Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

I had a really special evening on 17 May at the farewell for the inspirational Dr Robert Byrne from general practice from the western Riverina. A packed Yanco All-Servicemen's Club heard speaker after speaker tell how much-loved Dr Bob had saved either his or her life and of the great community work he had performed since arriving in the area on 7 January 1967. The very next day he delivered his first Riverina baby, Maria Olivero, and she was there to attend this special evening.

The night was tinged with great laughter but also with some sadness, especially when the story was recounted of how Dr Bob and his nurse wife, Fahy, helped the severely injured after the dreadful, horrific bus accident on Thursday, 27 November 1975, in which their own eight-year-old daughter, Catherine, lost her life. There were 85 people on the bus that day, 81 of whom were schoolchildren. They were coming back from Darlington Point, having attended swimming lessons, and the bus collided with a semitrailer seven miles north of Coleambally. They realised very quickly that their daughter was amongst the dead, but, like the true, fine medical professionals that they are, they helped the injured and saved many, many people's lives. That is the sort of caring, wonderful, warm, passionate people Bob and Fahy are.

Plenty of warm and funny tales about Bob's loving care for his patients were told. It was estimated that Dr Bob conducted 600,000 consultations in Coleambally, Griffith, Leeton, Hay, Jerilderie and Yanco during his time.

He is a truly wonderful man. He is a genuine country boy, born in Cootamundra in 1937. He was able to get his doctor's degree via a Commonwealth scholarship. He completed his primary medical degree in 1963 at Sydney university, and he came back, like so many good doctors do, to regional areas to do their bit to help country, rural and regional people.

Bob and Fahy moved to Hobart where Bob took on the job of senior resident in obstetrics and paediatrics and, later, medical registrar, and he moved to Griffith in 1967, driving from Melbourne to there with their children and their entire belongings in a Hillman Imp—a very compact car. They packed up their whole car and they moved to the western Riverina where, as I say, they have served our area so diligently, so well, so professionally and with such loving care for so many years.

He decided it was time to slow down in 2000, so he commenced recruitment for the town where he was working, Coleambally, in partnership with the New South Wales Rural Doctors Network, and since that he has had comebacks in Yanco, Jerilderie and Hay, and finally in Leeton, where he has retired. May he and his wife enjoy many years of happy, healthy retirement.

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