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The Town of 3,200 With No Doctor, and the Retired GP Who Keeps Turning Up Anyway

The clinic has been advertising for fourteen months. In the meantime, a 71-year-old is opening the door three mornings a week.

By Tui Marsden · 7 September 2026 · 6 min read

Small rural medical clinic building on a quiet country main street
Small rural medical clinic building on a quiet country main street. Photo: flxba

The vacancy has been live for fourteen months. The salary on offer is now 38 per cent higher than when it was first posted. There have been two applications, and both withdrew before interview.

In the meantime, a GP who retired in 2021 unlocks the clinic three mornings a week and works through a list that is always longer than the hours available.

"I said I'd do it for a month," he says. "That was March last year."

It is not really about money

Recruiters say the barrier is rarely salary. It is professional isolation, spousal employment, and the on-call load that comes with being the only clinician for eighty kilometres.

Two nearby towns have solved it by sharing a rotating roster of three doctors across four clinics. It works, expensively, and requires a level of inter-district cooperation that has taken years to negotiate.

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