IAN Davis has been working as a pharmacist in Alexandra for the past 40 years, and has been a pharmacist for 60 years. Prior to his move to Alexandra he had been working in Elsternwick, near the notorious Daily Planet. He explained, “I had no intentions of coming up into the country, even though I'd married the girl next door who wanted to come up into the country, I resisted. “One day, she and her mother showed me an offer I couldn't refuse. “So I went and saw dear old Wall Ackerman, and actually saw his son, and he sent me down some papers which had a new shop plus the lease, so I signed it and that's how the new shop was built, so I got going.” That was in October 40 years ago. Ian grew up in East Malvern with three siblings, two sisters and one brother. One sister became a barrister, his brother became a Professor of Psychiatry, and his other sister got a double degree in economics among other things. Ian laughed, “I'm the downmarket member.” His parents were George and Anne, with George being a civil engineer. Ian began his pharmacy degree straight out of school. Ian went to school at Holy Eucharist on Dandenong Road before transferring to St Kevin’s when he was in third grade, aged about eight. At this tender age, he would catch the train to and from school by himself. He commented, “There's none of all this c**p that goes on today, I was just a little tacker.” When asked what attracted him to doing pharmacy, he said that on the walk to the football oval, he and his classmates were talking about what they were doing and planning to do, and one said, ‘I'm going to do pharmacy. It pays well and it's only four years.’ “I thought, just right for me, because I was putting myself down to do medicine and I was not very happy about the six years,” Ian said. “That was just an instant decision, which I've never regretted.” He earlier mentioned Linda as ‘the girl next door’ and was asked whether this was literally the case. He explained that he had been working extremely long hours in the pharmacy and that this was probably one of the reasons that his first marriage broke up. He began living in a rental property. He said, “This girl turned up next door with a couple of fellas, who turned out to be her brother and his friend. “And I just thought, that's interesting. “One day I was sitting at home, I had the three kids on access, and Christopher got up and he wanted to play with cricket with the boys next door. “He was about eight, and they were about 22 or three, but he thought he could play. “He never went for self-confidence. “He was going to play cricket with them. “This girl came to the door, said, ‘I'm afraid the boys aren't here to play cricket.’” “She was in a bikini at the time, sunbathing out the back, and he looked at her and said, ‘Do you want to come and swim in our pool?’” “So she said yes. “He comes through the back gates and said, ‘There's someone coming’, and here comes a lady in a white bikini and she gets in the pool, and I thought I should be gentleman introduce myself, so I introduced myself and that's how we got started.” They married about a year later. They continued living in Melbourne for quite some time, trying to set up a pharmacy in a couple of other places, “But there didn't seem to be an opportunity.” Ian said, “Then we saw Didomo Tonelli’s pharmacy, which is now the massage shop just next to the Shamrock Hotel, so we thought we might buy that.” He considered it, but decided that the size of the shop would limit the turnover. “So we passed until the fateful day when I was presented with an offer I couldn't refuse,” he said. Linda and Ian had been coming up to Alexandra quite frequently as Linda family were in the town, and Ian enjoyed the area. He joked, “Every Sunday after church, I'd pop around at the appropriate hour to the CFA headquarters where everybody was sitting around and I'd knock off a bottle of beer, I'd help them because they needed help.” He soon settled in, saying, “I just loved Alexandra. It is a very pretty place.” Having owned the pharmacy in Alexandra for 40 years now, he was asked about the changes in the pharmacy world during that time. He said, “The biggest change was computerisation, which, let me tell you, is actually an answer to a bureaucrat's prayers, because there was a nonsense something about the paperless office. “That's one of the biggest jokes. “You have a proliferation of paper with computers, and of course, the Health Department bureaucrats just love to think of something or some committee will think of something, and next thing it's this or a directive for that. “I've often cynically said because of all of the ‘ifs and buts’ and all the other little boxes that have to be ticked, it's a miracle any prescription is ever dispensed,” Ian said. He added, “The role of a pharmacist has changed greatly. “People used to come in and be consulted, but now, you could go forward and tell them about their medicines, which have become more powerful and there can be side effects, et cetera, and one can cancel out the other.” He also commented on how careful pharmacists need to be, taking other medications into consideration when dispensing. “That's why a good pharmacist is so important,” he said. He said that when his Alexandra pharmacy had been operating for about 20 years, “One day I was coming out of out of the newsagent and Dean Max, who was the owner of the other [pharmacy] at the time, was coming across. “He said hello, and I said, I think it's about till we amalgamated, don't you? He said, All right. So that was how it was done. “So we amalgamated. But it was not, sadly, it was not a match made in heaven and he left. “He actually wanted to buy me out, but I refused, so he left and I just carried on from there.” Ian then split the shop, keeping a majority stake and bringing on minor partners. “It was the start of my retirement scheme,” Ian said. “I've gradually reduced it down so that my minor partners can have more of a say.” He said of the pharmacists he’s had at the shop, “They're very nice, they're good to get on with, and the shop assistants. “I have been really blessed with some excellent shop assistants.” As a pharmacist, there have certainly been time when people would come in and Ian would recognise health issues and help them to get help, such as calling an ambulance. He also recalled the Black Saturday bushfires. He said, “On the Sunday morning of the Marysville fires, we got a phone call and I got out of bed and went to the phone, and this fellow said, ‘Is that you, Ian?’ The call was from a member of the CFA, saying that there were some people from the fire area who needed some prescriptions filled, so Ian said he would open the pharmacy. He told Linda and they called pharmacy partner Cinoj, knowing that they would be busy. They were there all day. He said, “You could tell when somebody walked through the door… whether or not they'd lost their home.” He added, “Then you had to dispense. But this was before generics were really going. They'd say, I'm on a diabetic medication. ‘Oh, is it this one?’ and you showed them a box. ‘No’. Is it this one? ‘Yes’. Do you know how many you take a day?... We had no documentation. “We just took it off the shelf and showed them. They could say they knew what they had to take. Nobody managed to die from my dispensing or Cinoj’s dispensing that day. “We compiled a list of it and we sent the list, totally unbureaucratic, off to the National Health Department and they paid, just paid.” Ian’s decision to retire came suddenly. He’d just finished serving a customer and thought, “I've had enough of this… Then next morning, because I had to get out of bed, I consulted with the man in the mirror, and he advised me that I should retire. “When I turned 70, I consulted with the man in the mirror again and I told him, I've worked on a Saturday morning job since I was 15. “Do you think I should give it away? “And he looked thoughtful, and then he said, I really do think he should, especially since it's your birthday.”
