I’m writing this 10 hours ahead in Townsville, where it’s 38oC and very humid. Townsville is in Northern Queensland in Australia and officially in the dry tropics. I’m attending as Keynote speaker at the joint meeting of the Australian and New Zealand Association of Clinical Anatomists and Australasian Society for Human Biology. The meeting is at the James Cook University, a well-funded and modern University serving rural North Queensland, which makes Aberdeenshire look over-populated.
I’ve met old colleagues and made lots of new contacts at a hugely interesting and varied meeting. Talks have ranged from detailed tooth morphology through to secondary sex determination in non-human primates via detailed biomechanics, gait and novel educational approaches.
There are ‘roos on campus and a floor to ceiling tropical reef and fish tank in the reception. The University of Aberdeen has more in common with them than you might expect as both universities have a remote and rural training theme to get doctors out into the under-served parts of our regions, just the Outback is a little different to Orkney.
I’m just about to run a workshop on anatomy teaching, which should be fun, especially as I have completely lost my voice!
