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Jane Vuletic and her husband Jim now live permanently at the Providence vineyard on the hill above the roundabout at the start of Takatu Road. While locals will be very familiar with the view of the beautifully maintained rows of grapevines, most people will be unaware that Jane was one of New Zealand’s few forensic pathologists, a job which has taken her to several overseas destinations. She talked to Allan Barber about her career in this very specialised area of medicine …
I started at Auckland University Medical School in 1974 – there were 60 in the class, half of whom were women and all were there on merit. Some years into my course a family friend, surgeon and Matakana winemaker John Gillman, invited me to observe some operations at Mater Hospital. This sparked my interest in surgery and when I graduated, I decided to apply for the surgical training programme. At the time, there was only one female plastic surgeon and one female orthopaedic surgeon in the country. Due to the small number of training positions in surgery, two of us were assigned to the anatomic pathology discipline for three months, which dealt a huge blow to my ambitions of becoming a surgeon.
To my surprise, I found pathology so fascinating, I realised I had found my true career choice and I decided to switch formally to the pathology discipline. I became New Zealand’s first female forensic pathologist when I was 32, after 11 years of study – five years getting my medical degree, one post-graduate year of surgery and five years completing the pathology qualification.
During the pathology training, there was an opportunity to spend a six month rotation studying forensic pathology, which specifically relates to conducting autopsies to determine the cause of death. I found this discipline of pathology particularly fascinating. When I had completed the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia exams, I qualified as an anatomical pathologist, which entitled me to work in a laboratory analysing tissue samples (in those days there were no exams in forensics in Australasia).
When I qualified at last, I needed a job and there were two positions available, one at the Medical School in the Department of Forensic Pathology, which I accepted, working on the principle that I could always go back to anatomical pathology if I didn’t like it. One of the most memorable cases I had was Delcelia Witika, a two-year-old child who died from injuries from abuse. One of my daughters was a similar age when I did the post-mortem on Delcelia, so it had a big impact on me personally. There was a lot of interaction with police in many of the cases I was involved with over the years. I remember going to crime scenes at all times of the day or night, without Google maps to guide me! One memorable day I drove down to a crime scene south of Hamilton where a police officer had been shot and then after arriving home, I was called out to the Awhitu Peninsula to another crime scene. Sometimes I would have to take my young daughters, Kristina and Margy, with me and leave them in the car while I was at a scene. Occasionally they would assist me, looking at skeletal remains of animals.
A highlight in my career was the opportunity to go to Phuket with the NZ Police as part of an international operation following the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami. New Zealand and Australia had responsibility for managing the mortuary process, which was a small part of something hugely important. Post-mortems are a small but essential element of the process of identifying the dead for the families. This also gave me an opportunity to work outside NZ, which provided variety and more of a career challenge. I then began to work for short periods of time in Tasmania, Adelaide and the Northern Territory.
In 2012, I had the opportunity to work in Australia full-time as a forensic pathologist at John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle with colleagues who were already good friends and, after discussion with the family, I took the job. This entailed several weeks on duty interspersed with long weekends back in New Zealand. The closed borders that came into effect during covid put an end to this. I now work for Communio as the clinical director. Communio is a contractor to the Ministry of Justice, providing coronial post-mortem services for much of New Zealand. I also perform post-mortem examinations for the Coroner for Northland at Whangarei Hospital.
I regard myself as an average Kiwi, but my parents always encouraged me to be independent, which gave me the determination to follow the lengthy qualifying process for a pathologist and make a success of my career choice as a forensic pathologist. My father was a science teacher at Takapuna Grammar, where my mother also taught home science classes in embroidery at night school to women with young families. She wrote a book and two embroidery magazines, which were published by the New Zealand Herald.
When I was seven, my parents took the whole family (my older brother, younger sister, younger brother and me) to the UK for a year, where my father taught at a school in south London. In the summer holidays we piled into a campervan and travelled around Europe, which opened my eyes to the wider world. I grew up believing I could do anything I wanted to and, when my father suggested I should study medicine, I applied for medical school. I recall being at Takapuna Grammar, where my sixth form teacher was well known children’s writer David Hill. He asked us talk to the class about our life ambitions, so I stood up and said I wanted to study medicine. I do recall one of the boys in the class saying that the place for women was in the home!
I am very grateful to my husband Jim, who has fully supported my career choice, particularly my decision to work in Australia, while our daughters have also been very supportive. Kristina and Margy now live with their partners in Amsterdam and Paris respectively, and we had the great pleasure of seeing them both on a recent holiday in Europe.
Jim was practising as a general lawyer in Glenfield where we lived, but at the same time he had a passion for the wine industry. When we first met, he was involved in the Antipodean vineyard, but we set up Providence vineyard and planted the first vines in 1990 with the first vintage in 1993. From the beginning, he strove to produce a red Bordeaux-style wine, similar to Chateau Petrus. Providence has been a major influence on our lives and many of the people we have met through the wine world have become great friends.
