It was 30 years ago this Monday – 9 May, 1991 – when a much younger, slimmer and darker-haired version of John Perrier first opened the doors to PhysioWorks. The ensuing three decades have been a roller coaster of change, so I invite you to take 10 minutes to wander though the memories with me.
The original Bulimba site was at 124 Oxford St, next to the old Commonwealth Bank– Grill’d Burgers operates there now. I had spent weeks painting, carpet laying, buying equipment and networking with local doctors. I turned the key, opened the door, and then waited nervously by the phone for … well, nothing.
It took all day, but eventually the phone rang and I had my first booking – a young swimmer named Nathan – and my life as a private physiotherapist was underway. I haven’t seen Nathan for some time, but I’m pleased to say that I still regularly treat his mother to this day.
The original Bulimba Physiotherapy Centre. Luxurious, isn’t it?
I had taken out a start-up bank loan at 17% interest – the going rate at the time – and my equipment was leased at 25% per annum. I had heard multiple warnings about how many small businesses closed in the first two years so I was determined not to fail.
Working alone, my tasks rapidly expanded beyond what my inexperienced mind had imagined – I had thought that being my own boss would give me control over my time. Ha! I could not have been more wrong.
Besides treating patients, taking payments and answering the phone, I had to squeeze the accounting, cleaning and admin into my lunch breaks. Three nights a week after work I would head off to the local AFL club for sports physio from 6-8 pm. On Saturday morning I would spend a few hours in the clinic and then try (but usually fail) to complete the financials and marketing. I’d sleep in on Sunday morning – that was my only real time off – before heading to the AFL to work the afternoon as the strapper and on-field physio. I’d love to have just a fraction of that energy now – I don’t – but in its place is hopefully a little more wisdom.
Because the rooms were next to the bank, break-ins were frequent in those first few years. The thieves’ usual plan was to bust open my back door and then smash through the adjoining wall into the bank. It never seemed to occur to them that the bank’s vault would be locked anyway. The first time I walked in after a break-in I was horrified. After the sixth such burglary, I barely paused to sweep up the rubble before registering the intrusion with the police and calling my plasterer, who by this stage I had on speed dial.
The practice location right next to the bank. This picture was taken about 1995 after a modest renovation.
After three years the business was humming along. I was struggling to keep up with patient demand, so I took the plunge and employed another physio to help me out. I thought it would make things easier and give me back some time. Again, wrong!
When we were both working it was great, and our appointment books were both nicely full. However when one of us was away, either on holidays or sick, it was disaster. No matter how hard we tried we simply could not do the work of two people, each of whom were already busy. So for about 10-12 weeks a year it was stress-filled pandemonium.
What was the answer? I decided to expand so that I could employ even more physios and spread the load. Losing one physio out of two was horrible, but, I reasoned, if it was only one out of four then we could probably cope for a few weeks at a time.
To help decide the location of the proposed new premises I used the Yellow Pages phone directory, a huge table-sized paper map of Brisbane and a box of dressmakers pins. Just as I had done when setting up Bulimba, I mapped the location of every physio in the greater Brisbane area. Eventually, after much laborious cartography, I noted a sizable gap in the Mansfield-Wishart area.
I took a reconnaissance ride through the area on my old push bike and was heartened to discover a small retail shop for lease in a shopping strip called Aminya St. One phone call to the landlord is all it took to secure the premises – we didn’t even use a lease – and Mansfield PhysioWorks was soon underway.
By contrast, my current lease runs to over 200 pages, plus an additional 60 pages to outline a couple of rent free months at the start of each period. I guess those lawyers have to earn their keep somehow.
I can clearly recall the first day I opened the doors at Mansfield: it was the same day that the Queensland Cricket team hosted the Sheffield Shield final. That might not seem like a big deal these days, but back then The Shield was passionately followed by just about every sports fan; Queensland had never won it despite over 100 years of trying, so it was considered the Holy Grail of sporting trophies. The final was at the ‘Gabba, and thousands of people, including most of my mates, were packing it to capacity.
I was faced with a decision. Should I attend the game, and thus fail to open the doors on my very first day of my new venture, or should show up at work and hope that some patients booked in?
I was determined and responsible, so I opted for the latter. Eight hours later, having listened all day to the celebrations on ABC radio as the Queenslanders romped home to win their first title after a century of failures, I dejectedly shut the doors and headed home. Zero patients for the day. I should have gone to the cricket!
