Announcing on my first day at school I wanted to be a doctor I was pleased thirteen years later that my good Scottish state education led me to place at Edinburgh medical school, the first in my family to go to university.

The usual house jobs led me into surgical training in Edinburgh with a passing stint in radiotherapy.  Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh qualification gained, I moved into radiotherapy and oncology training, still in Edinburgh.

Time as a lecturer under Prof Bill Duncan at the MRC's neutron therapy cyclotron centre there was followed, after I gained my FRCR, by an amazing year as a Project Investigator at Houston's MD Anderson Hospital under the incredible Dr Gilbert Fletcher.

I returned to Edinburgh as a consultant clinical oncologist working with Prof Sir Patrick Forrest and his Breast Unit. Ten years later in 1992 I was appointed Monash University's first Professor of Radiation Oncology and Melbourne's Alfred Hospital's Director of the new William Buckland Radiotherapy Centre and began the best eleven years of my career.

I had the best team and loved it all. A wee exam led to FRANZCR and a few years later I was honoured to be grandfathered into FAChPM of the RACP.

It has been a pleasure to see how palliative medicine has come into its own in Australia and New Zealand since that time. In 2003 I was invited to return to Scotland to become Medical Director of Scotland's largest and the UK's second largest cancer centre, the Beatson West of Scotland Cancer Centre, at a time it was facing many financial and staffing problems and, yet again, I was involved in planning a totally new centre - a challenging and yet rewarding post.

I retired in 2009 and now my husband and I enjoy our home, Scotland, travel, returning to Australia each year while I am able to indulge my passion for opera.

In the 1980s a patient, who many years ago had undergone simple mastectomy and radiotherapy in an era when the local side effects were much worse and who was in her late 50s, asked if she could be considered suitable for reconstruction, at that time a very new surgical approach.

I thought it would be worth considering and referred her to my NHS colleague in plastic surgery. Many months later I received a photograph of her by post. She was on a Mediterranean beach and wearing a two piece swimsuit: the comment was "Thank you. You have made a new woman of me!" A few years later she went on to become engaged to an Earl but sadly was killed in a road accident before the wedding. Her farewell gift to me when I was about to emigrate to Melbourne was Bruce Chatwin's "Songlines".

In my years at the Alfred in Melbourne I worked with many Fellows of the College, most of whom were medical oncologists but there was the entire spectrum of medical specialties. For a time I was Medical Co-director for Medical Specialties responsible for medical management across several medical services.

A very few of my colleagues were irritants - far fewer than in surgery - but it was a pleasure to work with so many dedicated clinicians the majority of whom were helpful and impressive while only a few were overly territorial or obstructive. Such is medicine, I have found, across the world and best, I think, mention no names.