Wagga Event gives medical students a taste of country life

July 4, 2016

Wagga Wagga, Friday 2 October - About 140 university medical and allied health students from across Australia will descend on Wagga Wagga this weekend to learn about rural health, get a taste of life on the farm and the rewards of country living.

The visit, part of the annual Rural Appreciation Weekend (RAW) run by UNSW’s Rural Allied Health and Medical Society (RAHMS) kicks off this Friday night in Tarcutta and will continue over the weekend.

India and Australia collaborate to test world-first heart device

December 2, 2015

Chennai, Mar 20 – As part of a joint Indian-Australian research project, scientists will test a new heart-assistance device on two Indian patients who suffer from decreased cardiac function, in India this Friday March 20.

The project is exploring the use of a new cardiac device being developed by a team of Indian and Australian scientists led by the UNSW’s Associate Professor Craig McLachlan. If successful the device will help reduce the pressure being placed on the hearts of patients that suffer from heart failure.

After growing up on a cattle property in central QLD, Jayden is pursing a career in rural medicine. Photo credit: Joel Katz

UNSW student pursues rural doctor dream after life on cattle farm

May 18, 2015

Growing up on a cattle property in central Queensland, Jayden Conaghan has always had a strong connection with the bush. Now as a first year medicine student at UNSW, he can’t wait to return to the country as a doctor and help the rural communities so close to his heart.

Pop culture stop

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Like everyone else, I know how this movie ends.

And it's just really gross. But kind of cool too.

It's based on a guy called Aron Ralston, a young adrenalin junkie who goes canyoning in the wilds of Utah, solo - without telling a soul.

Spoiler alert: early on in the film Aron, played by James Franco, dislodges a boulder, plunges down a crevice, and gets pinned by the same rock.

And that rock ain't going nowhere, no-how.

Directed by Danny Boyle of Shallow Grave, Trainspotting and Slumdog Millionaire fame, the film is based on Ralston's book Between a Rock and a Hard Place.

A title that sums up his gory tale, and the movie's story arc.

Boyle is awesome at branding his films with powerful imagery geared towards a hyperactive media-crazed instant gratification audience.

From the kick-off the movie goes full-throttle as Aron recklessly sets off on his adventure: hurtling down the highway in a beat up car while his headphones blast pulsing beats.

“Boyle has a real knack for branding his films with powerful imagery geared towards a hyperactive media-crazed instant gratification audience.”

Within the same heartbeat he's on his mountain bike as the stunningly bleak mars-like Utah landscape flashes by.

He meets some babes. Shows them an subterranean lake only accessible by slipping down a groin-tinglingly narrow rift. Then he's off, pumped on nature, fresh air and the rush of living life to its fullest...

Then Aron slips. He's now trapped.

Frozen in time and space by nature: the drug that has always pushed him to dizzying heights.

Camera zooms on Aron's stunned face and the Movie title appears for the first time: 127 Hours.

Brake is applied heavily now for momentum-loving viewers - or is it?

Sometimes this film was hard to watch (and for a few nerve-snapping moments - unbearable).

Franco does great credit to Aron's gritty determination, and Boyle doesn't rely on sentimentality or melodrama.

It's like a companion piece to Sean Penn's Into the Wild, but thankfully here the hero survives.

Like Into the Wild's care-free hero, for Aron it's the people in his life, and the premonition of his future son, which gives him the courage and down-right ballsy-ness to, literally, disarm himself to break free.

So yeah - he gruesomely and noisily hacks off his own limb. But as he's scrambles out of the crevasse, one arm down, he looks back at the rock and says 'Thank you'.

Then he snaps a selfie of his dismembered hand with his membered hand.

Through the entire film Aron stays level-headed and never loses his great love of nature and even the very rock that so nearly entombed him.

This is a powerful film, and a tribute to the importance of human love and the brutal and unforgiving beauty of the wild.

“Through the entire film Aron stays level-headed and never loses his great love of nature and even the very rock that so nearly entombed him. ”