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Dr Clive Stead , soon to take off for Tasmania , hams it up with a stethoscope testing the engine of a Northern Territory Aerial Medical Service plane in Alice Springs , Northern Territory .
Magnetic Island's Calypso King , Dr Clive Stead , who regularly performed with a Trinidad steel pan at markets is selling up and moving to Tasmania with his extremely fit wife, Shannon , who each two days runs a 22kms marathon.
Cancer has played a large part in their lives . At the age of 32 , Mrs Stead developed cancer and as a result took up marathon running and trekking .
The trekking will later this year include the world's toughest , the Snowman Trek in Bhutan , 36 days with 11 spots over 5000 metres . More people have climbed Mount Everest than completed the gruelling Bhutan climb.
She was taking part in another tough trek, in rugged country which took in the third highest peak in the Himalayas , Mount Kanchenjunga, when earthquakes struck Nepal last year , killing more than 8000 and injuring 21,000.
The massive jolts were felt during the trek , and Mrs Stead said sherpas in her party lost relatives in the disaster. Her group saw parts of the mountain terrain collapse .While they were traversing a narrow track , with a great drop , she looked up and noticed a large boulder bouncing down and yelled , "Rock!" , enabling a person next to her to dodge out of the way .
The tension of the dangerous situation had made her feel sick and feel that she could die. A truly unforgettable experience . Yet she is going back to the dangerous heights in September.
She was taking part in another tough trek, in rugged country which took in the third highest peak in the Himalayas , Mount Kanchenjunga, when earthquakes struck Nepal last year , killing more than 8000 and injuring 21,000.
The massive jolts were felt during the trek , and Mrs Stead said sherpas in her party lost relatives in the disaster. Her group saw parts of the mountain terrain collapse .While they were traversing a narrow track , with a great drop , she looked up and noticed a large boulder bouncing down and yelled , "Rock!" , enabling a person next to her to dodge out of the way .
The tension of the dangerous situation had made her feel sick and feel that she could die. A truly unforgettable experience . Yet she is going back to the dangerous heights in September.
In the case of her husband, to show that he is still alive in his joust with prostate cancer , he went diving with White Pointer sharks in South Australian waters ; engaged in white water rafting at Tully ; three variations of leaping from a tower at Cairns-one mounted on a bicycle ; sky diving from 13,000 feet over Townsville; hang gliding from the Rex Lookout , north of Cairns, and barrel rolling in a Mustang aircraft at Caboolture . All captured on film .
His varied life has included extensive travel as a doctor with P. & O. shipping line , medical officer with Gulf Air in Bahrain , spells in Australia as a GP in Sydney and Noosa ,Queensland , as a flying doctor based in Alice Springs and as a writer for Australian medical publications .
Along the way he survived a bad car crash in America , was bitten by a Cobra in Phuket, Thailand , skied across a mine field in Sarajevo , caught cholera in Laos , had a Lyssavirus fright when he was shat on by a bat on Magnetic Island and had an arm and leg smashed up while they were skiing in Japan .
From England , at the age of five, he was taken to Trinidad with his parents where his father was a teacher for the expat community numbering 2000, with 500 children , involved in the oil industry.
There he led an idyllic life hunting, shooting , fishing , developing his musical talent ... a photo album shows him holding a large trophy he won for playing the clarinet .While there he experienced the steel drum bands which are now the subject of large competitions with up to 100 players in a single band .
From this developed his skill in the field , especially with "the pan" -the top of a steel drum , tuned with a hammer , mounted on a stand . For a time on Magnetic Island he tried to organise a full range steel drum band .
Edinburgh University is where he studied medicine and he has a photograph of the first car he owned , a Vauxhall , of some kind , which he had agreed to buy for 20 pounds during an evening of heavy drinking .
When he went to insure the car, he was told the premium was a little over 22 pound. This , he pointed out, was more than the value of the car , couldn't the insurance company do something cheaper for a medical student? The reply was to the effect that the insurance was high because he was a student , the inference being that such people were reckless . There is a photograph of him playing the saxophone in a university band . Early in his medical career he went to the US and Canada .
