logo
Beloved WA doctor retires after 45 years

Beloved WA doctor retires after 45 years

Perth Now21-07-2025
From hanging out of helicopters in African war zones to performing general practice in Bunbury, Frederik Pretorius has had a life full of twists and turns.
Arriving in Australia 45 years ago, Dr Pretorius left the unrest of apartheid South Africa with his family, looking for a better life.
Being a passionate diver, Australia was a natural choice for him and he arrived in Brisbane with two toddlers, a few suitcases of clothes and $400 in travellers' cheques.
After staying in Cairns for one year and then another year at Pinjarra, Dr Pretorius and his family eventually decided to settle in Bunbury.
'It was close enough to Perth, but close enough to the southern places, not too big, like Perth, but not too small, like a country town where everybody knows what's in your shopping basket at the supermarket,' he said. Dr Fred Pretorius with his best friend Mapula. Credit: Yousuf Shameel
Soon after settling in Bunbury, he set up a clinic in the Plaza Shopping Centre with a chemist shop close by.
Dr Pretorius said his most proud moment he would pick of his career would be when he was able to detect 50 melanomas in their early stages when he started to do community skin checks after losing a dear friend and partner Dr Rex Chidgzey to melanoma.
'I was already doing quite a lot of skin work, and that reinforced it,' he said.
'His portrait still hangs in our surgery in the skin cancer clinic as a memory to him and passing away from melanoma.
'He was in his 40s, which is very sad. A good doctor and good friend.'
While in Bunbury, Dr Pretorius made the headlines, not for his services to the community, but for his diving expeditions.
'I was diving with a buddy a few kilometres from the Ningaloo shoreline and our boat anchor rope got severed by sharp coral whilst we were in the water,' he said.
'The boat took off in a stiff easterly breeze and was eventually found by a passing Greek freighter somewhere between India and Cocos Islands and taken as salvage.
'My buddy and I got separated but both reached the shore in the dark after a very long swim after having to dump our heavy scuba gear and I drove home to Bunbury with an empty boat trailer, wearing diving goggles with prescription lenses as my proper glasses went with the boat.'
After selling his GP clinic, Dr Pretorius set out to start the Bunbury Skin Cancer Clinic with Dr Gavin Matten from Donnybrook at Forrest Avenue next to Mainline Plumbing.
Soon, they realised they were running out of space, and decided to move into the current skin cancer clinic at South Bunbury.
Now, at the age of 75, Dr Pretorius has decided its time for him to consider retirement and wishes to thank his staff, colleagues, friends and most of all, his patients and Bunbury itself.
'Thank you for your friendship, patience, laughter, compassion and trust over the past four and a half decades and for putting up with my choice of music in the operating theatre,' he said.
As for a piece of wisdom, he said people should 'appreciate your GPs, because they have to deal with everything and be fairly good at many things.'
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

French fries that work like Ozempic: The push to make medicine you can eat
French fries that work like Ozempic: The push to make medicine you can eat

