This year’s honourees run the gamut from Queensland’s first Indigenous doctor to medicos at the cutting edge of maritime medicine.
This year’s King’s Birthday honour roll recognises 14 doctors who have worked in or around general practice, honouring their work both within and beyond the consult room.
Each doctor has made a mark on his or her community, whether as a long-time practitioner, a leader in rural health, or a dedicated volunteer.
Of the 14 doctors, 10 were awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM), three were appointed Members of the Order of Australia (AM), and one was awarded the Conspicuous Service Cross (CSC).
Among the honourees was Dr Noel Hayman, Queensland’s first Indigenous doctor.
Dy Hayman decided to pursue medicine in 1994 after reading a Herald Sun article that reported there were no Indigenous medical students in Queensland.
He would go on to become the first, specialising in Indigenous general practice and public health.
He is one of two GPs to be appointed AM this year and is being honoured for his service to medicine, particularly Indigenous health care and medical education.
“It’s a great accolade, as I’m going to retire this year,” Dr Hayman told The Medical Republic.
Starting at The Inala Community Health Centre general practice in 1995, Dr Hayman noticed that despite being a low socio-economic area with many Aboriginal people, there were only twelve Aboriginal patients.
Focus groups with elders and Aboriginal community organisations painted a clear picture.
“There was no Aboriginal face at the centre,” he said. Aboriginal patients didn’t feel welcome.
Since 2010, he has co-founded and directed the Southern Queensland Centre of Excellence in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Primary Health Care.
Seeing poor attendance for specialist services among Aboriginal patients, Dr Hayman brought specialists out from hospitals into primary care – “because Aboriginal people feel comfortable at my centre.”
The centre now hosts well over 10,000 patients.
Dr Hayman believes all doctors should undertake a stint in Indigenous health and that GPs and specialists alike must understand the diversity of Indigenous cultures and health across regions.
“You can’t treat all Aboriginal [people] the same, you’ve got to know where they come from, and what might work [in Queensland] won’t work in Central Australia,” he said.
A government advisor to the Close the Gap Program and associate professor at the University of Queensland’s school of Medicine, Dr Hayman has also received the Vice-Chancellor’s Diversity Award for recruiting and training Indigenous doctors.
He is focused on ensuring the Centre of Excellence’s continuation as his enduring legacy.
Trailblazing rural GP Dr Shane Sondergeld was also appointed AM this year, in recognition of his significant service to rural and remote medicine, general practice, and the community.
It was a reflection, he told TMR, on the unsung heroes who have bolstered his almost forty-year career.
“Rural medicine is the pinnacle of all medicine,” he said.
“People trust you implicitly with their lives, and in their greatest and their darkest moments.”
For 15 years, Dr Sondergeld practised in the rural Queensland town of Texas – the first decade alone.
He was deeply immersed in community life, which he described as “a wonderful dinner party that goes on, and in the midst of it all, you happen to practice some medicine.”
Among the patients he met, one elderly widower stood out.
Well into his 80s and admitted for palliative care with a carcinoma of the pancreas, the man would always try to stand whenever the nurses made their rounds.
He had never once called Dr Sondergeld by his first name.
When the man’s son was admitted to the hospital and passed away one Saturday evening, Dr Sondergeld arrived to find him holding his son’s arm.
The old man looked up and said, “Ah, Shane.”
“It’s the only time he ever called me by my first name,” Dr Sondergeld said, tearing up.
Dr Sondergeld co-founded the Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine in 1997, served as President of the Rural Doctors’ Association of Queensland, and has contributed to the AMA since 2000.
He said retaining medical graduates in rural placements requires better training and working conditions.
“If doctors get the training, you really can provide a wonderful service to your community,” he said.
Outside medicine, Dr Sondergeld has contributed artworks to exhibitions nationwide – a hobby with his wife that quickly grew into loan works, in one instance raising money to recreate artist Margaret Olley’s home at the Tweed Regional Gallery.
He has also served 51 years at St Mark’s Anglican Church, and 55 years as a church organist.
Dr Helen Roxburgh, who was worked in general practice since 1989, was awarded an OAM for her contributions to women’s health.
Initially in dietetics, Dr Roxburgh’s interest shifted to holistic care.
She studied medicine at Flinders University during the school’s early days, earning an exemption from first year – something they’d never do now, she told TMR.
“I actually really liked all parts of medicine; I really couldn’t see myself voluntarily giving up any part of it,” she said.
The diagnostic challenges, problem-solving, and longitudinal relationships developed with patients in general practice are among her favourite aspects of the profession.
“They confide in you significantly, and I feel quite privileged to be their confidant,” she said.
