The Story So Far… By Dr. Brian Nicholls

I arrived in Australia in late November 1994, decided to settle in Mornington, and took a lease on a shop in the Wilson’s Road shops (now a wine cellar) with a view to opening a clinic there in January 1995. It was always going to be a challenge. At the time, if my memory is correct, there were fewer than 400 osteopaths in the whole of Australia, and very few people I talked to had any idea what an

osteopath was. I also knew nothing about the Australian health system. I had to figure out what TAC, WorkCover and Veterans Affairs were, and there was no private health funding of osteopathy in the UK, so there was a lot of new stuff to absorb in a short space of time. Even the banking system presented challenges which would be familiar to many migrants. “What the hell does 100 points of ID

mean?” and “Why is an ordinary transaction account called a savings account when it has nothing to do with savings?”

The clinic opened on Jan 18th 1995 with zero fanfare, and very few patients. It was obvious that it was going to take time to build up when there was so little awareness of osteopathy in the community, so I took advantage of my previous life in teaching to take a part time job lecturing on the osteopathy course at Vic Uni on Flinders St., which helped keep body and soul (and family) together while

the patient base slowly grew. A lot of mistakes were made in the first couple of years, but as I began to understand the local demographics and the patients’ expectations better, the numbers slowly grew. After a couple of years, I thought that maybe a more prominent location might help, so moved the clinic to rooms in Hast Court in Main Street – now a chiropractic clinic. This was the start of a long friendship with Tom Hast, who taught me a lot about doing business in Mornington, but in fact the move was counterproductive in some ways, as I realized that it didn’t make financial sense to pay a full week of Main St. rent for premises I was only using two and a half

days. I therefore decided that, since we were building a house, it probably made more sense to adapt the house so that I could work from home on the days I wasn’t teaching, and so began 14 years of running the clinic from home.

By the mid 2000s, however, patient numbers had grown to the point where I had to decide whether to give up the uni work, or take someone on to cover the days I was at uni. As luck would have it I then ran into Khali Williams, a local girl who I remembered as a very good osteopathy student. She told me she had been working at two clinics, but one wasn’t going too well, and she was thinking of

giving it up. “Aha, I said. If you do that, which days would you be free?” “Monday and Wednesday”, she said. “I just happen to need someone on Mondays and Wednesdays”, I replied, and the rest, as they say, is history. Khali has been with us now for more than a dozen years, is a full partner in the business, and has done an extraordinary job in helping the clinic grow.

As we continued to grow, we took on a satellite clinic in Mount Martha Village shops for a while, but it wasn’t ideal, and after I gave up the uni in 2011, it was clear we needed bigger premises. There was an aborted attempt to set up a clinic on the corner opposite the Bentons Square shops, which foundered on planning permit issues – there’s now a dental clinic there. However, in 2013 the current premises at 941 Nepean Highway came available, so we moved in, and had the luxury for the first time, not only of having expansion space, but of alsobeing able to afford a receptionist. Since then we have expanded massively, and now have 7 other osteopaths, plus Jenny, our massage therapist. When I look back on it, we have outlasted many other Mornington businesses that opened around the same time, and many of the clinic’s original suppliers of printing, stationery etc. have gone bust, so we have been very lucky to be able to survive and thrive. We owe this to our wonderful staff, and also to the loyalty of our patients. We are now, in a few cases, seeing grandchildren of some of our earliest patients. So thanks to everyone, and here’s to the next 25 years.