Awards 2022

Dr ALBERT FOREMAN OAM

Nakara

Nominated by Mrs Eugenia Foreman

Albert was 26 in 1957 when as a Civil Engineer, he came to the Northern Territory. Arriving in Darwin, he started working briefly on projects including the Ludmilla Sub-division and the Para Water Tower which still stands today. He also worked supervising a team, dredging the Harbour for unexploded Japanese bombs.

He then spent 4 years around Alice and the Barkly Region working on town water supplies, sanitation, sewerage work, highways and bush roads. "I reckon I knew every pothole along the Barkly between Alice and Newcastle Waters,"

he mused.

Engineering also took him to Katherine where he was part of a team that built the first bridge over the King River, then worked on the Borroloola, Timber Creek and Roper River roads.

Around the end of the 60's, he took a position as Senior Engineer for Roads and Aerodromes in Papua New Guinea. After a short while there, he decided to quit engineering and teach Mathematics at the University in Port Moresby.

In 1971, he decided he wanted a career in the Medical Profession. Upon graduation he went overseas for a short time, working in Swaziland, Tanzania, Israel, India and in a refugee camp in Ethiopia. He returned to work in the Australian Outback for the Port Augusta Flying Doctor Service , then on to hospitals in Alice Springs, Katherine and eventually Darwin where he took a position as an Assistant Surgeon at RDH.

Then in 1998, aged 70 he decided to leave RDH and has been running his Ear, Nose & Throat Clinic in Nakara with his wife Eugenia, since then.

When questioned as to why he continues to practice, Dr Foreman quietly said, "Practicing medicine is good for me. It gets me out of bed."

In 2017, Dr Foreman received an OAM for his Services to Medicine.

Now at the age of 91, and likely, one of Australia's oldest practicing  Doctors, Dr Foreman is being recognised as a Senior Of Excellence NT.