Joel moved to the Northern Rivers by chance having spent 2015 travelling around Australia with his wife and their three children.

Joel has served in the Royal Australian Navy continuously since 1997. He was initially an officer of the navigation branch and a ship’s diving officer before studying medicine at the University of Sydney in 2004. Joel worked at the Navy’s Submarine & Underwater Medicine Unit at HMAS Penguin, Sydney from 2010-2015 and was the Officer-In-Charge from 2012. Responsibilities included the medical care and selection of the Navy’s elite Clearance Divers and Submariners as well as the medical management of military and civilian diving accidents including hyperbarics. He deployed to many areas of the globe including East Timor, the Middle East, Pakistan, South East Asia and Papua New Guinea and has worked with the UN, NATO and Humanitarian agencies. He has been in the Navy Reserves since 2016.

Joel has lectured extensively on diving medicine and updated/co-edited the diving medicine textbook 'Diving Medicine for Scuba Divers', 2023 Edition. He conducts diving medicals for both recreational & occupational divers.

Joel also has a special interest in paediatrics and holds a Diploma of Child Health (2010).