This lady has been working with Heart of Australia for only a few months, but Melania Mobily already has settled on a life plan – to work in rural communities throughout her career.

In her excellent (but super-fast) English, Italy-born Melania and Heart of Australia sonographer, has made up her mind to “work in rural areas; I’d like to help to bring more medical services” to the bush.

And her determination is clear when she speaks: it’s in her remarkable, sparkling, blue-green eyes that seem to flash to confirm that whatever Melania decides to do – then she’ll do it.

At home in Italy, Melania moved between her birthplace of San Bernedetto del Tronto, to Rome (the ‘real’ Roma) and to the city of Pescara, where she qualified and practised as a cardiologist. Within months, she expects to complete her Masters Degree through the Melbourne University in clinical ultrasound echocardiology to gain Australian registration as a cardiologist.

Widowed too young (her husband died of heart failure), Melania, her three boys and her mother, Daniela, followed Melania’s brother to Australia. They spent six years in Perth before choosing to make a home in Queensland.

Now 44, a naturalised Australian citizen about to claim the right to practice as a cardiologist, Melania says she likes to “talk to everyone” because, she says, “Australians don’t talk to each other enough” in their daily lives – “not like in Italy; every time you go for a coffee somewhere in Italy, you talk to people around you and everything is friendly”.

Meanwhile, there are a couple of issues she is working on. There’s the matter of spending so much time driving on her Heart of Australia visits that, she says, “my bottom has the shape of the seat in the (staff transport) Pajero”.

Then there’s the matter of trying to beat her fear of Australia’s cockroaches and “other bugs that must be the biggest anywhere”. – interview with Peter MacDonald