Sometimes Australians just don't realise how fortunate they are. There is another barely imaginable world out there.
Canberra's Dr Salah Raya is not one of them.
He divides his time between the world's best medical standards here and the world's most desperate places.
But it took a suicide bombing in June to bring home the full truth of the dangers to which he and his family were exposed.
He's a Canberra doctor working for the Red Cross so he takes his skills to some of the most dangerous wars in the world.
I was in that building the day before and that's made me think. When it's your own kid, it's a totally different story. We couldn't put him in that situation.
Dr Raya Salah
He has just returned from Tunisia where he worked with doctors dealing with the bloody anarchy of neighbouring Libya. Before that, he was in South Sudan where there is also a civil war without formal armies or battle lines - mostly men with guns roving in unpredictable ways.
At the moment, he is working in the hospital in Goulburn where he sometimes asks his colleagues if they have a particular piece of rudimentary equipment. They look back with incredulity. "They say, 'Of course, we do'."
In war, he says, there is often no electricity. "In conflict zones, you don't have oxygen. You don't have bandaging. You have to use your own cloth or the patient's cloth - a towel, a scarf, anything."
While working for the Red Cross (or Red Crescent as it's called in Muslim countries), Dr Raya met his Australian wife. When their son was due, they moved to the safety of Canberra but they still travel to dangerous places to help.
In a conflict, you do the best for the most. You can't do everything for everyone.
Dr Raya Salah
In Tunisia, the danger to their son became too obvious for comfort. A suicide bomber detonated himself in a building where Dr Raya had been the day before.
"We were willing to take a certain level of risk but then when our son involved, it's a totally different matter.
"So we've decided we needed to come here and settle down, and we would go on short missions and not take him with us. Definitely not."
The plan now is for one parent to go to danger zones and leave the other in Canberra with their son.
Dr Salah remains utterly committed to his work with the Red Cross and to its principle of neutrality.
Its doctors treat what he calls "weapons bearers" without regard to their cause, no matter how bloody and fanatical. This includes members of Islamic State.
"We are happy to help any weapons bearer," Dr Salah said.
"In the Red Cross, we believe that whoever you are when you are injured, you deserve life saving. That includes IS, government weapons bearers, militias."
On his last deployment, in Tunisia, he trained people how to treat injuries of war. He said that by dealing with people of all political persuasions, the Red Cross is trusted and so is allowed into war zones.
Despite this, the dangers faced by Red Cross workers remain. They get caught in cross fire (or being in the wrong place at the wrong time). Civil war does not have order to it.
With the Libyan conflict this year, for example, Dr Salah was stationed in neighbouring Tunisia, training people going in and out of Libya - but the Tunisian capital, Tunis, is also subject to suicide bombings.
The people he works with in civil wars have different medical priorities from his colleagues in Canberra and Goulburn.
The abundance of facilities in Australia means more is possible. Medically, Sudan or Libya and Canberra might as well be on different planets.
In war zones, for example, there may be no point in stabilising the condition of an injured weapons bearer because there is not an ambulance or hospital to take him to once his condition is temporarily under control.
There may be no point in giving someone CPR - cardiopulmonary resuscitation is a vigorous, rhythmic thumping of the chest to keep the heart going so it can supply oxygen to the brain until proper medical treatment is possible - which in war, it may well not be.
"In a conflict, you do the best for the most. You can't do everything for everyone."
Their son will grow up in the safety of Canberra. The nearness to the suicide bombing in Tunis has convinced Dr Raya of that.
"I was in that building the day before and that's made me think. When it's your own kid, it's a totally different story. We couldn't put him in that situation."
Dr Salah trained as a neurologist in Syria. He is now going through the process of getting Australian qualifications. And that validation of his skills, he says, is quite right.
But the Red Cross work continues. Over the internet, he continues to give advice to people on the war ravaged other side of the world. In Canberra, he has access to the latest medical thinking and in Libya or Sudan, among the roving death squads, that advice is not available.
And he will continue to go to the most dangerous places in that other world of war.
"It's 16 years of my life. It's how I met my wife. It's in our blood.
We'll never give that away. We will always believe in neutrality, humanity and voluntary service."
