He's the Bonython schoolboy who's gone on to become an award-winning doctor, and leading advocate for Indigenous health.
Dr Haydn Dodds is only 30 but has already achieved much in the medical field (and also survived being lost in the harsh Northern Territory desert last year, but more on that later).
On Thursday night on the Gold Coast, Dr Dodds was awarded Bond University's Young Alumni Award.
The former Marist College student completed the doctor of medicine program at Bond, graduating in 2019. He chose to complete his medical internship in Alice Springs where he learned some basic Arrernte language to better communicate with local Indigenous people.
A former chair of the Australian Medical Students Association who is now working at Royal Darwin Hospital, Dr Dodds said he was committed to improving health outcomes for First Australians.
"We service Arnhem Land where people live on islands that are a boat trip and a 700km drive away from hospital," he said.
"Indigenous people living in that environment just don't have the same access to education and healthcare and all the things you can expect in a city. The key to improving that is Aboriginal-led policy discussions.
"You can have the best of intentions but unless you've got senior leaders within those organisations trying to get the young ones on board, it's never going to work."
Canberra born and bred, Dr Dodds is the son of Gemma, a nurse with Canberra Hospital's medical imaging department, and Peter, who had an optometry business at Erindale for more than 20 years.
Dr Dodds attended Bonython and St Anthony's primary schools before going to Marist in year 5. He and his younger brother Jarron both completed medical science degrees at the Australian National University. Jarron is also a doctor, in Melbourne. Their sister Carlie works for the Salvation Army.
Dr Dodds said one of his inspirations was his late aunt Karen Hopkins, who died of an aggressive brain tumour in 2014, just before her 45th birthday. An ICU nurse for 20 years, Karen was the fun, supportive aunt and the three Dodds siblings all cared for her in her dying days. "It was really hard but I'm glad we had that time with her," Dr Dodds said.
Dr Dodds relished his time as chair of the Australian Medical Students' Association, the peak representative body for some 17,000 Australian medical students. He said he would continue to also work in whatever capacity for the Australian Medical Association because "someone has to fight for health care in Australia".
He showed his own resilience after being lost for two days in the remote central Australian outback in September last year.
Dr Dodds, two other doctors, a nurse and a physiotherapist were on a camping trip together when their 4WD became bogged. Friends they were supposed to meet up with at Ruby Gap, 150km east of Alice Springs, raised the alarm.
Dr Dodds said the only thoughts that ran through his head on their second night lost was "I'm so thirsty" and "How are we going to get out of this?".
"The only thing more valuable than water in that environment is an EPIRB and we didn't have one," he said.
An aerial search thankfully located them all safe but dehydrated, Dr Dodds continuing his good work in the territory.