The Age

timea day ago

  • The Age

French fries that work like Ozempic: The push to make medicine you can eat

'It's about 100 or so times more potent than gabapentin, which is the clinically used drug for neuropathic pain,' Craik, from UQ's Institute for Molecular Bioscience, said. His team then genetically tweaked mustard plants to produce the venom-derived cyclotide. 'Those seeds are tiny, the size of a pinhead, so they're never going to be enough to be therapeutic. But we'd be interested in putting it into something bigger … peanuts or chickpeas.' Craik's team has also crafted cherry tomatoes that contain a cyclopeptide going through clinical trials in Sweden as an experimental treatment for multiple sclerosis symptoms. It's very hard for a new drug to make it through the clinical trial process, and many promising candidates falter. But if the peptide proves effective, Craik can imagine people with multiple sclerosis eating a Greek salad or sipping a Bloody Mary made with the tomatoes and feeling their symptoms ease. The ARC grant and partnership will also explore a cholesterol-reducing drug that could be spliced into vegetables, as well as a peptide that targets an appetite receptor and induces fullness. Craik said it could serve as an alternative to Ozempic. Loading 'My dream would be to put that into potatoes so that you could have your McDonald's French fries and not worry about obesity.' These products, at this stage, are hypothetical. One of the research goals is to have a food product ready for trials by the end of the three-year grant. It's also unclear which regulatory jurisdiction the products would fall under. Whether they're considered nutraceuticals, medicines, or genetically modified foods will dictate which bodies need to be involved before they're grown and sold commercially, such as the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator. 'We're hoping, to start with, that they will fall under a nutraceutical, where it's a very light dose, and you'd have to eat tonnes of product to get anywhere dangerous,' said Phyllome chief executive Sebastien Eckersley-Maslin. Phyllome grows packaged vegetables such as spinach and rocket in automated 'plant factories'. Robots whizz around the indoor vertical farm in inner Sydney's Alexandria and take a photo of plants every hour, analysing the crops with AI, and harvest them when they're ready. 'In essence, our entire farm here has zero human interaction, from sowing through to picking bags off the back of a packager,' Eckersley-Maslin said. 'Everything in the middle is automated by robots.' The partnership will first focus on growing peptides aimed at pain relief, cholesterol management and appetite suppression in the native tobacco plant Nicotiana benthamiana. The tobacco plants can't be eaten, but work as natural 'bio-factories' to produce the target peptides, which can be extracted from the plant's leaves. Loading The plants were discovered near Wolf Creek in Western Australia, of Hollywood horror fame, and proved useful because they have weak immune systems, which makes it easier to insert the genes that code for the production of cyclotides. The next stage of the research will work on making the same genetic tweaks in plants that produce food. Said Craik: 'It's sort of, if you like, going back 3000 years to Hippocrates, who said, 'Let food be thy medicine'.'

French fries that work like Ozempic: The push to make medicine you can eat
French fries that work like Ozempic: The push to make medicine you can eat

Sydney Morning Herald

timea day ago

  • Sydney Morning Herald

French fries that work like Ozempic: The push to make medicine you can eat

'It's about 100 or so times more potent than gabapentin, which is the clinically used drug for neuropathic pain,' Craik, from UQ's Institute for Molecular Bioscience, said. His team then genetically tweaked mustard plants to produce the venom-derived cyclotide. 'Those seeds are tiny, the size of a pinhead, so they're never going to be enough to be therapeutic. But we'd be interested in putting it into something bigger … peanuts or chickpeas.' Craik's team has also crafted cherry tomatoes that contain a cyclopeptide going through clinical trials in Sweden as an experimental treatment for multiple sclerosis symptoms. It's very hard for a new drug to make it through the clinical trial process, and many promising candidates falter. But if the peptide proves effective, Craik can imagine people with multiple sclerosis eating a Greek salad or sipping a Bloody Mary made with the tomatoes and feeling their symptoms ease. The ARC grant and partnership will also explore a cholesterol-reducing drug that could be spliced into vegetables, as well as a peptide that targets an appetite receptor and induces fullness. Craik said it could serve as an alternative to Ozempic. Loading 'My dream would be to put that into potatoes so that you could have your McDonald's French fries and not worry about obesity.' These products, at this stage, are hypothetical. One of the research goals is to have a food product ready for trials by the end of the three-year grant. It's also unclear which regulatory jurisdiction the products would fall under. Whether they're considered nutraceuticals, medicines, or genetically modified foods will dictate which bodies need to be involved before they're grown and sold commercially, such as the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator. 'We're hoping, to start with, that they will fall under a nutraceutical, where it's a very light dose, and you'd have to eat tonnes of product to get anywhere dangerous,' said Phyllome chief executive Sebastien Eckersley-Maslin. Phyllome grows packaged vegetables such as spinach and rocket in automated 'plant factories'. Robots whizz around the indoor vertical farm in inner Sydney's Alexandria and take a photo of plants every hour, analysing the crops with AI, and harvest them when they're ready. 'In essence, our entire farm here has zero human interaction, from sowing through to picking bags off the back of a packager,' Eckersley-Maslin said. 'Everything in the middle is automated by robots.' The partnership will first focus on growing peptides aimed at pain relief, cholesterol management and appetite suppression in the native tobacco plant Nicotiana benthamiana. The tobacco plants can't be eaten, but work as natural 'bio-factories' to produce the target peptides, which can be extracted from the plant's leaves. Loading The plants were discovered near Wolf Creek in Western Australia, of Hollywood horror fame, and proved useful because they have weak immune systems, which makes it easier to insert the genes that code for the production of cyclotides. The next stage of the research will work on making the same genetic tweaks in plants that produce food. Said Craik: 'It's sort of, if you like, going back 3000 years to Hippocrates, who said, 'Let food be thy medicine'.'

