When moving back to the city from a regional centre makes you homesick for what you’ve left, you know that regional living is for you.
That’s what happened when obstetrician David Chettle and his wife Wendy crash-landed back in Brisbane with three small children after a year-long placement in Rockhampton.
They vowed to “find a Rocky closer to home.” A colleague’s tip to check out Toowoomba – just one and a half hours from the Queensland capital — paid off for the Chettles, as well as their new community.
“Moving to Toowoomba in 2018 gave us an opportunity to fulfil our dream of starting a women’s health clinic and doing it our way,” says Wendy, who manages the practice which is located in St Vincent’s Private Hospital.
“We make it easy for families to get the services they need and have patients who are up to a six-hour drive away,” she says.
“In just four years, we’ve grown from a clinic of one doctor to a clinic with three specialist obstetricians, two physiotherapists, a massage therapist and five administration staff.”
In Brisbane, David worked at Logan Hospital and couldn’t always clock off in the evening as he feared traffic would prevent him from returning to the hospital in the case of an emergency, Wendy says.
But if David gets called into the hospital in the middle of the night in Toowoomba, “it’s only a four-minute drive from our house, or four minutes and 20 seconds if Dave catches the single red light,” laughs Wendy.
“Here, we have a big backyard, pool, huge parks within walking distance and our children go to the most amazing school,” Wendy says.
And on top of that there’s the sheer beauty, she says, “of the place and its people.”