The Aminya St precinct is a suburban shopping strip that was constructed in the 1960s. The original town planning idea was to position the shops in the middle of the residential area, rather than on corners of busy main roads, to act as the social and logistical hub for the local community. Unfortunately all of the traffic on those busy main roads – that is, the potential customers – didn’t know the shops existed and drove right on by. So Aminya St meandered forward with a collection of small local businesses: a bakery, a doctors’ surgery, a supermarket, and, in 1994, a physio.
My second day at Mansfield was also unusual. I arrived at work to see a hive of activity in the car park. Hundreds of people had invaded this quiet mid-suburban shopping strip. It turned out that they were filming a movie, called “Mr Reliable” starring Colin Friels. The movie was set in the 1960s and they had chosen the Aminya St shops because – as the producer told me over coffee later that day – they didn’t have to change anything about the centre except for the price tags on the supermarket shelves!
The Aminya Street shops – nothing much had changed since the 1960s!
The Mansfield practice grew slowly but steadily. A decade or so later we relocated to our current location at Wishart Square, and later bought the larger premises next door. We haven’t looked back since.
Much has changed since I started in business, not just with physio, but with the local and wider world.
Mansfield/Wishart has gown exponentially, with four large schools now attracting hundreds of young families to the area every year. Some of the original residents from the early years remain, but each year I see fewer and fewer of them.
Bulimba, too, has undergone a complete makeover. Its primary characteristics in 1991 were dilapidated old Queenslanders and dozens of industrial factories. It’s hard to imagine now but many large companies, including Telecom, Rheem and Lloyd’s ships, all had major manufacturing facilities in the now-restaurant-filled Oxford St. There was barely a coffee shop in sight. True.
The Balmoral Pub, then known affectionately as the “Balmongrel”, was not a place for the feint-hearted, with a motley collection of out-of-work tradies and old punters being the main clientele of its smoke-filled public bar. There were no TAB outlets in pubs in those days (and of course no on-line betting) and the nearest outlet was further down Oxford St (where Woolworths now stands). So the punters would regularly wander down the street, beer in hand, to place a bet.
Unfortunately there was a brick bench directly outside my practice door, where they’d stop for a breather or a cigarette. (You can see it in the photograph above, by which time it had been converted into the garden bed behind the lamp post.) At times their arguments would get quite rowdy, and I had to break up more than one fight.
As Bulimba’s old houses were renovated and the industrial land was snapped up for units, the suburb’s working class persona steadily disappeared. In the meantime, land values and rents soared: our rent has climbed from $250 per month to about $1000 per week – a 16-fold increase!
Technology has also completely transformed the way we do business. My first computer in 1991 had a hard drive capacity of only 512 Mb (that’s megabytes). I recall paying extra to upgrade to a top-of-the-range RAM chip, which was 64 Kilobytes. Yes, kilobytes – you may have to google that term if you’re under the age of 35. To put this into perspective, you would have to link 1000 similar computers to match the capacity of a single modern smart phone.
My original business card includes only the shop address and a phone number: 899 1226. (Note the missing initial ‘3’, which was not introduced until eight years later.) There were no other contact methods; faxes were the domain of big business and hot-shot lawyers, while electronic communication was still a few years away.
By comparison, we now have three phone lines (including the fax line), multiple email addresses, mobile numbers, EFTPOS and HiCaps payments, text out services, Skype contacts, a 200-page web site, e-commerce capability, online booking systems and social media pages. Of course most of these things come with a monthly account fee….
The last surviving copy of an original business card. Sometimes I long for these simpler times…
Thankfully, one thing that hasn’t changed much in all those years is the human body. In hindsight, I was fortunate to choose a profession that is amenable to accumulating skills and experience over time. Things that I learned way back in 1991 are still 100% relevant today – backs, knees and shoulders haven’t changed at all. By contrast, the knowledge gained in 1991 by say, a computer programmer, would now be largely worthless.
But of course treatment methods have progressed. In 1991 most joint surgery was performed by the old “open ‘em up” method that more resembled carpentry than the surgical precision of a modern arthroscopy. MRI scanners and the like weren’t invented yet, so we had to diagnose injuries with scant help from technology. This was sometimes like a mechanic trying to pinpoint your engine problem without opening the bonnet, but at least it gave us a solid grounding to develop diagnostic skills.
In this matter I’d particularly like to thank those patients who trusted me and persisted when things didn’t always improve as they’d hoped over the first few sessions. Sometimes it was only after we changed diagnosis or treatment that results flowed, and my physio bag of tricks subsequently grew each time. So thank you for your patience, patients!