General practice provided the flexibility to raise two children during her studies, at a time when balancing motherhood and medicine wasn’t always viewed favourably.
Her interest in women’s health began when she learned she was pregnant, and she spent almost a decade as an obstetrics medical officer at Modbury Hospital in the 1980s and 90s.
“I’m championing for women on two fronts,” she said – in women’s health, and for women in the healthcare workplace.
Seeing patients from the delivery room into adulthood has been an honour, she told TMR.
Once a month, Dr Roxburgh boards a small plane to run FIFO women’s health clinics at Yalata and Oak Valley in South Australia, through the Kakarrara Wulkuraka Health Alliance.
She has been Belair Medical’s practice principal since 2008, hosting an all-female workforce that supports women in general practice and women’s health.
She has also collaborated with SA non-profit GPEx for over 30 years, supporting GPs and primary care professionals through education, training, and workforce initiatives.
“Mentoring registrars and upcoming GPs has been incredibly satisfying,” she said.
While not a specialist GP himself, Canberra sonologist Dr Wesley Cormick was awarded an OAM for his service to ultrasound and general practice.
Initially wanting to be a physician, he fell ill while a resident.
Pivoting to ultrasound – “it seemed to be an easier option” – he quickly discovered he had an aptitude for it.
Dr Cormick said his sonologist work helped Canberra GPs avoid referring patients to Sydney or Melbourne.
He also gave over fifty keynote addresses for associations, including the Australasian Society for Ultrasound in Medicine and the Australasian Sonographers Association.
“It’s important to share medical education as widely and freely as possible,” he told TMR.
However, a severe allergy condition – Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, which causes repeated anaphylaxis-like episodes triggered by everyday products, from shampoos to deodorants – forced him to leave practice ten years ago.
He is now housebound.
MCAS is believed to affect up to 17% of the global population, according to a recent study.
“I’ve got a rather unique story in that I became allergic to my own patients,” he said.
Despite his own health struggles, Dr Cormick championed patients’ experiences of chronic pain throughout his career.
“I strongly empathise with what it’s like to be a patient,” he said.
As his health has “started to settle down,” he dearly misses practice.
“Looking after yourself is as important as looking after your patients,” he said.
Dr Cormick is not the first in his family to receive this honour. His twin brother, Dr Craig Cormick, received a similar honour five years ago for his service to science and the community.
For Dr Cormick, the award remains a personal affirmation of his dedication throughout his career.
“It’s important you don’t work trying to achieve awards. You work for the benefit of the patients you look after,” he said.
Dr Lachlan Warren was awarded an OAM for his service to dermatology, but his career began in the 1980s as a rural GP.
“My memory is full of important events and tragedies that go with being responsible for a large amount of community care,” he said.
“Thirty years ago, I could see that the services that were being provided by so many rural GPs were being undervalued and not appreciated by so many in medical and government circles,” Dr Warren said.
Workforce challenges, he said, persist today. “It has to be better supported than it is at the moment.”
After fourteen years, Dr Warren pivoted to dermatology in SA in order to spend more time with his children while they were young, and was inspired by specialists at his hospital.
He served as chief examiner at Fiji’s Pacific Dermatology Training Centre from 2019 to 2024, under a philanthropic grant to build dermatology expertise across the Pacific in low-resource settings.
While Dr Warren was humbled by the honour, he said many in the broader community remain unsung.
“People who contribute in ways other than professionally have to be equally rewarded or regarded as those who do a good job in their professional life,” he said.
Victorian Medical Board of Australia chair Dr Abishek Verma was awarded an OAM for his service to medicine and medical administration.
Beginning in surgical training, he pivoted to general practice after the birth of his first child.
“As a GP, you get this really unique window into people’s lives,” said Dr Verma.
“You see how people struggle through the hardest times of life, but you also get to see their courage and their resilience and their hope,” he said.
His work has predominantly focused on serving disadvantaged groups, including at The Refugee Health Service in Collingwood, where patients often arrived with poorly managed chronic disease and little knowledge of the healthcare system.
He feels this is where he has been able to make the most tangible difference, and a position he said was an enormous privilege.
One patient he recalls especially fondly.
A young, socially isolated neurodiverse man with limited family support was struggling with his mental health.
Over years of psychological support, medication, and ongoing consultations, he began to thrive, eventually becoming highly functional and getting engaged.
On receiving the award, Dr Verma told TMR that the honour belongs to the colleagues, family and friends who’ve supported him.
“Everyone’s helped me along the way. It’s theirs as much as it is mine.”
