Mudgee

There's just something magical about Mudgee.  You feel it when you come into town. Mudgee to me is a place I really love, it's a really feel good place to live.

The first thing that visitors comment on is how pretty the town is. It's exactly what you picture a beautiful country town to look like but then there's these amazing things outside of the township.

Really picturesque little spots, wide open spaces and fresh country air. There's beauty around every corner, that's what I love about the region. Mudgee's been making wine since the 1850s, it's the combination of the meteorology, it's the the weather, the climate, what Mudgee has going is this intensity of flavour coming from the warm to hot dry conditions at ripening and of course what you get is clear precise flavours. Also that you get to meet the winemakers themselves that's something which I think is a massive draw card for people coming to visit. It's a mecca for chefs because you have such great produce, it's always there you work so closely with the producers we just have to provide the stage for it and to live here that's the bounty we get to eat from everyday great food.

We've got great accommodation, the accommodation in Mudgee is of a really high standard. You've got these ginormous beautiful elegant houses to the glamourous glamping to setting up your own tent and camping on a campsite. Mudgee has quite a lot of cultural significance from the Drip and Hands on rock and Dunne swamp. There's so many places of cultural importance and significance to Aboriginal people. My favourite thing about Mudgee is its natural beauty, Mudgee is surrounded by beautiful national parks, lush farmland, lakes and rivers and fantastic bush walks. I think people that discover it for the first time realize the variety that it has.

We have arranged beautiful heritage villages that you can visit - Gulgong, Rylstone, Kandos, so there's a lot to explore across the region, it's really quite close together. And we have beautiful shops and then seeing such unique hand-picked products in all of our boutique stores from clothing, to baby wear, to home, our shops in Mudgee are amazing. I think what makes the region here unique is its people, they're very warming and welcoming, they're authentic, they're what you see is what you get. We see other people who visit Mudgee as being collaborators, fellow travellers that's very important the characteristic of Mudgee. It's a place you can come and enjoy and relax and you feel like you've actually had a holiday. It's so hard to put into words what I love about Mudgee, you just gotta see it for yourself.

I knew from a very early on in my medical career that I wanted to work in the country. There's things that I can do here as a doctor in Mudgee that I can't do in larger centres that keeps my job really interesting, keeps every day different and just also allows me to do the things I love doing the most.

I love living in the country, I think you know it's five minutes until you're out of town, you're not commuting for hours each day to get to or from work but more than that I think I really love the people in the country, a lot of them are very grateful for you actually being here everyone pitches in and helps you and almost helps raise your family. The idea that you're working rurally therefore you're isolated I mean I think that's probably a fear for a lot of people, but I think the reality is that you know particularly here is that when you need help, people will come and we've got such a great community of doctors and Allied Health and staff within our hospital who will all pull together when we need to.

But it's also about that clinical context like you've got that group of people that you can go, can I just run a patient by you, can you come and see this and just you know give me a little bit of advice, the hospital's such a friendly place, it's such a lovely team it's a wonderful place to work. We love to go as a group to trivia with friends and become part of that culture of Mudgee it's not just about work it's about play and fun as well.

So Mudgee is in Central West New South Wales it's about three hours West of Sydney. Mudgee is renowned for its wine, it's tourism, it's beautiful countryside around there's a lot for a small town, if you love food and wine it's a place to be. I think a training with that crew was right for me because ACRIM has been designed by rural doctors for Rural doctors, I knew I was going to get skills and be assessed in actually the place that I was wanting to work, my advanced specialist training is in obstetrics which allows me to, within my broad training offer that specialised care that otherwise would be need to be sought at larger centres through specialists.

I love the continuity with women that we get to have, being part of their journey become very important part of a lot of people's new families when they're really in tough situations, is very close to my heart. I love the community, feel welcome almost as soon as you come here, I want it to be a place that people get great care for the whole of their life. Just because they're in the country I don't think there should be a compromise on that. Mudgee is a community that has been there for me and I want to be there for them.

