By all accounts, Chris Thomas is not a man who asks for much. A quiet life in Crystal Brook, the bush town he has called home for most of his 68 years. A small win here and there, even in the face of setbacks that would flatten others—a case of Q-fever in the eighties, a life of labour through droughts, amputations, viruses, cardiac arrests. Now he is being asked to choose between moving to the city or dying.
The choice has not been put so crudely by SA Health, of course. But his daughter Alex Thomas, who is mounting a public campaign on his behalf, sees the decision for what it is. “SA Health’s instruction is ill-informed and is a death sentence for my Dad, simply because of a gross lack of consideration of alternate options,” she says.
Until recently, Mr Thomas had been receiving dialysis at the Port Pirie Satellite Dialysis Unit. That access has now been withdrawn. Medical staff at Lyell McEwin Hospital, where he is currently undergoing rehabilitation after a leg amputation and two cardiac arrests, have informed the family that unless he relocates to Adelaide permanently, dialysis will be withdrawn.
It’s the sort of decision that might make sense on a spreadsheet. But to the Thomas family, it reeks of bureaucracy run amok. “Why can’t my Dad access dialysis in Port Augusta, Clare or even Whyalla?” asks Ms Thomas. “What about home dialysis, or using his existing NDIS support to help facilitate each transfer?”
The Department has not released full details of its decision, but the family says they’ve been told it comes down to equipment constraints—the local centre lacks the resources to help transfer him into a dialysis chair. Ms Thomas argues this is exactly the kind of scenario the National Disability Insurance Scheme was meant to address. Her father is funded. There are carers. There are community supports. What is missing, she believes, is will.
The Thomas case is beginning to crystallise a broader unease in rural South Australia—the sense that remoteness comes with a price. And that price, increasingly, is access to care.
“Your postcode should not determine your standard of care,” Ms Thomas says. The logic is hard to argue with. Dialysis is not an elective treatment. It is the thin thread keeping patients alive between hospital visits. Asking someone in their late sixties, with multiple amputations and a complicated medical history, to move hours away from their family, their community, and everything familiar, is not just hard—it is cruel.
For Mr Thomas, the bush is not just where he lives. It’s who he is. “My call to SA Health is to respect his choice to remain in the bush and honour the contribution he’s made as a farmer who’s fed and clothed many Australians over the course of his working life,” says Ms Thomas.
There are deeper currents beneath the surface of this story. According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, rural Australians are 1.4 times more likely to die from potentially avoidable causes than those living in metropolitan areas. The pattern is well-documented. Fewer GPs. More travel for specialists. Lower access to allied health and aged care. But while statistics show the problem, they rarely show the face of it.
Chris Thomas is now that face. A former Roxby Downs worker, a Mid North pastoralist, a man who lived through Q-fever and Ross River Virus and still insists, despite everything, on staying close to his paddocks and gum trees. His condition has worsened over time—a result of chronic diabetes, kidney failure, and years of physical strain. But until the hospital directive last week, the family says they still had hope of a manageable, supported future at home.
“He’s been through enough,” says Ms Thomas, with the tight, clipped tone of someone who is still balancing anger and exhaustion. She is not the kind to call press conferences or storm Parliament steps. But she is a daughter fighting to buy her father more time in the only place he feels he belongs.
“It’s time for the medical fraternity to find a way for my Dad to continue to access dialysis in reasonable proximity to Crystal Brook,” she says.
The family has now written to ministers and local MPs. Online, their petition has started to gain traction among rural communities, many of whom have their own stories about the cost of isolation.
The irony, of course, is that this is a man who spent a lifetime sustaining others. His days began long before dawn, feeding stock, fixing sheds, tending to paddocks that produced grain, wool, meat. The backbone of a system that now seems to be turning its back on him.
Ms Thomas calls it “geographic discrimination.” She says it with conviction, with grief, and with a clarity that’s hard to ignore. “Surely all Australians should have access to life-saving treatment and the right to remain in their community, particularly in their eleventh hour and during a time of such extreme vulnerability.”
SA Health has so far not responded in detail to public calls for intervention. Inquiries by the local press have been met with general statements about resource allocations and ongoing assessments. But for the Thomas family, time is not a renewable resource.
According to Rural Doctors Association of Australia, the situation is becoming more common, particularly for dialysis patients. Demand continues to rise, particularly among older Australians and First Nations patients in rural areas. Infrastructure, meanwhile, is slow to keep pace.
There’s nothing abstract about the cost of delay. Each missed session raises the risk of complications. Each long-distance transfer adds physical and emotional strain.
And so the question becomes one of policy, but also of humanity. What is the point of funding regional growth, rural resilience, and community pride, if it all disappears when someone gets sick?
Chris Thomas cannot fight this battle himself. His body is too tired, his words soft now. But his daughter has found hers.
And she is not asking for miracles. She is asking that the system work as it claims to. That care follow need. That logistics not override dignity. That dying in your own postcode be treated not as a luxury, but as a right.
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🏥68yo Crystal Brook farmer Chris Thomas fights @SAHealth's order to relocate to #Adelaide for dialysis. 🚜Daughter says forced move would be "death sentence" for bushman. 💔Highlights rural #healthcare inequities. #TheIndianSun @RuralDoctorsAus
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