Dr Verma hopes general practice will become a more popular pathway for graduates and continues to teach the next generation of doctors.
“When your patients really value what you do as a GP, they’ll listen to you… because they know how much you care about their health outcomes,” he said.
Dr Andrew Beattie, a retired Coffs Harbour GP who practised for almost three decades, was awarded an OAM for his service to the community.
Dr Beattie always found general practice inspiring.
“I was very impressed by the calibre of the people I met and the work they were doing,” he told TMR.
His career began in the 1980s, helping establish the Wurli-Wurlinjang health service in Katherine, NT – part of a nationwide expansion of Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services (ACCHOs).
“In the 1970s, the life expectancy for all Aboriginal people was about 50, which is pretty horrendous,” he said.
There are now 148 ACCHOs in operation, which he said is a testament to what general practice in communities can achieve.
Outside medicine, he co-founded the Bicycle Users Group in Coffs Harbour more than thirty years ago.
NSW-based palliative care consultant and GP Dr Fiona Boyd was awarded an OAM for her service to general and palliative medicine.
Her interest in medicine stemmed from her uncle and grandfather, both GPs, she told TMR.
“It was just beginning, but you’d find these patients in the community with pain that was out of control,” she said of palliative care’s nascent days.
Without subcutaneous pain pumps, Dr Boyd recalls going out “every four hours to give an injection of some painkiller in order to get through the time.”
When an opportunity arose to extend palliative care services at Calvary Mater Newcastle in 1992, she took it – hoping now to shine a “spotlight back onto palliative care and community care as a whole.”
Western Australia’s Dr Sean Stevens, a GP supervisor with over 25 years’ experience, received an OAM for his service to general practice.
His enjoyment comes from “instilling the love of general practice” by mentoring and supervising younger GPs.
Co-founder of Grove Medical – with two clinics in Victoria Park and Cockburn, WA – and education podcast The Good GP, Dr Stevens credits his success to his Grove Medical co-founder, Dr Mary-Therese Wyatt, and the teams he’s worked with.
“I’ve had the privilege of working with some really amazing people in my career,” he said.
He chaired the RACGP WA ADHD working group, which led Australia’s first landmark ADHD GP Training Program in WA, in collaboration with the Australasian ADHD Professionals Association.
He also helped establish the RACGP Practice Owners National Conference.
As the current RACGP Chair of the Digital Health and Innovation Interest Group since 2024, he continues to advocate that GPs be “rewarded and acknowledged as really the essential backbone of the health system.”
“The longitudinal relationships that you form with your patients, no other medical specialty has got that to the same degree,” he said.
Dr Kenneth Facer was awarded OAM for service to medicine as a GP.
Now retired, Dr Facer worked as a school doctor St Joseph’s College in Hunters Hill for more than two decades, also practicing in the Sydney suburb of Gladesville and the Riverina town of Leeton.
He has been a member of the AMA for more than 70 years.
Northern Beaches GP Dr Timothy Harpur was awarded OAM in recognition of his service to the local community.
An involved member of St Faith’s Anglican Church, Dr Harpur has helped manage the North Narrabeen Rugby League Club community pantry for the last decade.
Wing Commander Alan Turner, a specialist GP with the Royal Australian Air Force, was awarded an OAM in the Military Division.
Over his period of service, Wing Commander Turner has advanced the health capability and readiness of the air force and helped shore up practitioner retention.
GP and emergency medicine doctor Commander Scott Squires of the Royal Australian Navy was awarded a Conspicuous Service Cross in recognition of outstanding devotion to duty in maritime operational health.
Commander Squires implemented a new method for safe management of frozen blood products, to be used when ships are deployed in austere environments.
Queensland anaesthetist Associate Professor Michael Steyn, who is a member of the Royal College of General Practitioners in the UK, was appointed AM.
The full list of current and former GPs honoured is as follows:
- Professor Noel Hayman, AM
- Dr Shane Sondergeld, AM
- Associate Professor Michael Steyn, AM
- Dr Andrew Beattie, OAM
- Dr Fiona Boyd, OAM
- Dr Wesley Cormick, OAM
- Dr Kenneth Facer, OAM
- Dr Timothy Harpur, OAM
- Dr Helen Roxburgh, OAM
- Dr Sean Stevens, OAM
- Dr Abhishek Verma, OAM
- Dr Lachlan Warren, OAM
- Wing Commander Alan Turner, OAM in the military division
- Commander Scott Squires, Conspicuous Service Cross
We try our best to identify every current or former GP and rural generalist receiving an Australia Day honour. Sometimes we miss someone; please email Holly@medicalrepublic.com.au to notify us of any omissions.