At last count, our practice have now helped a combined total of 350,000 clients – I’d like to think we’ve learned something from every one of you!
We physios are also fortunate that we have plenty of time to talk while we’re working. Can you think of any other occupation in which you can chat for 20 minutes or so to every client without impeding your time or theirs? Even better, our patients are from all walks of life: both blue and white collar workers, kids, stay at home parents, retirees, elite sports people, soldiers, you name it; everyone gets sore sooner or later. So we are exposed to a variety of problems, ideas and opinions, all of which provide for an interesting and varied work day.
The internet didn’t exist in 1991, and Google was still eight years away, so finding information was far more difficult than today; you couldn’t just type a search phrase into a computer. For most people this meant either a trip to the library or just asking around until you found someone who knew that subject. But we physios had a big advantage: with about 100 people per week coming in for treatment, it was only a matter of time until an expert on gardening, car engines, mountain climbing or whatever came through the door. We had our own ‘mini-internet’.
We’ve also expanded our staffing levels over the years. Obviously the enterprise began with just one inexperienced soul. In 1994 I married and my wife started helping out in the office; she would work her day as a schoolteacher and then come in to help with the admin until late. We ate a lot of take-way for a few years! In 1997 our first baby daughter came along, and we took the big step (well, it seemed like a big step at the time) of employing a part time receptionist. We have been slowly expanding since.
We now employ five physios, two practice managers and three casual receptionists. Many co-workers have come and gone, but I’m grateful that I still count most of them as friends. Some, like our practice manager Melany at Bulimba, have been here for almost a decade, and is just as much a part of the place as the walls. Our super-physio Moto has also been here since 2016 and has performed miracle cures than I can count. I’m also proud that my daughter is now a qualified physio as well; her weekly phone requests for advice on patients certainly keeps me mentally on my toes.
With the enormous changes that have taken place in 30 years it’s hard to imagine what our working lives will be like in another decade or two. But it should be fun finding out.
Yes, it has been a roller coaster ride, but one with more ups than downs. Thank you again to you for your support, and I hope you continue to trust us at Bulimba and Mansfield PhysioWorks to help you feel better for many years to come.
It was 30 years ago this Monday – 9 May, 1991 – when a much younger, slimmer and darker-haired version of John Perrier first opened the doors to PhysioWorks. The ensuing three decades have been a roller coaster of change, so I invite you to take 10 minutes to wander though the memories with me.
The original Bulimba site was at 124 Oxford St, next to the old Commonwealth Bank– Grill’d Burgers operates there now. I had spent weeks painting, carpet laying, buying equipment and networking with local doctors. I turned the key, opened the door, and then waited nervously by the phone for … well, nothing.
It took all day, but eventually the phone rang and I had my first booking – a young swimmer named Nathan – and my life as a private physiotherapist was underway. I haven’t seen Nathan for some time, but I’m pleased to say that I still regularly treat his mother to this day.
The original Bulimba Physiotherapy Centre. Luxurious, isn’t it?
I had taken out a start-up bank loan at 17% interest – the going rate at the time – and my equipment was leased at 25% per annum. I had heard multiple warnings about how many small businesses closed in the first two years so I was determined not to fail.
Working alone, my tasks rapidly expanded beyond what my inexperienced mind had imagined – I had thought that being my own boss would give me control over my time. Ha! I could not have been more wrong.
Besides treating patients, taking payments and answering the phone, I had to squeeze the accounting, cleaning and admin into my lunch breaks. Three nights a week after work I would head off to the local AFL club for sports physio from 6-8 pm. On Saturday morning I would spend a few hours in the clinic and then try (but usually fail) to complete the financials and marketing. I’d sleep in on Sunday morning – that was my only real time off – before heading to the AFL to work the afternoon as the strapper and on-field physio. I’d love to have just a fraction of that energy now – I don’t – but in its place is hopefully a little more wisdom.
Because the rooms were next to the bank, break-ins were frequent in those first few years. The thieves’ usual plan was to bust open my back door and then smash through the adjoining wall into the bank. It never seemed to occur to them that the bank’s vault would be locked anyway. The first time I walked in after a break-in I was horrified. After the sixth such burglary, I barely paused to sweep up the rubble before registering the intrusion with the police and calling my plasterer, who by this stage I had on speed dial.
The practice location right next to the bank. This picture was taken about 1995 after a modest renovation.
