Professionally, he is known as Doctor Peter Barker OAM, but to the community he serves, he is affectionately known as Doc Barker, Doc, Peter and even PB. Last week, our local GP celebrated 40 years in the job in Cohuna – and he celebrated wearing a blazer and tie much like he wore on his first day at the clinic on August 3, 1983.

If the doc’s plans had unfolded as intended, he would have stayed for just 6 months and headed off to New Guinea, but a chain of events saw him settle permanently in the district and become a much-revered doctor and member of the community.

Working in the UK but looking to move back to Australia in 1983, Dr Barker was informed of an availability in Cohuna. “They said that they were desperate for someone in Cohuna,” Dr Barker said of the Family Medicine Programme. “I went to the library in Coventry and looked it up, and all I could find out was it was the place where the cow flew over the moon,” he laughed. “I came here completely not knowing what it was about.”

His welcoming party at the clinic was Annie Graham, Norma Ryan and Lucy Thrum at the front, and Shirlene Dunne (who he later married) and Arleen Wilson in the office. “I wore a jacket and tie,” he recalls of his first day. “I took the tie off at lunchtime and never wore it again.”

He had been here just one week when the sole doctor, Dr Peter Graham, left for a holiday. “He showed me how to use the x-ray machine, then he left for two weeks.”

As planned, after six months Dr Barker left, picking up a locum role in Barham. “I was going to stay for six months and then go. I did a locum in Barham at the end of that time. Doc Graham had gone on holiday again, this time to Bass Strait, but the boat that was going to pick him up didn’t come back, so Cohuna had no doctor. So, all the patients from Cohuna came across to Barham to see me over there that week.”

A position on Bougainville in New Guinea was lined up – but fell through. “The war broke out, so I thought, no, I’ll stay in Cohuna, I like it here. And, I’ve never looked back.”

Dr Barker recalls that when he started, the doctors wrote patient notes on little cards and handwrote scripts and referral letters. While advances in technology have played a large part in efficiency and other areas, Dr Barker says there were benefits to handwriting notes. “As a student and young doctor, as you’re writing the notes, your brain would click over formulating diagnoses and solutions. But when you use the computer, you concentrate on the computer – that process doesn’t happen. So, I think that the biology of how you actually make diagnoses changed, and people follow more protocols. Eventually, you do learn to make the computer in the background, but you have to focus on it to use it, whereas, you were focussing on the patient face-to-face more before.

“If you wanted to see a specialist, we’d write a letter. Sometimes, specialists would drive to Cohuna and see the patient, and then we’d go and have a cup of tea with them. It was very different. Now, with video linking, you can access more services, but there’s less personal interaction.

“When I was working with Doc in those days, if you wanted to do a new procedure, it was see one, do one, teach one. So, you get shown once and you do one, then away you go. These days, it’s six months of accreditation for everything you do, which is good to be safe, but it also is slow and it means it’s very hard to get new services to country areas.”

Dr Barker attributes the staff to keeping him at work for so long. “The staff have always been incredibly supportive, both here and at the hospital, and probably, that’s why I’ve lasted as long as I have. Because they don’t feel burnt because we work as a team.

“We have a ward round every day at the hospital that trains the new doctors to have continuity of care, and they all love it. I think that’s what’s kept Cohuna so strong. We don’t get paid for that, we do the ward round together and it’s a collegiality thing, but as a result, the patients know that they’re getting care because we bounce ideas off each other. That’s always been a wonderful thing about Cohuna. The same with the hospital, a very supportive environment. I think, because we work as a team together, it’s been easy to work. So, that’s why I’m still here.”

Despite the support from colleagues and the hospital, Dr Barker says that the district has been underserviced. “The Health Department’s never really looked after rural areas. We’ve always been underserviced. When I first came here, we didn’t get paid on call, and I got paid about 700 bucks a week. Still, compared to New South Wales, they get paid to look after the hospital a couple of thousand dollars a day. Victoria doesn’t do that. We get paid fee for service, so you have to work harder for the money. 

“I just think that it’s harder on the communities here. They’ve relied on doctors to do it all, but it’s harder to attract people for the clinic. I am worried for the future, what will happen. But we’ve always been enthusiastic and try to keep up to date and try to provide the best service possible.”

The community is grateful for having Dr Barker come to us, and dare we say it, for the obstacles that kept him here. Marrying Shirlene helped, of course. “Meeting Shirlene and marrying, and growing the kids up here was wonderful,” he says. 

There is no doubt that Dr Barker has cemented himself as not only a dedicated and passionate GP, but also as a valued and respected member of our wider community and has built the Cohuna Clinic from one GP in the 1980s to five. 

I asked the doc what he was most proud of after 40 years in Cohuna. Without hesitation, he replied, “That I still love the community and that the community still hold me in respect. Hopefully, I can do more good than harm. There are so many things, but it slowly entwines you.”

There are two more questions I have for Dr Barker. 

Did the tie make it through the day? “No,” he says, explaining it suffered the same fate as the tie on his first day. 

What’s on the horizon for this 67-year-old? “It’s been worth more than gold to be healthy and still cognitively able at my age, so I’m going to continue to work but I’ll actually try and do less on call and have a few more holidays as the years go by. But, when I’m working, I’ll still be 100 per cent there and if I think I’m starting to slip, I’ll back out.”

Read more about Dr Peter Barker OAM in The Bridge June 11, 2020 https://www.thebridgenews.com.au/news/a-cohuna-chat-with-dr-peter-barker-oam

This article appeared in The Koondrook and Barham Bridge Newspaper, 10 August 2023.