A remote Australian town seeks a doctor, offering a $400,000 salary and free rent

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — A remote Australian town that will soon lose its only doctor is offering a salary of up to 680,000 Australian dollars ($428,000), plus free rent and a car, to attract a new candidate.

The remote Queensland town of Julia Creek, population 500, is offering about double the salary a family physician would earn in the state’s capital, Brisbane. The catch is that Brisbane is a 17-hour drive away. The closest major city, Townsville, is a seven-hour drive.

Prospective applicants must embrace searing heat and tropical insects, too.

But the town's outgoing medic, Dr. Adam Louws, says his replacement will also find a quieter pace of life and the chance to learn skills they’ve never used before.

Louws was recruited from Brisbane in 2022, when Julia Creek drew national headlines for offering a salary of AU$500,000.

“My mother-in-law sent me a link to this news article saying, ‘the half a million dollar job that no one wants,’” Louws said. “My first thought when I saw it and I looked at it was, where’s Julia Creek?”

Luring doctors off the grid

Julia Creek is a sweeping, romantic slice of the Australian Outback with wide-open spaces and orange sunsets. Kids play sports and ride horses. But it’s remote — high school means boarding school in the city and the nearest hospital is nearly three hours’ drive away.

Before Louws arrived in 2022, the town hadn't had a permanent doctor for 15 years, with a roster of visiting physicians dropping in for short stays. It’s a problem that has vexed rural towns in Australia and around the world for decades.

Australia has a shortfall of general practitioners of 2,500 doctors across the country, according to a 2024 government report, with the shortage worst in rural areas and expected to grow. Attracting doctors to rural Australia is made harder by the eye-watering distances between the most remote settlements; the vast country is one of the world’s least densely populated.

In neighboring New Zealand — where 5 million people live in a country the size of the United Kingdom — distances between far-flung towns have worsened health disparities. In the United States, 65% of rural areas had a shortage of primary care physicians in 2023, official figures showed.

For Janene Fegan, the mayor of McKinlay Shire — which includes Julia Creek — that meant the town needed a good sales pitch. Fegan was involved in the local health service’s campaign that recruited Louws and offered to promote the town again when the job was advertised in March.

“We actually have a very, very good lifestyle and a very safe lifestyle,” she said. “Yes, there is distance to travel at times, but how many people do you hear now wanting to escape from that and go off-grid?”

The town was not, she added, literally off the grid: Julia Creek has electricity and broadband internet.

“You don’t have to stay forever,” Fegan said. “Just give it a shot.”

Knowing the whole town by name

When the job was advertised in 2022, some health care analysts said the bolstered salary still wasn’t enough to compensate for a solo doctor’s workload.

But Louws, the departing doctor, said working solo prompted him to learn medical skills that he would have sent patients “two minutes down the road” for another practitioner to perform when he lived in the city. He also fulfilled a childhood dream of learning to milk dairy cows.

“The money is plenty. It is,” Louws said. “One of the things that I think people don’t necessarily consider enough about this job is the other things that this town has to offer.”

Louws applied for the job three days after first hearing about Julia Creek, following study on Wikipedia. Soon, he and his wife and four children were packing to move.

When he’d been in the job six months, Louws said, he knew “nine out of 10” people in the town by name. “It feels kind of like stepping back in time about 60-odd years,” he said. “Everyone knows everyone.”

At the end of his two year contract in Julia Creek, however, the distance from his extended family had taken a toll and he plans to return to his practice in the city. Louws departs in May; applications for his post close Sunday.

He's sorry to be leaving the “incredible” town.

“It feels a lot closer," the doctor said. "You get to really make a difference.”