Peter Roberts was one of the best known and highly respected GPs in inner city Newcastle in the era from 1950-1990

Peter was born in Newcastle, in Hamilton, in 1920, the son of a doctor-Alan Roberts, who had an Edinburgh Fellowship in Surgery, and who became the senior orthopaedic surgeon at Royal Newcastle hospital in later years. Peter describes growing up in Newcastle, in a doctors family, then going to Sydney Grammar school, followed by what he saw as a natural progression into medicine .He provides an insiders view of the old Lodge system in Newcastle, by which a whole family was cared for by the family doctor for a few shillings per week -the system which persisted in this city until well after WW2.

He graduated in 1940, in a shortened course because of the war, and then saw service in New Guinea in the RAAF, " goods” and the "not so goods "of general practice in his generation, the benefits of having a congenial partner, his own efforts to increase his knowledge- and his later work as a part time VMO specialist in Paediatrics at Western Suburbs and the Mater hospitals. He describes the changing pattern of disease over his practicing lifetime, particularly in children and gives some insights into medico legal issues then and now. Apart from his fascinating history of the time, there will be many thousands of his old patients who will get a real buzz out of hearing about the lessons he learned in over 50 years of a busy general practice in the central city.