Pharmacist marks 40 years at 'five-year' job
JONO GALUSZKA
WARWICK SMITH/Fairfax NZ
LONG SERVICE: Graham Platt will
have owned his pharmacy in Bulls for
40 years on Tuesday. He says the
pharmaceutical trade has changed
remarkably since he started.
Graham Platt will mark 40 years as the owner-operator of Platt's Pharmacy on November 22, making him the longest-serving owner of a pharmacy in the region.
The pharmacy was established in the 1870s, and moved to Bridge St before Mr Platt bought it in 1971.
While he ran solely pharmacy services at first, he soon established a co-operative and opened a photo processing laboratory on High St, across the road from the pharmacy's current location.
The photo lab quickly turned into one of the busiest in the country, fielding customers from Taupo to Wellington, he said.
The pharmacy was also the first franchised postal outlet in the country in 1995, and was selected as the trial site for printing vehicle registrations at the same time.
Having to do a bit of everything had kept Mr Platt busy, he said, but it was part and parcel of running a pharmacy in a small town.
"Many towns of our size no longer have a pharmacy, but we are very lucky to have a large, loyal customer base."
But not all the people in the area have been good to Mr Platt. His shop has been burgled "about 40 or 50 times" over the years, he said. The most serious was an armed holdup in 1997, when he and his wife were threatened with a shotgun and a knife.
"The thing that frightened me the most was that they put the barrel on my back and were cocking the gun," Mr Platt said.
He had also had a car plough through his shop window seven years ago, and was off work for eight months in 1996 when a car ran him and his Harley Davidson motorcycle off the road, pulverising his right leg.
"It was extremely difficult, because we had to bring in people from all across the country," he said.
"There were chemists coming in all the way from Hawke's Bay."
But the pharmacy went on, with the local community keeping him going, he said.
"People were bringing in food parcels and flowers and all sorts – they were great."
Having run the pharmacy for so long, Mr Platt said he had seen generations of customers and employees come through his doors.
He had also seen a change in the attitude towards medication.
Recreational drugs when he started out were for "old Chinese men in the opium dens in Wellington".
"These days you get kids who see anything and they'll take it."
Medication mixtures were also never made on site any more, with his pill-making gear having sat idle for decades. "It's only the old pharmacy owners who will have this, as the new guys have never needed to use it."
- Manawatu Standard
