Steven Holmes has always been a hard worker. His mum, Gabe, tells a story of driving a young Steven on the 10 kilometre school bus run from their property at Euambeline, in a rural stretch outside Tottenham in the state's Central West.
"We would be driving down to the bus through this amazing landscape in the middle of NSW," Mrs Holmes said, "And Steve would have his head in a book.
"He has always worked hard."
On Tuesday, the country kid from outside Nyngan graduated with a Bachelor of Pharmacy with Honours from the Univeristy of Newcastle.
Steven, who, as he explains it, has a few nurses in the family but as yet no pharmacists, began his studies in biomedicine, but transferred later into a field he felt offered him more a pragmatic career direction.
"It's not hard to see," he said at the university's Callaghan campus Tuesday, with his degree in hand, "Even out home, we're lucky to have a doctor in the hospital. It's not a massive town but if we can get a locum there for three or four weeks, it's pretty good.
"It's the same as everywhere - everywhere is crying out for health professionals. It's going to be good to get out there and - I'm not going to fill a massive gap - but to be part of some way to help."
It wasn't all a smooth road to graduation; first there was drought, which devastated the Holmes' crops in 2019, then the COVID pandemic forced Steven home to study. Then, endless rain followed on COVID's heels.
Joe Holmes, Steven's dad, was in the middle of this year's harvest - pushed back by the relentless wet weather - when he saw his son graduate. Like his son, Mr Holmes looks back on the past few years with a unique kind of rural pragmatism.
"If you start a job, you've just got to finish it," he said, "It's just got to get done.
"There have definitely been challenges, but there always has been. But you just step up and get one challenge out of the road and the next one comes along. You've really got to have that attitude, I think."
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