Beloved WA doctor retires after 45 years
Beloved WA doctor retires after 45 years

Perth Now

time21-07-2025

  • Perth Now

Beloved WA doctor retires after 45 years

From hanging out of helicopters in African war zones to performing general practice in Bunbury, Frederik Pretorius has had a life full of twists and turns. Arriving in Australia 45 years ago, Dr Pretorius left the unrest of apartheid South Africa with his family, looking for a better life. Being a passionate diver, Australia was a natural choice for him and he arrived in Brisbane with two toddlers, a few suitcases of clothes and $400 in travellers' cheques. After staying in Cairns for one year and then another year at Pinjarra, Dr Pretorius and his family eventually decided to settle in Bunbury. 'It was close enough to Perth, but close enough to the southern places, not too big, like Perth, but not too small, like a country town where everybody knows what's in your shopping basket at the supermarket,' he said. Dr Fred Pretorius with his best friend Mapula. Credit: Yousuf Shameel Soon after settling in Bunbury, he set up a clinic in the Plaza Shopping Centre with a chemist shop close by. Dr Pretorius said his most proud moment he would pick of his career would be when he was able to detect 50 melanomas in their early stages when he started to do community skin checks after losing a dear friend and partner Dr Rex Chidgzey to melanoma. 'I was already doing quite a lot of skin work, and that reinforced it,' he said. 'His portrait still hangs in our surgery in the skin cancer clinic as a memory to him and passing away from melanoma. 'He was in his 40s, which is very sad. A good doctor and good friend.' While in Bunbury, Dr Pretorius made the headlines, not for his services to the community, but for his diving expeditions. 'I was diving with a buddy a few kilometres from the Ningaloo shoreline and our boat anchor rope got severed by sharp coral whilst we were in the water,' he said. 'The boat took off in a stiff easterly breeze and was eventually found by a passing Greek freighter somewhere between India and Cocos Islands and taken as salvage. 'My buddy and I got separated but both reached the shore in the dark after a very long swim after having to dump our heavy scuba gear and I drove home to Bunbury with an empty boat trailer, wearing diving goggles with prescription lenses as my proper glasses went with the boat.' After selling his GP clinic, Dr Pretorius set out to start the Bunbury Skin Cancer Clinic with Dr Gavin Matten from Donnybrook at Forrest Avenue next to Mainline Plumbing. Soon, they realised they were running out of space, and decided to move into the current skin cancer clinic at South Bunbury. Now, at the age of 75, Dr Pretorius has decided its time for him to consider retirement and wishes to thank his staff, colleagues, friends and most of all, his patients and Bunbury itself. 'Thank you for your friendship, patience, laughter, compassion and trust over the past four and a half decades and for putting up with my choice of music in the operating theatre,' he said. As for a piece of wisdom, he said people should 'appreciate your GPs, because they have to deal with everything and be fairly good at many things.'

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store