‘Saved thousands of lives’: Gale Duffield of Duffields’ Pharmacy dies, aged 92
Gale Duffield has died aged 92. The former Flinders St pharmacist was an active figure of old Townsville, helping run Rotary, boat club, and the 9th Field Ambulance. OBITUARY.
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Gale Duffield, formerly of Townsville, has died aged 92.
A pharmacist by trade, Gale grew up in Townsville and was 10 years old when the town was occupied by the Allied Forces in 1942.
Gale’s brother Lee Duffield said his brother could remember as a child going to North Ward to see Japanese prisoners of war being held captive inside a tennis court.
“He told me the kids would chuck stones at the men,” Lee said.
“Gale would also go to the airport and was very good at telling the different aircraft apart and he remembers seeing planes coming back with damage from the Battle of the Coral Sea.”
Gale was the oldest of three children, and followed his father William Arnold Duffield into the pharmacist trade and eventually took over the family store ‘Duffields’ Pharmacy’ in Flinders St.
At its peak Duffields’ Pharmacy also had a Hermit Park, West End and Gulliver store.
“The pharmacy was large for its time, but a lot of the older businesses were being overtaken and their customers weren’t going to Flinders St anymore, instead they went to the large shopping centres,” Lee said.
“Duffields’ Pharmacy got smaller, but Gale kept it going and he did quite well.”
As a young man, Gale joined the army reservists in 1955 where he worked in the 9th Field Ambulance, eventually making Captain in 1982.
“They would go off into the bush and run a hospital for all the units,” Lee said.
“He had to deal with a lot of dengue fever (among the soldiers) and things like that.”
Not content with just two passions, Gale was also a keen sailor and was so into his yachts he became the Commodore of the motorboat club (now Townsville Yacht Club).
But three passions still wasn’t enough, while running the pharmacy in Townsville Gale also joined Rotary International where he helped organise collections of unused drugs, which Rotary then sent to PNG.
“That was a very detailed task because Gale and the other pharmacists would get these drugs in and they’d have to look at the tablets and identify them and label them,” Lee said.
“The drugs went to people couldn’t ever afford them. It probably saved thousands of lives, and it was just a small group of Queensland chemists who did it.”
Gale continued to work, live, volunteer, and generally be incredibly busy in Townsville until 1984 when the government offered Duffields’ Pharmacy a buyout.
Previously, Queensland law meant a pharmacy could only be owned by a registered pharmacist, which meant the trade was run entirely by thousands of small, independent sole-trader stores.
When the law was changed, franchises and wholesalers came into the market, and the Australian Government became concerned about the ‘oversupply’ of stores.
Lee said his brother was offered a buyout that was roughly $40,000 at the time, if he agreed to amalgamate Duffield Pharmacy with another pharmacy on Flinders St.
After agreeing to the deal, Gale transferred from the army reserves into the regular army in 1985 and was relocated to South-East Queensland where he looked after the army’s drug dispensary at Yeronga and later Enoggera.
Gale retired from the army in 1995, but continued to be involved in Rotary and went on several adventurous retiree trips to places like Dubai and Iceland.
“Everyone who knew Gale would tell you he was a passionate and emotional man,” Lee said.
“He had to make a difference. He always felt keen satisfaction with what he was doing, and keen disappointment if it didn’t work out.”
Lee said his brother - who was 15 years older than him - was like a ‘second father’ to him.
“He taught me what sort of music came from the 18th century, what was from the 19th century, he was the sort of bloke who carried a lot of knowledge and was always inquiring.
He went off and got a pocket-sized transistor radio before anyone else, which Gale believed was the first transistor radio in Townsville,” he said.
“When personal computers were invented in the mid-80s many people were terrified of them, concerned about artificial intelligence and the AI things we have now, but not Gale. He got a computer, set up all his files, and more or less learnt by experimenting with it.”
Lee said his brother always “set a high bar for himself”
“Well into his 80s he could be found working on boats and organising the Bunnings sausage sizzle for his bowls club,” Lee said.
Gale succumbed to complications of a chronic heart condition on Monday, February 10, 2025.
He is survived by his wife Nancy May, and daughters Anita and Susan.
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