The GP who made ripples around the world

‘You’ve got to realise that I’m just on a working holiday since I came out from the UK 48 years ago.’
 
Dr Geoff Taylor never intended to stay in Australia. In 1978, the newlywed British-born doctor had plans with his wife to stop in Western Australia for perhaps a year or so, then continue to Papua New Guinea.
 
Safe to say, it didn’t work out that way.
 
‘I still always say “we’re on our way to New Guinea, but we’ve sort of got stuck in Australia”,’ he jokes.
 
‘We were seduced by the scuba diving and the blue seas and the sunshine here, and ended up thinking, “what are we going back to the UK for?”.’
 
Now 75, Dr Taylor laughs often as he recounts the many turns of events that led him to make a life in general practice in remote Western Australia.
 
He retired five years ago at the age of 70, after 43 years of caring for patients. While that is a major achievement in itself – and one that earned him a Medal of the Order of Australia in this year’s Australia Day honours – it isn’t the one that has made him world-renowned.
 
Geoff Taylor’s name has become synonymous with whale sharks, the rarely sighted ocean giants that long remained a mystery to environmentalists and scientists – until he began seeking them out.
 
Dr Taylor is now recognised as a world authority on what is officially the largest fish in the sea, which grow to more than 12 metres in length and feed on plankton (conversely one of the ocean’s smallest creatures).
 
As the author of Whale Sharks: The Giants of Ningaloo Reef, and a keen underwater photographer and filmographer, Dr Taylor became the first person to document whale sharks and to connect their seasonal movements with the annual coral spawning of the World Heritage-listed Ningaloo Reef, which extends some 260 kilometres along the WA coastline.
 
His discovery led to what is now a jewel of WA tourism, with tightly managed whale shark tours and dives injecting an annual $20 million into the local economy.
 
Growing up in North Yorkshire, the nature-loving Dr Taylor became a keen birdwatcher. He also watched ocean and diving documentaries by legendary sea explorers Jacques Cousteau and Hans Hass, which fuelled his own dreams of adventure, and a drive to scuba dive.
 
It was his desire to ‘contribute’ that led him into medicine, but his sense of adventure meant he would unlikely ever make his career on home soil.
 
‘I was really looking for adventure, but the most exciting thing you’d do at the weekend in the UK was to go for a walk on the moors somewhere, have a pub lunch and sleep for the afternoon; there was nothing threatening your life,’ he tells newsGP.
 
‘You haven’t lived until you’ve lived among something life-threatening.’
 
Dr Taylor completed his first degree in medical sciences at Queens College in Cambridge. While most people usually then went to London to complete their medical degree, Taylor, who ‘hated cities’, chose to do the second part of his degree at the smaller Oxford.
 
There, he obtained his membership of Britain’s Royal College of Physicians before spending six months studying obstetrics at Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital.
 
While there, he became good friends with an Australian Sister working on the ward. One day she told Dr Taylor she was planning to return home to Perth.
 
It sparked an idea in Dr Taylor, who already intended to go to Papua New Guinea to work.
 
‘I knew some guys in Oxford who’d gone and worked in the highlands of New Guinea and had a wonderful time; they’d come back full of stories of great adventures,’ he said.
 
‘Then I thought, “well, maybe I’ll have a year in Australia first”.’
 


Arriving in Perth in 1978, Dr Taylor’s first job was as a medical registrar with the then-named Northwest Medical Service in rural Perth. While he still intended to work in Papua New Guinea, communication challenges soon scuppered those plans.
 
‘It was so hard to communicate with New Guinea, that by the time I got an answer back as to whether I had a job, I’d had to commit to doing a second year in Perth,’ he said.
 
Surprisingly, although a member of Britain’s Royal College of Physicians, Dr Taylor says he ‘never qualified as a general practitioner’ in Australia.
 
‘I was grandfathered into general practice,’ he said.
 
‘Although I had the specialist qualification, I got here too late to have that recognised immediately by Australia – they wanted me to do more exams.
 
‘And they weren’t going to recognise the time I’d done as a registrar at Royal Perth with all the other trainees, so I thought, “I’m just going to go back up north and work for the Northwest Medical Service for a couple of years”.
 
‘And in my mind, I had this little idea: “I’m going to go and look for whale sharks”.’
 
In 1980 he got his chance. He went on a six-week expedition with the West Australian Museum as an accompanying doctor while the museum staff explored a Japanese warship wreck at Ningaloo. There, the sighting of a single whale shark excited everyone on the boat.
 
‘Jacques Cousteau only ever saw two whale sharks in the whole of his time traveling oceans,’ said Dr Taylor.
 
‘I really fell in love with that coast, and had a yearn to get back there, so I thought “I’m going to go and work in Exmouth when a job comes up, and get myself a little cinecamera”.’
 
The following year, a job did indeed come up, and so began Dr Taylor’s deep dive into the world of whale sharks – all the while still practising medicine.
 
He stayed with the Northwest Medical Service until 1993, when he and his wife Jo moved from Exmouth to Busselton, about 200 kilometres south of Perth, and almost 1500 kilometres south of Exmouth. There, he continued to practise until retiring in 2020.
 
Skin cancer surgery became a prominent part of Dr Taylor’s final 10 years of practice, treating patients who had spent much of their lives working the land or the sea.
 
‘I was forced into having to do it in Exmouth; there was an awful lot of skin cancer,’ he said.
 
‘And then, I carried on down here [in Busselton] and learned to do skin grafts and rotation flaps and everything.’
 
He particularly enjoyed looking after the older, matter-of-fact Wheatbelt farmers.
 
‘You get quite fond of some of your patients, although some drive you potty,’ he says.
 
Dr Taylor and his wife still make regular pilgrimages to Exmouth, where they have had a house for the past six years.
 
Retirement has barely slowed Dr Taylor down. He has just finished building a six-metre power boat, after deciding the five-metre boat he built 26 years ago wasn’t big enough anymore, although ‘it’s still going strong’.
 
He still has a passion for medicine, and for making a difference.
 
‘All of us, we want to make some sort of mark in our lives, on society, and contribute in some way,’ he says.
 
‘I always tell young doctors that the satisfaction from medicine comes from taking responsibility and doing stuff.
 
‘The more procedural work you do, and the more hands-on care, the better.’
 
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