Seeing his way into retirement

RETIRED: Duncan and Gwen Bush at their Makaraka home. Picture by Rebecca Grunwell

DUNCAN Bush went to a vocational guidance counsellor in his senior year at St Kentigern College in Auckland, looking for a career where he could be his own boss.

Born in Wellington, Duncan’s family moved around New Zealand a lot due to his father’s work as a bank officer at the BNZ.

“I didn’t want a job like my father’s. I wanted to run my own business and be in charge of my own destiny,” says the 66-year-old, who retired in February after over four decades as an optometrist in Gisborne.

“I was good at maths so I looked at accounting or engineering as a future career but then I saw a pamphlet on optometry. I didn’t know much about it back then but at the age of 17 or 18 years, it appealed to me. I thought I wouldn’t have to study as hard to get a Diploma of Optometry compared to a bachelor’s degree, and most importantly, it would lead to a career where I could be my own boss,” says Duncan.

As it turns out, he was right on one count but wrong on the other.

The diploma was four years of study at Auckland University and much harder to attain than a bachelor’s degree, but at a young age, he did end up owning his own business.

Duncan graduated at the end of 1972 and worked at a practice in Karangahape Road in Auckland for two years.

By then, he had met his wife-to-be, Gwen, at a party he had gate-crashed with some mates, and they were married in 1973.

“By 1974, many of our friends were starting to leave Auckland and we were getting sick of life in the big city so we decided to have a holiday in Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne to see what the regions had to offer.

“Gisborne had good opportunities for both of us so we moved here in 1975.”

Gwen, a qualified teacher, began work at Gisborne Girls’ High School, and Duncan had a choice between working for an optometrist who was looking for a partner and another who wanted to sell and retire. Duncan chose the latter and after working for the owner, Brian King, for a year, he bought the practice on January 1, 1976, when Brian retired.

So at the age of 25, Duncan realised his youthful ambition and became the youngest solo practitioner in New Zealand at the time . . . and his own boss.

King and BushThe practice was called King and Bush for the first couple of years and then Duncan Bush Optometrist.

“Brian had very basic equipment so I had to purchase a lot of gear in order to practise the way I wanted to, work which involved fitting contact lenses and providing a good service of primary eye-care.

“That’s what optometry was all about in those days — doing the best for your patients and looking after their eyesight. If you did that, you developed a good reputation which enabled you to earn a reasonable living. To me clinical optometry was more important than retail optometry.”

The 1990s saw major changes in the industry.

“Prior to 1990, professional services could really only be advertised in public notices. It was frowned upon for professionals to openly advertise so we relied on reputation and word of mouth for business.”

However, in the early 1990s, the regulations on advertising were lifted and the business landscape became much more commercial.

“In 1996, the business changed its name to Eastland Eye Care Centre and at the end of 1994 Michael Ferguson, a Bachelor of Optometry graduate, came to work for me becoming a partner 1998.”

In the mid-1990s things got quite competitive with two other optometry practices opening in town.

In the mid 1990s Duncan joined a group of independent optometrists to buy a wholesale company, Optical Holdings Ltd, a vehicle they used to create Visique.

“This gave us buying power and clout.Visique worked very well for us because we got support from people who had a better understanding of running a business than we did.”

Things became even more commercial and competitive with the arrival of Specsavers in New Zealand.

“Based in the UK, it was a big organisation with a huge advertising budget and a large number of outlets in Australia and New Zealand.

“When they opened in Gisborne in 2009, it had quite an impact on our business especially on customers who wanted a cheaper option.

“In 2012, we were approached by OPSM, an off-shoot of Luxottica, the largest optical company in world, suppliers of high-quality frames and sunglasses.

“OPSM wanted to open an outlet in Gisborne and made it very attractive for us to leave Visique and join them, so in mid-2013, we became a franchisee of OPSM,” he says.

“They’ve been very good to work with although, being a large organisation with headquarters in Australia, there were some ‘issues’ that had to be ironed out. Basically, they didn’t understand New Zealand business law.

OPSM“Kelly Knight, our practice manager and OPSM franchise representative, dealt with all those problems. Kelly joined us in 2003 and we wouldn’t be where we are without her,” he says.