So it's been a very long work-in-progress started off with a little community consultation, a lot of staff consultation and we involved our health council and we asked their community exactly what they wanted to see from the new Mudgee hospital. We're gonna have all teams under one roof which will really consolidate the multidisciplinary team approach to health care. Previously we had our community health services, mental health drug and alcohol under a different roof in a separate building, this brings all of those services together for a much more consolidated multidisciplinary team approach.

It's clean, it's fresh, it's patient-centred it should be a very welcoming, very bright, very clean, calm and hopeful place of well-being. As you walk in there are people to meet you, there are admin staff to greet you and direct you as to where you need to go, there are specific areas designed and built for specific purposes. We've got a purpose-built maternity unit with massive baths that women can labor in, with huge great big areas that are designed with women and families in mind as part of the design.

As well we also wanted to create a space of well-being and people feeling well and calm while they were here, a lot of our clients will be coming in three four times a week for repetitive therapies so it's about making their experience as pleasant as possible, it's really exciting that Mudgee hospital is going to have a CT scanner that's a really great service expansion for us in terms of radiological operations our emergency department. There's a purpose-built resource area that it's really exciting. Our local population will come to the hospital for all of the services that include theatre, dental, allied health, community health, mental health drug and alcohol, as well as those acute inpatient and emergency services. We're also going to increase our oncology services so people aren't driving to Orange and Dubbo so this is about people being treated in their own community. To everyone that's contributed an overwhelming thank you, we are really excited that we'll be able to treat our local population appropriately, that it's a beautiful clean bright building that it is absolutely fit for purpose.

I am standing right now in the Dialysis dialysis unit and ambulatory care unit of the Mudgee Health Service. Having dialysis in the new hospital will be amazing, at the moment we've got six patients and they are doing morning and afternoon sessions, we'll be able to just do morning sessions in here Monday Wednesday Friday. The whole process of coming in is going to be more streamlined with the new inpatient unit that's bright, it's vibrant, there is plenty of room to get our equipment in to be able to access the patients so it'll be much easier for the patient for the nursing staff and the physios as well.

My name's John Carters, I've got a wife and three children and I've just moved to Mudgee as the principal of Mudgee public school. My favourite thing about Mudgee would have to be the time that we have as a family, is just such a big improvement on where we were before, but also just the resources available to the town and the people.

I still work in a really busy demanding job which is a very enjoyable job and do have to spend a lot of time at school so it's great to be able to when I finish work, just head straight home and be at home in five minutes. The schools in are Mudgee fantastic, now Mudgee public schools are fantastic schools full of tradition and history but it's also a very progressive school not dissimilar to every other school in Mudgee.

My kids are a little bit younger but they absolutely love the Mudgee water park coming into summer we've already made many visits there it's a great local swimming pool you know slides and play area and great pools for kids of all ages. They also love going for a walk down at Lawson park. We can really see a better future in relation to what we can do financially for our kids as well realistically a couple years ago we weren't able to see that where we were we've got opportunities for affordable housing and with affordable housing means more money in the pocket which means more opportunities for our kids to go on holidays or invest in our family for the future.

I definitely think that other families should consider moving to a town like Mudgee I think the misconception that when you go there you're going to be bored or that there's not going to be much to do. Everything that you are concerned about when you're living in the city life compared to when you get here you have access to I don't know why we didn't do this years ago as soon as we've moved to this town we've just felt really comfortable we've known it's the right decision. We chose Mudgee region for our family and just a better lifestyle.

It's such a vibrant place I never realized that a true work life balance could really exist until I moved to Mudgee. There's so many cafes bars and restaurants and I've made such a great group of friends there's so much more time to enjoy it all without the stress of the city. Wouldn't you rather live in Mudgee.

The kids walk to school most days, it's only five minutes down the road, it feels so safe here. We never have to worry about them walking or riding to a friend's house or exploring the outdoors. They've become so creative and adventurous, it's really important to us that our kids can experience freedom and independence growing up. Wouldn't you rather live in Mudgee.