A FRIENDSHIP going back 45 years, as farmer mates as well as doctor and patient, helped celebrate recognition in the Australia Day Honours last Tuesday of Bridgetown and Manjimup's Dr James Bowie.
Subscribe now for unlimited access to all our agricultural news
across the nation
or signup to continue reading
A Bridgetown cattle farmer before he became the local doctor at Manjimup and Balingup for 43 years of his 60-year medical career, Dr Bowie, 87, was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for service to medicine as a general practitioner.
He was one of 847 Australians to be honoured, one of 371 to receive an OAM and one of 34 Western Australians to be recognised this year, but Dr Bowie appears to be the only WA farmer on this year's honours list.
Unwittingly, Dr Bowie's first patient in private practice at Manjimup and, by coincidence, his last when he retired in 2018 and also his great friend Vincenzo (Jim) Vallelonga who, despite turning 95 in March, still farms at Balingup, visited on Monday.
"We didn't know about the award until we turned up and they (Dr Bowie and his wife Elizabeth) let it slip - the visit was supposed to have been before Christmas but it didn't happen," said Elsia Vallelonga-Silvestri, Mr Vallelonga's daughter who accompanied him on Monday.
"It (OAM) is so very well deserved, Dr Bowie is very much loved and admired around here," Ms Vallelonga-Silvestri said.
"He is very determined, caring and has great integrity.
"Being a farmer as well as the local doctor, he had a great rapport and empathy with his patients, (also) a lot of local people you run into were delivered by him as babies at the hospital.
"I know whenever dad went to see Dr Bowie for a consultation they always started off by talking about cattle - what the latest cattle prices were, what were the best breeds."
Ms Vallelonga-Silvestri said she could still recall an early visit by Dr Bowie to their farm after her father was laid up after a serious accident.
"Mum and me and my two sisters were trying to run the farm," she said.
"Dr Bowie came around and helped us cart hay.
"We all had standard black rubber boots.
"Dr Bowie had these pristine bright white ones - they were his theatre boots from the hospital."
Dr Bowie said he grew up on a farm in Hertfordshire, England, but his family had farmed at Ayrshire, Scotland and he also had a relative who was a doctor.
"I had the choice of becoming a farmer or a doctor," Dr Bowie said.
"But I thought that if I became a doctor, I could also be a farmer."
Dr Bowie trained as a doctor in Scotland after studying medicine at Glasgow University then worked at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary - a large teaching hospital - and enlisted in the Territorial Army, the British equivalent of the Army Reserve.
Answering a call for more doctors, he came to Australia in 1966 and became senior medical officer at Port Hedland.
"Part of my job there was to quarantine the iron ore ships as they came into port," Dr Bowie said.
"I would go out with the pilot and leap off the deck (of the pilot launch) onto a (rope) ladder and climb up the side of the ships.
"Onboard I would inspect all of the crew to make sure they were alright to come ashore."
He moved on to Tom Price, working as a general practitioner at the hospital from 1970 to 1975.
In 1967 he travelled south to Perth with the Royal Flying Doctor Service for a visit, hired a car and toured the South West of the State, stopping for lunch in Bridgetown.
He liked the area and the friendly service at lunch.
"Part of the area reminded me of Ayrshire," Dr Bowie said.
He bought his first farm near Bridgetown the following year, the same year his parents emigrated from England to WA and he met a Bridgetown girl called Elizabeth Goyder who he married in 1970.
When his father fell ill before dying in 1975, Dr Bowie left the north and established the Warren District Family Medical Practice at Manjimup which he ran until 2018.
He also held consultations in the Balingup Hall and was on call for the Manjimup Hospital.
Over the years Dr Bowie bought more local farms and began breeding cattle, first Herefords but then the more popular Angus.
The Bowie farming enterprise, now run by son James and his wife Katina, consists of nine properties and in the current season joined 1000 Angus cows.
Dr Bowie and Elizabeth have another son, Angus and a daughter Edwina who live on a sheep station near Woomera in South Australia.
They have retired to one of their properties called Break o'Day near Bridgetown and until very recently Dr Bowie still helped around the farms.
His varied medical experiences include a period as medical officer aboard Blue Funnel Line's cruise liner Perseus, which used to call at Fremantle and a three-month stint on a civilian medical team in Vietnam in late 1969 during the war.
It was on the Vietnam trip that Dr Bowie discovered his passport mistakenly listed him as an Australian citizen but listed his nationality as British.
He had to obtain a visa to get back into Australia and later became naturalised to end the passport confusion.
Dr Bowie's OAM citation list of achievements include as an Australian Medical Association life member since 2016 and a member since 1966, also a past member of the WA branch of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners.
In 2018 he was presented with the WA Country Health Service and Rural Health West Chairman's and People's Choice awards.
He also received the Centenary Medal in 2001 for service to the community through medicine and a 50-years Rural Service Award in 2016.
Dr Bowie was nominated for the OAM by Sue Priddis, a nursing sister who worked with him at the Manjimup Hospital.
- Anyone can nominate any Australian for an award in the Order of Australia. If you know someone worthy, nominate them at gg.gov.au
