‘I’ve been bloody lucky’: Dr Devinder Grewal’s remarkable life

At the age of 82, Port Augusta GP Dr Devinder Grewal could be forgiven for easing his foot off the pedal a little.
 
His work has spanned more than half a century in South Australia and has led to many plaudits – and they are still coming.
 
Recently shortlisted for the statewide Australian Senior of the Year, he also received the 2024 Citizen of the Year award from his local council ‘for his unwavering dedication to providing exceptional care’.
 
He does admit to one concession to age. Once he helped oversee 29 practices; now he is involved in just one, the Augusta Westside Medical Centre.
 
In most ways, however, he is as involved in local life as he ever was.
 
He is still dedicated to supervising the next generation of rural GPs. And in the evenings, he is frequently found holding court in the bar of the Standpipe Golf Motor Inn, the thriving restaurant and accommodation venture his family took on almost by accident in 1983.
 
His journey to this eminent place in this community on the north-western shores of the Eyre Peninsula is a remarkable one, spanning continents and huge historical shifts.
 
Born in Punjab in 1942 in what was India and is now part of Pakistan, Dr Grewal is a third-generation clinician. His grandfather practised in South Africa, while his father was a psychiatrist in Malaysia.
 
After an arranged marriage in 1970, he and his new wife Surinder decided to leave the simmering tensions that had seen race riots erupt in Malaysia.
 
Despite ongoing ripples in a country only just casting off the White Australia policy, they decided to head south, via an academic detour to the UK.
 
Having studied medicine in Amritsar in India, he had already worked as a GP in Malaysia, but undertook studies in northern England as a safeguard.
 
‘I had to super-specialise into something that would allow me to come into Australia, and that was microbiology, biology and serology at Manchester University,’ Dr Grewal told newsGP.
 
In a profile for Australians: The people and their stories, a book published in 2000, Dr Grewal put it even more succinctly.
 
‘I thought if somebody wasn’t happy with my black hands delivering their white baby, I could at least handle bacteria,’ he said.
 
Once they made the move to Australia, Dr Grewal’s first stop was a lecturing post in Adelaide, but he soon felt life in the South Australian capital was not for him.
 
‘To get on, you had to be an OAF, an “old Adelaide family”,’ he said of the city in the early 1970s.
 
‘I wore a turban, a funny looking creature, so could not be an old Adelaide family.’
 
They moved to the Flinders Ranges, to Quorn, where he went back to being a GP – and swiftly fell in love.
 
‘I reverted back to general practice, and I have not looked back,’ he said.
 
‘It’s been a fabulous thing. We used to do a lot of hospital work, with a lot of interesting cases and interesting procedures.
 
‘It was good from the point of view of making sure that we got on and enjoyed the opportunity to improve our skills in medical practice.
 
‘It was just a different type of practice.’
 
That said, he does not think rural general practice clinical work has changed for the worse since those days.
 
‘I would not want to do half the things that we were doing at that time, it’s moved on and there is much better support, much better ability to handle and transfer.’
 
As for the welcome in rural South Australia, he says he could not have asked for more – and in fact believes being a practising Sikh and looking different from most other residents played in his favour.
 
‘If you get comfortable in the community you live in, the community is much more accepting,’ he said.  
 
‘In the city, you can be living in one suburb, and nobody recognises you in the next suburb.’
 

Surinder and Devinder Grewal at the Standpipe Golf Motor Inn. Picture by Anna Cornish.

His own clinical work continued to thrive after a move south-west to Port Augusta, which also led to an unexpected career twist – a thriving sideline in the hotel and restaurant industry.
 
He recalls trying to take his family out for dinner after a long, busy day delivering babies and treating ill residents, only to find the latest opening local hotel in town – the Standpipe, once a final watering hole for outback adventurers – shut by 7 o’clock.
 
Sensing a niche, as well as wanting a place serving dinner at a reasonable hour, the family took control of their own destiny.
 
‘We took it on in 1983 and there were 15 rooms, we added on more rooms and now there are 87 rooms,’ Dr Grewal said.  
 
‘The restaurant used to cope with about 45 to 50 people, now they cope with 150 people.’
 
Well worth a detour, one professional restaurant reviewer wrote just last year, it remains a true family business which has involved his wife, daughters Rupinder and Harkiran, and his son Depinder, as well as their respective families.
 
However, after spending so much of his life looking after the Port Augusta community, Dr Grewal found he needed their support after Rupinder died suddenly from a stroke at the age of 44.
 
‘There was a huge amount of outpouring of grief and love and affection to the family,’ he said.
 
Buoyed by those around him, Dr Grewal and his wife remained involved in the running of hotel – something they have no plans to change.
 
‘I’m only 82, I have got to work,’ he said with mock indignation when asked if he still does shifts there.
 
‘When you are young, you can do these sorts of things.’
 
Nor is he anywhere near ready to give up his clinical supervising responsibilities, saying passing on his passion for rural general practice helps keep him sharp.
 
‘I always say to people, I’m learning more medicine from them than they’re learning from me,’ he said.
 
‘But that’s great – it keeps you young, keeps you interested.’
 
As for the recent accolades, he is modest.
 
‘Those things just make you so grateful, so humbling, but it also allows you to say you must be doing something right.
 
‘The experience in Australia has been phenomenal. I have been bloody lucky.’
 
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