Dream role for a doctor
When deciding what to study, Dr Norman Swan was only interested in two areas – drama or medicine. And he chose the easier of the two, he says. He did try out for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London, but was unsuccessful. This was not displeasing to his parents. Swan’s father was a school teacher and musician, who had his own dance band in Glasgow, and his mother did market research. “Before I did medicine I wanted to go to drama school, but I chickened out of that and did medicine as a safe option,” he says. “But I always had a sense of dissatisfaction that there was something else I wanted to do. The feeling came back strongly when I was in Australia.
“I didn’t want to get to my 50s and wish I’d done something else. I’ve always felt that the worst feeling you could have is regret. I never wanted to feel regret and look back at a certain age and realise I hadn’t tried to do what was in my heart.”
Never properly emigrating to Australia, Swan says he arrived here in 1978 to do his paediatric training for a year. He liked the country and could see that there were opportunities so he decided to
