COURAGE UNDER FIRE - Annette HOLIAN

RAAF Group Captain Annette Holian has mended bones in the wake of the Boxing Day tsunami and come under fire from the Taliban. Sue Smethurst meets a trailblazing orthopaedic surgeon who has travelled to hell and back to save lives.

- Sue Smethurst

The clock had ticked past 2 am when Dr Annette Holian finally emerged into the warm night air. The trauma surgeon had spent the previous hours hunched over in an operating theatre deep inside the multinational military base at Tarin Kowt, Afghanistan, saving the life of a Dutch soldier seriously injured after an improvised explosive device exploded under his vehicle.

Having successfully sent him to intensive care, she stepped outside the pressure cooker ER to catch her breath. While gathering her thoughts in the inky darkness, she noticed fireworks in the sky.

“I wondered what the celebration was,” Annette recalls. “Then I got my bearings and realised I was facing north, towards the Baluchi Pass, known as the valley of the shadow of death, where our troops patrolled against the Taliban. What I thought were fireworks were in fact Apache helicopter tracer fire, rockets and flares. In that split second I remembered I wasn’t in Australia any more, and I pretty quickly went back inside.”

RAAF Group Captain Annette Holian is one of Australia’s unsung heroes, an orthopaedic surgeon who is as at home in a war zone, saving the lives of wounded troops, as she is mending bones in Australia’s best hospitals. The revered doctor is one of Australia’s most distinguished women and yet, chances are you’ve never heard her name – until now.

“I just really like helping people,” she says humbly of her extraordinary career. “No one plans to be a trauma victim, but if you provide good care and follow up, you can get a patient back to being the best they can be, which is very satisfying. You can make a big difference to someone’s life.”