chronicle during the darkest stages of the unfolding pandemic when a way out of it was not entirely clear.
“This community had very little in the way of adverse outcomes from the pandemic. That didn’t just happen. It left me both exhilarated that we had done our best, but very tired. Many people tell me they felt the same, and still do. We were all in the same boat in some ways.”
The future of rural General Practice is by no means certain, and patients and doctors need to stake their claims now according to Dr Ronan.
“By organising ourselves, we might have some success in showing recalcitrant governments the way. More power to rural general practice,” he said.
“I will miss the people, but my cows moo at me nicely. Poll Herefords in the Upper Murray will be my companions now, it seems.”