After three years the business was humming along. I was struggling to keep up with patient demand, so I took the plunge and employed another physio to help me out. I thought it would make things easier and give me back some time. Again, wrong!
When we were both working it was great, and our appointment books were both nicely full. However when one of us was away, either on holidays or sick, it was disaster. No matter how hard we tried we simply could not do the work of two people, each of whom were already busy. So for about 10-12 weeks a year it was stress-filled pandemonium.
What was the answer? I decided to expand so that I could employ even more physios and spread the load. Losing one physio out of two was horrible, but, I reasoned, if it was only one out of four then we could probably cope for a few weeks at a time.
To help decide the location of the proposed new premises I used the Yellow Pages phone directory, a huge table-sized paper map of Brisbane and a box of dressmakers pins. Just as I had done when setting up Bulimba, I mapped the location of every physio in the greater Brisbane area. Eventually, after much laborious cartography, I noted a sizable gap in the Mansfield-Wishart area.
I took a reconnaissance ride through the area on my old push bike and was heartened to discover a small retail shop for lease in a shopping strip called Aminya St. One phone call to the landlord is all it took to secure the premises – we didn’t even use a lease – and Mansfield PhysioWorks was soon underway.
By contrast, my current lease runs to over 200 pages, plus an additional 60 pages to outline a couple of rent free months at the start of each period. I guess those lawyers have to earn their keep somehow.
I can clearly recall the first day I opened the doors at Mansfield: it was the same day that the Queensland Cricket team hosted the Sheffield Shield final. That might not seem like a big deal these days, but back then The Shield was passionately followed by just about every sports fan; Queensland had never won it despite over 100 years of trying, so it was considered the Holy Grail of sporting trophies. The final was at the ‘Gabba, and thousands of people, including most of my mates, were packing it to capacity.
I was faced with a decision. Should I attend the game, and thus fail to open the doors on my very first day of my new venture, or should show up at work and hope that some patients booked in?
I was determined and responsible, so I opted for the latter. Eight hours later, having listened all day to the celebrations on ABC radio as the Queenslanders romped home to win their first title after a century of failures, I dejectedly shut the doors and headed home. Zero patients for the day. I should have gone to the cricket!
The Aminya St precinct is a suburban shopping strip that was constructed in the 1960s. The original town planning idea was to position the shops in the middle of the residential area, rather than on corners of busy main roads, to act as the social and logistical hub for the local community. Unfortunately all of the traffic on those busy main roads – that is, the potential customers – didn’t know the shops existed and drove right on by. So Aminya St meandered forward with a collection of small local businesses: a bakery, a doctors’ surgery, a supermarket, and, in 1994, a physio.
My second day at Mansfield was also unusual. I arrived at work to see a hive of activity in the car park. Hundreds of people had invaded this quiet mid-suburban shopping strip. It turned out that they were filming a movie, called “Mr Reliable” starring Colin Friels. The movie was set in the 1960s and they had chosen the Aminya St shops because – as the producer told me over coffee later that day – they didn’t have to change anything about the centre except for the price tags on the supermarket shelves!
The Aminya Street shops – nothing much had changed since the 1960s!
The Mansfield practice grew slowly but steadily. A decade or so later we relocated to our current location at Wishart Square, and later bought the larger premises next door. We haven’t looked back since.
Much has changed since I started in business, not just with physio, but with the local and wider world.
Mansfield/Wishart has gown exponentially, with four large schools now attracting hundreds of young families to the area every year. Some of the original residents from the early years remain, but each year I see fewer and fewer of them.
Bulimba, too, has undergone a complete makeover. Its primary characteristics in 1991 were dilapidated old Queenslanders and dozens of industrial factories. It’s hard to imagine now but many large companies, including Telecom, Rheem and Lloyd’s ships, all had major manufacturing facilities in the now-restaurant-filled Oxford St. There was barely a coffee shop in sight. True.
The Balmoral Pub, then known affectionately as the “Balmongrel”, was not a place for the feint-hearted, with a motley collection of out-of-work tradies and old punters being the main clientele of its smoke-filled public bar. There were no TAB outlets in pubs in those days (and of course no on-line betting) and the nearest outlet was further down Oxford St (where Woolworths now stands). So the punters would regularly wander down the street, beer in hand, to place a bet.
Unfortunately there was a brick bench directly outside my practice door, where they’d stop for a breather or a cigarette. (You can see it in the photograph above, by which time it had been converted into the garden bed behind the lamp post.) At times their arguments would get quite rowdy, and I had to break up more than one fight.