Then followed years as assistant surgeon-"Baby Doc"- on P&O passenger ships Oriana and Oronsay, the so called Love Boats , where the high living and Monty Python hijinx in ports made life interesting . One vessel was described as being 40,000 tons of rust , lust and thrust . Another P. and O. vessel he served on was the SS Uganda , which took passengers on educational cruises about Scandinavia and the Mediterranean , the education including gaming tables .
His connection with Sydney saw him running a GP practice in a small room at North Sydney, near the Harbour Bridge , and taking further medical studies at Sydney University which resulted in him going to Alice Springs as a flying doctor travelling to isolated settlements , Brunette Downs and Ayers Rock (Uluru ).
It also involved occasional " shadow bombing ", the pilot flying in a way which cast a fairly constant shadow across a vehicle as it drove along . Clive points out photographs in an album in which the shadow is seen on a car, the concerned driver of which thought the plane wanted to land and pulled over and stopped . Another Territory shot shows him with a large signpost in the mining town of Tennant Creek pointing far and wide .
While at Noosa for a decade he set up a Calypso band , the Pantastics , below , in which Clive is in the middle in the top trio, that played at various functions and venues up and down the coast , including at the One Big Day Out events .`
His enthusiasm for this form of music went with him to Vanuatu , where he set up steel band in Port Vila , the Calypso Kings, below, which played in various tourist hotels . On Magnetic Island he attempted to get a band going but ended up playing by himself at Sunday markets down at Horseshoe Bay , just across from the Marlin Bar.
Chemothereapy has greatly reduced Clive's thick mop of hair. He wrote an anonymous article about his prostate cancer for a medical magazine in November 2011 , the opening paragraph carrying the astounding statistic that " one in nine Australian doctors will get prostate cancer " and that every year 75 of them are diagnosed with the disease.
His journey with prostate cancer had begun six years previous on an overseas holiday . Two years later, aged 62, just before setting off on a round-the world -trip, routine blood tests returned a warning sign . A radical prostatectomy was performed in 2007. He wrote that he took pomegranate juice daily to reduce the PSA reading , which it did, but rose again ...
On a lighthearted note, Dr Stead wrote an article for Australian Doctor headed Carry on up the Khyber Pass , about a medical centre in Dubai, United Arab Emirates , called the Khyber Medical Centre , recalling the rhyming slang for Khyber Pass , wondering if it was a colonoscopy clinic or a rectal surgery .
The Medical Observer of June 2003 ran a large illustrated article by him on Cuba , showing him in a Cadillac with a Cuban cigar , which included a visit to Ernest Hemingway's home and places the writer frequented . Discussing Cuba , here on the island , Clive said the Cubans were proud, well educated people . He wrote that healthcare and education were free and that Fidel Castro claimed the country had more doctors and teachers per capita than any other country .
Other places written about by him included his thoughts on Syria and its antiquities after a month exploring the country while sitting in a famous Damascus , Iraq, coffee house where Saddam Hussein and cronies used to meet ; impressions of Vietnam in 2007 ; a colourful piece about Cambodia which mentions the impact of plastic mines on the populace , three men regularly standing outside the Red Piano restaurant in Siem Reap, each with a leg missing , one an arm as well , hopeful of tourist sympathy ; health tourism in Asia .
Little Darwin made contact with the Steads due to a garage sale notice for their residence in Endeavour Street , Arcadia, named after Captain Cook's vessel , the famous explorer who described the island as Magnetical Island because of the way his compass reacted.
Mrs Stead said a plus about moving to Tasmania, where her mother and a brother live , will be that she will not sweat so much in her regular marathons as she does on the island . They bought from an artist an 1827 house built for the security officers of the governor of what was then known as Van Diemen's Land at New Norfolk , facing the Derwent River , near Hobart . The ballroom had been converted to an art gallery, which Mrs Stead may turn into an antique shop , friends with a container load in storage in Victoria keen on the idea .
Mrs Stead said a plus about moving to Tasmania, where her mother and a brother live , will be that she will not sweat so much in her regular marathons as she does on the island . They bought from an artist an 1827 house built for the security officers of the governor of what was then known as Van Diemen's Land at New Norfolk , facing the Derwent River , near Hobart . The ballroom had been converted to an art gallery, which Mrs Stead may turn into an antique shop , friends with a container load in storage in Victoria keen on the idea .
