To watch the movie "So Well Remembered", click here
Hearing that John Mills, formerly pharmacist of Rabaul Pharmacy, had just passed away at age 86, reminded me almost immediately of the title of a book by one of my favourite authors, James Hilton - remember "Goodbye, Mr Chips"? - , which sums up everything about John Mills: "So Well Remembered".
My memories of Rabaul are getting as hazy as this old photograph of John 'Pills' Mills, standing outside Rabaul Pharmacy with his staff, none of whom I remember except for the attractive Chinese assistant standing to his right. ( I was told by the man himself that the "attractive assistant" I'd been thinking of was Claudia Tang, a Rabaul Chinese and pharmacy post-grad from Sydney University who in the 1970s worked for John Mills, but that this photo was taken three years earlier in 1967.)
It was 1970 and I was a young audit clerk with the firm of chartered accountants of Hancock, Woodward & Neill, and we kept John Dowling's accounts, including Rabaul Pharmacy's debtors ledger. Our backdoors faced each other and John Mills and his staff regularly visited our office to check on some customer accounts.
I left Rabaul at the end of 1970 for the Bougainville Copper Project "next door", but John Mills stayed on for many more years before returning to Australia where he bought his own pharmacy in Nambucca Heads which he operated for 20 years. He became a locum for the next 23 years, working in various pharmacies from Kempsey to Coffs Harbour.
He then launched himself into a whole string of volunteer jobs, from Meals on Wheels to the Salvation Army, and, ever the humble "Pills Mills", was still dumbfounded when awarded the Order of Australia.
John has put away for good his mortar and pestle which is sad, but he will remain forever, at least for me, the man "so well remembered".
P.S. For a valedictory in John Mills' local paper, the "News of the Area Nambucca Valley", click here.
