Mary’s medical legacy
• Ringarooma’s Mary Schramm looks back on her international medical career.
By Daisy Baker
January 27, 2021
Mary Schramm has come full circle in recent years, returning to her childhood hometown of Ringarooma to retire, after an international medical career spanning more than three decades.
Ms Schramm’s early years were spent on her family’s farm up the golf course road in Ringarooma, which was established by her grandfather in 1903.
“I can remember the farm house and my father ploughing behind a team of horses and baling the hay which took about six or seven people to run the baler. We didn’t have a tractor on the farm,” she said.
“We were very seldom taken to school in the car – rain, hail or shine. Petrol rationing was a real factor in life in those days.
“It was war time and you needed petrol to run the hay baler so you had to make sure you had enough on hand when the grass was ready to be made into hay.”
When things were particularly busy on the farm, Ms Schramm and her brother Bruce helped with the milking, however she noted that her parents never made them help on school days, instead encouraging the children to get an education.
Ms Schramm and her family relocated to Launceston when she was in grade four, but she said they made regular trips back to Ringarooma and stayed in contact with the community.
After finishing high school and college, Ms Schramm went on to study her pre-medical year at the University of Tasmania.
She said she was keen to pursue a career in medicine from her early teenage years.
After the initial year in Hobart, students were required to apply to continue their studies on the mainland, where there were few places for Tasmanians.
“I took some advice and I went to Melbourne to do second year Science as a way of making me into a Victorian and then I sideways got into second year medicine the next year,” she said.
“There were a lot fewer restrictions on students interacting with patients in those days. Part of our experience we had to gain was delivering 20 babies for example.”
After graduating in 1962 she did a residence at the Royal Melbourne, followed by a year at Launceston General and then she went to work in India.
“Almost from the time I’d started steering for medicine it was to serve in a Christian church or community,” she said.
“There was a hospital in India that was the responsibility of the Australian Methodist church and that’s where I went.”
Ms Schramm then completed further training in obstetrics and gynaecology, spending 18 months in Melbourne and six months in Oxford.
In 1970 she moved to Fiji, where she worked as a doctor until 2000, and then spent the next 10 years working for the medical association.
Ms Schramm said Fiji’s healthcare system changed vastly during the years she lived there.
“The hospital, the buildings and facilities were improved as was the level of training,” she said.
“My primary task when I went there was teaching medical students but I also practiced and had my patients in the hospital.
“Fiji School of Medicine started up in the 1880s. The other pacific islands started sending their students in about the 1920s so I think in the end about 13 territories sent their medical students there. It was a four-year course when I first went there and now it’s a full six-year course.”
When she first arrived in Fiji, there was no helicopter available for emergencies and she vividly remembers attending an incident on an island around 100km south of Suva via a small boat during rough weather.
“A flat-bottomed landing barge actually was the only government vessel available,” she laughed.
“It was an interesting experience. On another occasion when the boat wasn’t designed for stability and luxury, you just took what you could get, I was seasick on the way out.
“Then, knowing the case, I more or less had to jump out of the boat and onto the shore with a knife in my hand because it was a surgical emergency.”
Ms Schramm was the president of the Medical Association for four years, during which time there was low membership and it was almost bankrupt.
“One of things I enjoy now is getting emails from the association which is a thriving organisation now with good membership, continuing education,” she said.
One of Ms Schramm’s career highlights was helping develop Fiji’s training course for midwives which was launched in the mid 70s.
There had previously been no local midwifery course and a small number of students would be selected to do the New Zealand course which was only run once a year.
“We had a WHO consultant for about six months and the sister in charge of the maternity unit and a certain amount of input from me, we developed the curriculum which ran right throughout the time I was there,” Ms Schramm said.
“I always lectured to them and it was one of the things I really enjoyed.
“They were such eager students and most of them had enough experience in the labour ward so they knew what they wanted to know.”
Moving back to Tasmania in her retirement seemed natural to Ms Schramm, who had always felt a strong connection to the place she’d grown up.
In late 2002 she came to Ringarooma in search of a suitable home, when she came across the town’s church and cottage with around one acre of land.
“I looked at the house itself and even though it was neglected it was solid. I liked the idea of it but I wouldn’t have bought it if it hadn’t been for the local people who wanted to have a history room,” she said.
Ms Schramm leases the now history room to the local society for $10 a year and the committee shares the load when it comes to maintaining the yard.
From the sunroom of her Ringarooma home, she looks out at a beautifully landscaped garden she has established in the last 18 years.
“When I moved in it had been neglected. There were a few shonky old trees and some aspidistras but that was about all.”
Initially Ms Schramm visited Ringarooma for several weeks at a time, three or four times a year and gradually over the years started spending more time in the North-East and visiting Fiji a few times a year instead.
As well as a lasting medical legacy, Ms Schramm still has strong ties to Fiji and she hopes she will be able to return soon to visit her daughter and grandson, who while not legally adopted, are family nonetheless.
Her last visit was in December 2019, which is the longest she’s been away for many years.
“At least there’s Zoom and telephones these days,” she said.
Ms Schramm said while Ringarooma no longer has local sporting teams and there are few lifelong residents still in the area, the active community groups are a credit to the town.