University graduates are now earning six-figure salaries in the first year of their profession if they are prepared to ditch Australia’s cities and move to a remote part of the country.
Brooke Mackie, 24, recently moved to Mount Isa in northwest Queensland after studying medicine at James Cook University in Townsville.
‘I really like the dynamic of small mining towns,’ she told Daily Mail Australia.
‘You do have a nice sense of community. Usually, they’re quite hard working communities and the sense of treating – as a doctor – the people you know is quite nice.’
As a first-year doctor at Mount Isa Hospital, Dr Mackie earns a base salary of $87,000 having practised medicine full-time for just six months.
But that increases to more than $100,000 with weekend penalty rates as a junior doctor doing rotations in emergency, obstetrics, surgical and paediatrics.
Then there are Queensland government incentives on top of that, including a $34,500 inaccessibility allowance.
Brooke Mackie, 24, recently moved to Mount Isa in north-west Queensland after studying medicine at James Cook University in Townsville (she is pictured left with her fiance Taylor Tomlinson)
That takes her pay to $134,500, with her job also including free accommodation and relocation as Australia grapples with a housing and rental crisis.
From next year, she will be eligible for a $21,500 professional development allowance and a $40,000 cash incentive to train to become a rural GP.
It can be gruelling though, some weeks Dr Mackie works 11 days straight.
Dr Mackie grew up moving around the north Queensland mining towns of Weipa and Mackay so Mount Isa isn’t too different, except for the 4C winter temperatures far inland.
‘It’s pretty similar to a lot of the towns I grew up in – the difference being that it has both a Coles and a Woolies,’ she said.
Dr Mackie’s ambition is to become a hospital obstetrician who also works as a GP after her mother was forced to travel long distances to give birth safely.
‘There is a massive shortage in Queensland for rural obstetricians – we’ve had a lot of birthing centres close so women are having to travel hours to go to somewhere where they have capacity to birth,’ she said.
‘From an employability standpoint, it’s really good; from a personal standpoint, living rurally, my mother has been in that situation where she’s had to travel hours and hours to have my siblings and I.
‘Being able to give birth, where you are, where you have support systems and receive your antenatal care in your local community is just so important, that’s why I’m interested in it.’
Dr Mackie disputed the notion there was nothing to do in Mount Isa, noting the area hosted rodeos, multicultural festivals and was close to great camping and four-wheel driving spots.
‘Definitely, I’m more of a country girl at heart,’ she said.
As first-year doctor at Mount Isa Hospital, Dr Mackie earns a base salary of $87,000 having practised medicine full-time for just six months but that swells to $134,500 with penalty rates and an inaccessibility allowance
‘If people are worried about going out bush – “there’s nothing to do” – there is something on almost every weekend.’
But she lamented how she was a very long drive away from her family members living in Townsville, Brisbane and Gladstone.
‘I find it hard, sometimes, if you want to visit family, you’ve got to pay an arm and a leg to get a flight,’ she said.
Despite the distance, the young doctor is thinking on one day locating to an even more remote part of Queensland, in the Cape York Peninsula region, so she can care for Indigenous patients.
‘You have the whole host of intergenerational trauma with the Indigenous patients and the distrust in sometimes the Western or white medicine, so dealing with those social factors as well as highly complex patients, it does make for very interesting medicine and very great learning opportunities as a junior doctor,’ she said.
Dr Mackie’s ambition is to become a hospital obstetrician who also works as a GP, having witnessed her mother being forced to travel long distances to give birth safely
Her fiance Taylor Tomlinson works in Mount Isa as a maths and physics teacher.
Across Australia, general practitioners have an average salary of $133,386 but the average taxable income swells to $163,360 with government incentives.
Queensland offers $187,000 worth of rural and remote perks including a $34,500 inaccessibility allowance, a $70,000 two-year workforce attraction incentive scheme, a $21,000 motor vehicle allowance, a $21,500 professional development allowance and $40,000 cash incentives for 500 junior doctors to train to become GPs.