Sometime towards the end of the '70's, I did a stint as the town doctor in Peterborough, a railway town a little under half the way between Adelaide and Broken Hill. Back then, around 2500 people lived in the town with a similar number on properties or in small communities in the surrounding area. And of course, a lot of sheep and an awful lot of kangaroos. We were the last medical outpost before the flying doctor service took over. If my memory serves me well, we left Peterborough sometime in early 1979 and haven't been back since

Until now! The Ghan rolled into Adelaide somewhat behind schedule. The following morning, we pick up a rental car and set off on the 300km drive northeast to Peterborough. The first half of the journey takes us through Australia's wheat belt: flat, treeless and gold-coloured. Then through the vineyards and pretty villages of the Clare Valley, one of several wine areas around Adelaide before rolling on into the South Australian outback. An hour or so later, and Peterborough welcomes us

Peterborough's still a "railway town" but other than the occasional freight train rumbling through, there are no longer any trains, except in the Railway Museum, Peterborough's main (only?) tourist attraction. Not surprisingly, the population has shrunk although we hear that might be about to change as plans have been approved for a massive open-cut iron ore mine. Peterborough's Main Street looked vaguely familiar, although as we are there on the weekend, just about everything is closed apart from a supermarket and a couple of pubs, only one of which had a kitchen - as long as we are up to finishing dinner by 6 o'clock when every table (not that many!) is booked and the single chef and barmaid are totally overwhelmed!

Peterbrough's hospital is still there, somewhat as I remembered. But now with an adjacent "medical centre" rather than the "doctors' surgery" which I think was in a different part of the town. We couldn't find that as we drove along just about every street in town, nor could we remember or recognize where we'd lived.

As far as we can tell, today's Peterborough doctors divide their time between Peterborough and the larger, thriving town of Jamestown around 40 km away which has a bigger hospital.

And to think we could have stayed in Peterborough! Geoff, my partner at the time was more interested in horses than practicing medicine and was keen to move to Jamestown. He indicated that the job was mine permanently if I wanted. And I was tempted! Fortunately, Sandra said "no way" and for us Peterborough was history until our trip down memory lane....

And scrolling around on the internet, I did manage to find Dr Geoffrey Tucker, retired general medical practitioner who had even moved on from Jamestown to end his career in Yorketown, east of Adelaide where he and his wife have devoted their retirement years (and quite some time before retirement) to breeding and racing horses.