As Bulimba’s old houses were renovated and the industrial land was snapped up for units, the suburb’s working class persona steadily disappeared. In the meantime, land values and rents soared: our rent has climbed from $250 per month to about $1000 per week – a 16-fold increase!
Technology has also completely transformed the way we do business. My first computer in 1991 had a hard drive capacity of only 512 Mb (that’s megabytes). I recall paying extra to upgrade to a top-of-the-range RAM chip, which was 64 Kilobytes. Yes, kilobytes – you may have to google that term if you’re under the age of 35. To put this into perspective, you would have to link 1000 similar computers to match the capacity of a single modern smart phone.
My original business card includes only the shop address and a phone number: 899 1226. (Note the missing initial ‘3’, which was not introduced until eight years later.) There were no other contact methods; faxes were the domain of big business and hot-shot lawyers, while electronic communication was still a few years away.
By comparison, we now have three phone lines (including the fax line), multiple email addresses, mobile numbers, EFTPOS and HiCaps payments, text out services, Skype contacts, a 200-page web site, e-commerce capability, online booking systems and social media pages. Of course most of these things come with a monthly account fee….
The last surviving copy of an original business card. Sometimes I long for these simpler times…
Thankfully, one thing that hasn’t changed much in all those years is the human body. In hindsight, I was fortunate to choose a profession that is amenable to accumulating skills and experience over time. Things that I learned way back in 1991 are still 100% relevant today – backs, knees and shoulders haven’t changed at all. By contrast, the knowledge gained in 1991 by say, a computer programmer, would now be largely worthless.
But of course treatment methods have progressed. In 1991 most joint surgery was performed by the old “open ‘em up” method that more resembled carpentry than the surgical precision of a modern arthroscopy. MRI scanners and the like weren’t invented yet, so we had to diagnose injuries with scant help from technology. This was sometimes like a mechanic trying to pinpoint your engine problem without opening the bonnet, but at least it gave us a solid grounding to develop diagnostic skills.
In this matter I’d particularly like to thank those patients who trusted me and persisted when things didn’t always improve as they’d hoped over the first few sessions. Sometimes it was only after we changed diagnosis or treatment that results flowed, and my physio bag of tricks subsequently grew each time. So thank you for your patience, patients!
At last count, our practice have now helped a combined total of 350,000 clients – I’d like to think we’ve learned something from every one of you!
We physios are also fortunate that we have plenty of time to talk while we’re working. Can you think of any other occupation in which you can chat for 20 minutes or so to every client without impeding your time or theirs? Even better, our patients are from all walks of life: both blue and white collar workers, kids, stay at home parents, retirees, elite sports people, soldiers, you name it; everyone gets sore sooner or later. So we are exposed to a variety of problems, ideas and opinions, all of which provide for an interesting and varied work day.
The internet didn’t exist in 1991, and Google was still eight years away, so finding information was far more difficult than today; you couldn’t just type a search phrase into a computer. For most people this meant either a trip to the library or just asking around until you found someone who knew that subject. But we physios had a big advantage: with about 100 people per week coming in for treatment, it was only a matter of time until an expert on gardening, car engines, mountain climbing or whatever came through the door. We had our own ‘mini-internet’.
We’ve also expanded our staffing levels over the years. Obviously the enterprise began with just one inexperienced soul. In 1994 I married and my wife started helping out in the office; she would work her day as a schoolteacher and then come in to help with the admin until late. We ate a lot of take-way for a few years! In 1997 our first baby daughter came along, and we took the big step (well, it seemed like a big step at the time) of employing a part time receptionist. We have been slowly expanding since.
We now employ five physios, two practice managers and three casual receptionists. Many co-workers have come and gone, but I’m grateful that I still count most of them as friends. Some, like our practice manager Melany at Bulimba, have been here for almost a decade, and is just as much a part of the place as the walls. Our super-physio Moto has also been here since 2016 and has performed miracle cures than I can count. I’m also proud that my daughter is now a qualified physio as well; her weekly phone requests for advice on patients certainly keeps me mentally on my toes.
With the enormous changes that have taken place in 30 years it’s hard to imagine what our working lives will be like in another decade or two. But it should be fun finding out.
Yes, it has been a roller coaster ride, but one with more ups than downs. Thank you again to you for your support, and I hope you continue to trust us at Bulimba and Mansfield PhysioWorks to help you feel better for many years to come.
Further investigations include US scan or MRI. X-rays are of no use in the diagnosis.
Mansfield & Bulimba Physioworks 