“With OPSM, the practice became much more retail-orientated which is something I learned to put up with. I’m always told I’m too much of an idealist but to me the primary purpose of optometry was to examine people’s eyes and provide the best eye-care solution for them. I never took much notice of the fashions and retail aspects.

“I saw myself as a primary eye-care provider and health professional, not a salesman. I’m a hopeless salesman,” he says with a laugh.

Duncan led a double life for many years, spending time in the Pacific Islands as part of Voluntary Ophthalmology Services Overseas (VOSO). He did eight trips from 1990 to 2007.

The team of optometrists and ophthalmologists visited the Tokelau Islands, Samoa and Tonga and saw between 1000-1500 patients during each two-week period.

“The optometrists examined vision and supplied recycled spectacles that had been collected by Lions Clubs in New Zealand. The ophthalmologists operated on cataract patients and the day after surgery, they could see half-way down the eye-chart after barely being able to see well enough to count fingers at one metre,” he says.

“Providing vision to people who hadn’t been able to read their Bible for years was always very rewarding. It was such an immediate result and they were so appreciative of their hugely-improved quality of life.

“On our first trip to the Tokelau Islands, we travelled by boat to the small atolls. In the tropical heat, the eating and sleeping conditions were horrendous with 150 passengers, pigs and poultry on board and no air-con. The boat, the Wairua, possibly fell apart soon after. We flew from island-to-island after that.”

Huge changes in optometryDuncan has seen huge changes in the four decades he’s been practising optometry.

“During the last 40-odd years, advances in technology have enabled us to be much more thorough and diagnose more accurately. As practitioners under contract to Tairawhiti Hospital (Hauora Tairawhiti), we became involved in retinal screening of diabetics in Gisborne and the East Coast.

“Back in the 1970s, I would never have dreamt we would be working in the domain of ophthalmologists. But we now work well together and optometrists routinely undertake a number of examinations that ophthalmologists used to do exclusively.”

Diabetes screeningDuncan very much enjoyed the diabetes screening work.

“I could show a diabetic patient the back of the eye and point out the changes caused by the disease. The implications were serious. Unless they did what the doctors said — lowered their blood sugar level and got more exercise — they would require significant treatment to the back of the eye like laser treatment or injections, or go blind. By that stage, many had lost a limb or two.

“I got to know the people very well after doing an optometry clinic in Ruatoria once a month from 1982.”

The aspects he misses most are patient contact and fitting contact lenses to difficult corneas — this could be the result of injury or keratoconus, a disease which thins and alters the shape of the cornea, often requiring a graft which in turn requires a contact lens to provide good vision.

“I also miss the banter in an exam room, the human contact, having a chat about what people are doing in their lives. It was all part of getting to know a patient, establishing rapport and examining them in a nice, relaxed environment.”

Gwen and Duncan began to think in terms of retirement a year or two ago.

“Gwen had been teaching at Westmount School for 10 years. She enjoyed her work and was a pretty good teacher but by the end of 2015 at the age of 64, she decided to retire. I was 66 and after 43 years in practice, I thought it was a good time for me to call it quits too — so I retired on February 19 this year.”

Four days later, Duncan and Gwen set off on a six-week tour of the east and south of the South Island towing their 6.5m caravan as their travelling motel.

While in Arrowtown, Duncan, a keen golfer, was a rules official for the New Zealand Golf Open at the Hills and Millbrook golf courses in March officiating for Michael Hendry (who came third) and James Nitties in the final round.

“It was wonderful to walk around such immaculate courses with fairways like plush carpet and greens like billiard tables.”

Gardening and golfApart from playing golf, Duncan looks after a large garden at their Makaraka home and he and Gwen are booked up well in advance by their son and daughter to help look after their four “wonderful” grandchildren who live in Dunedin and Hamilton.

“If we’d known grandchildren were so much fun, we’d have had them first,” he says.

Reflecting on two months’ of retirement, Duncan says, “a few guys I went through university with who had already retired said ‘you will know when it’s time to retire and when you do, you won’t regret it’.

“I agree 100 percent. I have no regrets.”

But he renewed his practising certificate for 2016, just in case.

“It was like taking out an insurance policy. I could do locum work if I did regret retiring, but I don’t.”