“I was very lucky that I was involved at the beginning of this Twinning program. It is a program that supports Vaiola Hospital in a couple of ways. We exchange staff between facilities and we also send over donated goods.
I suppose it all started when there was a doctor from Tonga who was out working with my intensive care director, Dr John Oswald. Dr Jeffrey Taliaʻuli Afeaki, the Tongan doctor, was out for 6 months working with John Oswald. I hadn’t met him but I did go to an intensive care conference in Ballarat at Sovereign Park, and it was about evening.
I was sitting there having a few drinks, chatting, and there was this guy sitting in the corner. It was Jeffrey. He looked at me blindly and was sort of very quiet. I went up and just said g’day. That was the start of the Twinning program to me, just by saying g’day and having a chat.
As it turned out, Taliaʻuli was quite concerned about the state of the health system in Tonga. He told me how bad things were and how hard it was, the lack of resources, and that it was in very poor condition.
People didn’t want to go to the hospital because they feel they’d die there. As a result, they’d always turn up late and they would die there. It sort of was self-perpetuating. He told me this and I got really excited about it and interested. When I was driving home with John Oswald, I said, ‘Oh John, we’ve got to go to Tonga.’ He said, ‘Where is Tonga?’
Well, he thought about it and came back and said, ‘Alright, you know what, why not? Let’s see if the sisters at St. John of God will be happy with that.’ We approached and wrote a letter for the sister-in-charge of the day, and they supported sending us over.
John and I came over in 1992 for the fiftieth Tonga Medical Conference. When John and I came out and had a look at the hospital, we were quite shocked. It was in bad repair. There was literally no intensive care here at the time.
I hadn’t travelled much before I came to Tonga. I hadn’t been out of Australia and I was feeling naïve I suppose. I was fairly shocked at the poverty and how little people had and yet they were so happy. It was a shock in one way but I was super impressed with the different culture, the different ways of life, and the focus on family.
We went back and to me, it was a bit like flicking a snowball off the top of a mountain. I thought it’ll be nothing but it just kept going and going and it’s still going today. It’s really been quite a journey for me personally.
I used to bring the teams out. Initially, we were bringing quite a few people to get the program going so like 6 or so people. In the end, it sort of settled down to being an exchange to Tonga for about 2 weeks for us and for Tongans to come out to us for about a month.
We did shorter and longer periods but that was a good settlement. We always emphasised, ‘You don’t need to go back and change the world in Tonga because you’re not going to. It doesn’t move that fast. Nowhere does.’ When I go to conferences when I was working, I never brought back everything I had. You bring one or two little snippets and say okay this’ll be different. Chipping that away over the years has really changed the structure of how things are done at the hospital now.
I’ve really enjoyed going through my career with these guys because at the 50th Tonga Medical Conference, they were all very young but very hard-working people. These are the ministry guys now; the top prism, and they did want to improve things.
It took a long time to actually develop that trust relationship because Tonga was the sort of place that a lot of people could come and go and you’d never see them again. But we just kept coming back.
The people on the ground ascended to high positions and they knew we were here for the long haul. I just kept bouncing back with the teams. I think to get that trust relationship we have now, that’s the foundation of the whole thing.
I just love Tonga. Tonga really gave me a meaning in life. I loved coming over, sharing that experience with the teams coming here and hosting the Tongan guys when they came out. Tonga’s been very much a part of myself for over 30 years.
It was always a pleasure to actually help in some small way. But the Tongans offered far more! The hospitality, the respect, and the mutual trust was just so meaningful to me.
Our people that came out, it changed a lot of their lives too; it wasn’t just mine. I can’t speak for them but it’s changed their lives too, I’m sure.
A lot of our staff that came in got very involved in the program, came in several times and made friends here as well. It wasn’t just about teaching someone to do something; it was about sharing our lives together.”
Source: Australian High Commission in Tonga – Stories of Partnership