Bore Hoekstra had no trouble integrating into the local community when he arrived in Warrnambool more than three decades ago to head up the base hospital's physio department.

Staff and community couldn't have been more accommodating to the Dutch immigrant and his young family.

Coming to grips with the Aussie vernacular was another matter altogether.

Despite being fluent in English and even Swahili, colloquialisms like "Bob's your uncle" and "She'll be right" had Bore baffled.

"I had a little green book that I used to write all the expressions in that I didn't understand so I could learn them," he laughed. "I had to learn Australian."

The little green book has long gone but the sentiment behind one particular phrase still resonates.

"No worries mate," came to epitomise the humour and positive, relaxed Aussie attitude to life that he has made his own.

"'Dutchies' are a serious lot. I think I have learnt the optimism of Aussie humour," Bore reflected as the chapter closed last week on his 33-year career with the hospital.

"That has really helped me through."

So well did he master the Aussie sense of humour, the self-styled cartoonist channelled it into his drawings.

For two years, Bore's political cartoons had a weekly spot in The Standard and he maintains a long-standing engagement with the Warrnambool Racing Club to produce the caricature portraits of the May Racing Carnival ambassadors.

Most of his colleagues have at some time been captured in caricature and even the recent email to hospital staff announcing his own retirement this week included a parting "selfie" cartoon.

At 72, Bore has no regrets about bowing out of the job he loves.

"If I had my time over, I would do it all again. Although I love the work, I'm happy to be walking away. I realise that it's time to move on," he said.

Bore came to South West Healthcare in February 1986 to take up the role of chief physiotherapist.

In search of a new challenge, he'd quit his job as department head of a rehabilitation centre in Utrecht, Holland, with his sights set on Australia.

Bore and his wife Anita, a child psychologist and classically-trained pianist, and their three little girls moved half-way round the world to Melbourne for a six-week locum position.

On weekends he would travel across the state interviewing for jobs at regional hospitals.

As an accredited hospital of a substantial size, along with the offer of a house and car, Warrnambool was Bore's first choice.

When the Lake Pertobe playground got the children's vote, the deal was sealed.

It was a time when massage tables and ultrasound machines were a physiotherapist's basic tools of trade, a sharp contrast to the fully-equipped gym that is today's focus of patient recovery and testament to the swing from passive to active patient involvement.

"It was very hands-on then, with manipulation and putting sound on people," Bore recalled.

"Patients came to be treated. Now exercise has become a much more important part of the treatment with a greater emphasis on the patient taking on a self-management role.

"It's a different mindset and a good one. We're giving responsibility back to the patient and we give them the tools and the means to do it. They have to exercise to deal with the pain."

He cites the case of hip and knee replacements as prime examples of the shift from "rehab to prehab".

"If people are coming in for a new hip or knee, we put them on a 12-month training program beforehand to build up their muscle strength and educate them in what to expect," he said.

"By the time they come to hospital for surgery, they're much better prepared.

"In the early days, we had wards where people stayed for months. Now they're sent home in three or four days."

It was also the era before the hospital's no-lifting policy was introduced with part of Bore's role to educate nurses and general staff in safe manual patient lifting techniques.

As a workplace safety officer, he was also involved in staff well-being.

"I really enjoyed it because it was hands-on, practical work. I felt part of the team," Bore said.

The hospital's physio department has come a long way since Bore first took the helm.

Stage one of a major hospital redevelopment completed in 2011 paved the way for a significant expansion in staff, facilities and service delivery.

Physio numbers more than trebled from fewer than 10 to today's complement of around 30 clinicians.

The sheer volume of patient numbers has also led to a greater role for physiotherapists in taking on more pre and post-surgical tasks, freeing up surgeons for their primary role of surgery.

"Physiotherapists are well trained to take over part of the role that surgeons used to do," Bore said.

For a clinician whose MO is very much hands-on, the expansion came with the downside of a greater administrative component.

"With the new building came new structures of management and more managers to deal with," Bore explained.

"My role became a full-time management one, but that's not me. I never wanted to sit behind a computer all day.

"More time was being spent on documentation and data input."

His response was to step down as department head six years ago to take on the senior clinician's role, freeing him to concentrate on patient treatment.

Outpatient clinics and even pre and post-natal clinics have been regular aspects of his work.

It was this desire to help people at a grassroots level that drew Bore, as a new graduate in the mid-1970s, to voluntary work in Africa with the Organisation of Netherland Volunteers.

Under challenging and often primitive conditions in Kenya's Rift Valley province, he spent two-and-a-half years caring for polio patients, casualties of a failed vaccination program. The majority of them were children.

With his equipment packed in the back of his car, Bore would tackle rough dirt roads to bring his mobile service to 23 remote polio clinics, clocking up 120,000 kilometres during that time.

Sometimes under the shade of a tree, or if he was lucky, in a hospital or health centre, he would teach his young patients to walk again, how to stretch their limbs and fit them with callipers.

As part of the couple's preparation, he and Anita, who headed an orphanage of 40 children during their stay, learnt to speak Swahili in a four-month crash course and lived with a local family for a week.

"We worked so hard, but it was very rewarding," he reflected. "It was a real eye-opener."

For Bore, the prospect of retirement offers the chance to spend more time with family and grandchildren and his other passion of music.

An accomplished pianist and organist, Bore's preferred instrument these days is the cello, which he plays as a member of the Warrnambool Symphony Orchestra.

He has also not ruled out the possibility of continuing with a little private physiotherapy work.

Bore might have adopted the Aussie way of life, but he has never forgotten his Dutch roots.

Within a few years of settling in Warrnambool, he had founded the city's first Dutch Community Group of which he remains president 30 years on.

With a membership of about 120, the group holds several events annually and broadcasts a weekly radio program titled Keep in Touch with the Dutch.

Regarded as "the invisible migrants" because of their success in blending into the community, Bore felt bound to acknowledge the contribution of his fellow 'Dutchies' in the south-west.

The resultant publication, Clog Wogs, is Bore's tribute to seven Dutch migrant families who made their mark in the community.

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