Former Paynesville local, Ken Lindstedt, has traded the sea for the snow, packing up his life in Australia and moving to Tromsø in northern Norway.
Ken grew up in Paynesville, then moved to Eagle Point when he was 12, where his mother still lives.
Ken has an older brother, Leon, who is now a federal policeman in Melbourne, and a younger sister, Sophie, who is a GP in Gippsland and East Gippsland Aboriginal Co-op in Bairnsdale.
For Ken and his siblings, surfing was one of their favourite hobbies.
“Every weekend mum would load me, my brother, and as many mates as would fit in our van and drive us down to Lake Tyers to surf,” Ken said.
“Other hobbies were spearfishing, camping, and snowboarding.
“At every opportunity we would also head down to Cape Conran which was paradise for us.”
After attending secondary school at Bairnsdale Secondary College, Ken went to The University of Melbourne where he took an undergrad in Biomedical Science, as well as an Honours year in Medical Science at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute for Medical Research.
“After this I went to Deakin University in Geelong where I got my degree in medicine (graduated in 2014) which included two clinical years in Warrnambool,” Ken said.
During the final six weeks of his medical degree, which was an elective placement, Ken also chose to work in a primary medical clinic in a rural fishing village in Sri Lanka.
“It was here I got my first exposure to the real scope and devastating impact of antibiotic resistance,” Ken said.
“This eye-opening experience inspired me to make antibiotic resistance the focus of my research/career.
“During my undergrad I was lucky enough to secure a place working part-time in a research lab to support my studies.
“During my medical degree, however, I had to rely on CentreLink for financial support.
“After graduating medicine I took my internship and first residency year at the University Hospital Geelong.
“My partner Lil and I then decided to take a gap year and travel. During this year we visited Morocco, Iceland, Mongolia, Indonesia, India, as well as travelled extensively through both Australia (by 4×4) and Norway.
“We also lived for around six months in Coffs Harbour where I worked at the emergency department at the Coffs Harbour Hospital.”
A significant part of Ken’s motivation to pursue a career in medicine was his father, who worked as a GP in Paynesville.
“Through Dad’s work as a GP in Paynesville, which for many years he was the only GP there, he became a real pillar of our community and helped and supported his many patients with great compassion,” Ken said.
“This was definitely a major inspiration for me to pursue a career in medicine.”
Ken began working at the Bairnsdale Hospital at the start of 2019 after his dad was diagnosed with cancer so he could be closer to him.
“I worked as a resident doctor in the emergency department there for around six months,” Ken said.
“As well as being able to be closer to dad during this tough time it was also great to be able to give a bit back to the local community for this period.”
Ken’s father sadly passed away in 2020.
THE MOVE TO NORWAY
The move to Norway was driven mainly by Ken’s partner Lil, who is Norwegian.
The pair met while backpacking in Peru and travelled together for some weeks, before she moved to Australia to take her bachelors degree.
Ken and Lil lived together in Australia for about nine years, after which they decided it was time to give Norway a try.
“I had already travelled with Lil quite extensively in Norway and had seen it was a beautiful country with amazing nature and lovely people so was quite keen to experience more of it,” Ken said.
“My grandfather on mum’s side was also Norwegian and I still have quite a lot of family here.”
They originally intended to move to Oslo where Lil is from, however, Ken had trouble finding a position there.
“I then found this position in Tromsø advertised which sounded like an incredible and exciting opportunity, so we decided to take the plunge and headed north into the arctic,” Ken said.
“I moved up here in September 2019 and Lil moved up not long after.
“The move to Tromsø was a major adjustment, not just for me but Lil too, as there are fairly extreme differences here even compared to Oslo.”
In Tromsø the snow begins to fall in October/November and continues late into May.
There is also two months of darkness from late November to late January where the sun does not come above the horizon (the Polar Night) and in late May to late July is the opposite which is the midnight sun.
By late June/July the weather has warmed up, usually getting up to 30C for a couple of days each year.
Despite the change, Ken still keeps the hobbies he brought from growing up in Paynesville.
“I still surf up here, although the best waves come in September through to March when the water temp can be as low as four degrees celsius,” he said.
“In winter and spring we are often out cross-country skiing and back-country snow boarding is a new favourite hobby of mine.”
Ken and his family are intending on staying in Norway long-term, but a visit down-under hasn’t been ruled out.
“For the time being we are very happy here and enjoying our arctic adventure,” Ken said.
“However, we do miss friends and family and many things about living in Australia so we may decide to head back down under at some point in the future, you never know.”
KEN’S WORK
Ken’s research is focused on understanding how the bacteria Klebsiella pneumoniae asymptomatically lives in the gut.
Klebsiella pneumoniae is a major cause of life threatening infections and spreader of antibiotic resistance.
It is also carried asymptomatically in the gut of a large proportion of the population, which is a major risk factor for then developing infection and a reservoir for spreading antibiotic resistance.
“Understanding how Klebsiella pneumoniae can silently colonise the gut may therefore help us design ways to inhibit gut colonisation, thereby preventing a large burden of infection and spread of antibiotic resistance,” Ken said.
“My day-to-day generally involves dealing with, analysing, and thinking about other people’s stool samples, as this is how we detect and analyse carriage of Klebsiella pneumoniae in the gut (although not particularly glamorous).
“At the moment we are nearing completion of a large study where we collected repeat stool samples from 108 adults from the Tromsø community each month for six months.
“These samples were then primarily analysed using a cutting edge technique called ‘whole metagenomic sequencing’ which is analysing the genetic sequences of all bacteria found in the gut so we can analyse both how Klebsiella pneumoniae can silently colonise the gut of these study participants and the other gut bacteria it interacts with.”
Ken is currently working in the Centre for New Antibacterial Strategies (CANS), which is a major research centre at UiT unraveling the mysteries of antibiotic resistance (AMR).
