When the Border Control official at London's Heathrow airport asked Rod Hunt-Sharp what he did for a living he replied, 'I deal in drugs.' Which was true, but not in the way the official took it to mean. And not the wisest of replies in such circumstances.
Ruffled feathers were eventually soothed and Rod was sent on his way to begin a new life and a new career far from where he started out as the son of the local policeman in a remote Queensland community.
He survived bullying and prejudice at school and university, and been rejected for national service on worrying medical grounds. Now he faced the challenge of being an unworldly young Australian plunged into the Britain of the 'Swinging Sixties'.
For the next fifty years or so he did as he had told the immigration official he would do - he dealt in drugs. But these were the preventative and curative medicines prescribed by hospitals and family doctors.
Rod was a pharmacist. A skilled member of a highly specialised world that few understand but on which everyone depends. After working behind the scenes in major UK hospitals he returned to Australia - with an English wife - to risk all by setting up his own pharmacies and rising to the heights of his profession.
The challenges and setbacks he faced were many and varied. He was always aware of the community's unwavering trust in pharmacies and the services and medicines they provide. Mistakes are rare, continual checking is essential. Even errors in a GP's prescription are the responsibility of the pharmacist.
Pills and Potions delves into life behind the dispensary of an average suburban pharmacy to a backdrop of an entertaining account of a young Australian's encounter with the British way of life.
It explains the puzzling terminology and the role of Latin, unravels the ingredients of well-known concoctions and their uses, delves into pharmacy's long history and looks at what goes on in the restricted world few of us are allowed to enter.
Hunt-Sharp, Rod: - The young Rod Hunt-Sharp had an unsettled and challenging start to life. He continually had to make new friends from different backgrounds as his police officer father was transferred to stations throughout Queensland.He secured a good scholarship examination pass at Taringa State School and then went to Brisbane Boys' College where he received full colours for tennis before matriculating to the University of Queensland. Enrolled in the relatively new faculty of pharmacy, he passed all three years to be awarded a Bachelor of Pharmacy. Only when called up for national service did medical examinations reveal he had contracted renal tuberculosis, which was later confirmed after additional testing when he was working and travelling in the United Kingdom. Fortunately his relatives in London included the chairman of the Port of London Authority, Viscount Simon and his wife, who provided him with accommodation at PLA headquarters overlooking the Tower of London and invited him to functions such as the River Thames Pageant.Hospitalisation and employment at major London hospitals helped him become highly skilled in paediatric dispensing. Later, as deputy chief pharmacist at Poole General Hospital, he was for a time in charge of sterile dispensing, which was further good experience.Eventually returning to Australia, with English wife Gillian, Rod established the Campus Pharmacy at the University of Queensland and overcame numerous professional and personal setbacks and challenges.Rod has maintained a keen interest in tennis ever since playing competitive tennis in Under-11 years tournaments at the Milton Tennis Centre in Brisbane. As a qualified high-level professional coach, he coached GPS girls at St Peter's Lutheran College, and on his own court at Fig Tree Pocket in Brisbane. Marriage to Gillian was a memorable fairytale wedding, with Viscount and Lady Simon standing in for his parents. 'Ten-pound poms' were in vogue when the newlyweds boarded the Fairsky and sailed home to Brisbane for a new chapter in a rich and varied life.Rod retired after selling Campus Pharmacy in 2005. He and Gillian now enjoy family time with their children, Sara and Peter, and four grandchildren.Rod still enjoys a gin and tonic, which he first had on the Queen's Barge as the guest of the then harbourmaster as it led the River Thames Pageant in London and where Rod suffered his first bout of motion sickness.
