Every surface is occupied and the mix of items is eclectic: a crocodile skull, a wooden carving of a bird of paradise, a trio of arrows, a large black and white picture of a Papua New Guinean man in full dress.
The walls are a mosaic of posters, artworks, newspaper clippings and personal photographs taken on a Kodak Retina bought in a Darwin shop in 1957.
If it weren't for the anatomical diagrams of ears and noses, the many framed degrees and medical instruments in amongst it all, this small suburban doctor's practice could be mistaken for a museum.
Everything here has a backstory, as does the office's owner, Dr Albert Foreman.
As general practitioner with a special interest in ear, nose and throat, Dr Foreman has peered into the ears of thousands of Territorians, and at age 91, he is likely one of Australia's oldest practising doctors.
"Medicine's good for you. It gets me out of bed."
His work as a doctor has taken him all over the world, including stints in Swaziland, Tanzania, Israel, India and to a refugee camp in Ethiopia at the height of the famine in the 1980s.
It's also sent him around the outback, from the Port Augusta Flying Doctors Service, to hospitals in Alice Springs, Katherine, and eventually Darwin.
Now he spends his days doing routine procedures at his suburban surgery.
"I still enjoy what I'm doing, even if I'm only cleaning out mucky ears," he said.
"I'll keep going as long as I'm able, but of course I can't go on forever."
Making a contribution
According to the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics data, the average age of retirement for Australians is 55.4 years, although several studies show doctors typically retire much later than other professions.
In amongst the newspaper clippings on Dr Foreman's waiting room wall, a cluster of articles feature other local medical professionals who continued practising until late in life, including friend and colleague Dr Edwin 'Ted' Milliken, who in 2018 was still working as a psychologist in Fannie Bay, aged 100.
Australian Medical Association NT president Dr Robert Parker said the later retirement age for doctors was about more than just enjoying the work.
"It's about making a contribution to society," he said.
Dr Foreman, who in 2017 received an OAM for his service to medicine, particularly in rural and remote areas, has been running his clinic with his wife Eugenia since he left his position as an assistant surgeon at Royal Darwin Hospital in 1998, aged 70.
"This was my retirement job," he said.
Alongside his commitment to his patients, Dr Foreman also attributes his long working life to his late entry into medicine, which he only began studying as a 40-year-old in Papua New Guinea.
"Because I started late, working this long is almost in part to justify getting in [to study medicine]."
Engineering the Territory
Before medicine, Dr Foreman had several careers, and Territorians who haven't found themselves as one of his patients, have almost certainly encountered his earlier work in the roads, airstrips, bridges and sanitation they use daily.
He first came to the Territory in 1957 as a civil engineer with the Commonwealth Works Department, working briefly in Darwin on projects including the Ludmilla subdivision and the Parap water tower.
He also supervised a team dredging the harbour for unexploded bombs.
He then spent four years in and around Alice and the Barkly region doing town water supply, sanitation and sewerage works, as well as working on the highways and bush roads.
"At that time I knew every pothole and defect on the Barkly as far as up to Newcastle Waters," he said.
Engineering also took him to Katherine, where he was part of the team who built the first bridge over the King River after the war, and worked on the Borroloola, Timber Creek and Roper River roads.
"There was no air-conditioning or anything back then, but I thought it was wonderful," he said.
The path to medicine
Dr Foreman said he often felt like a misfit in engineering, so he left the profession to study theology.
He became eligible to be ordained as an Anglican priest, but decided against it in favour of a position as senior engineer for roads and aerodromes in Papua New Guinea.
It was a cushy role, but he took another detour to teach mathematics at the university in Port Moresby, before leaving engineering for good and applying to study medicine in 1971.
The Dean of Medicine in Port Moresby, Professor Ian Maddocks (now an eminent palliative care specialist who was awarded 2013 Senior Australian of the Year) initially rejected his application, saying at age 40, he was too old to enter the medical profession.
"But he was overruled by others on the committee, and I got in," Dr Foreman said.
Time to reflect
Now suffering hearing loss himself, Dr Foreman said, on reflection, it was probably his childhood that sparked his initial interest in ears.
"I grew up with a deaf father," he explained.
"He had Ménière's disease … and he gradually went stone deaf.
Dr Foreman said his father lived to age 90, adding that he was the first in his family to make it to 91.
Although he has no plans to retire any time soon, Dr Foreman said he intends to drop a day or two soon.
"I'm going to cut down to five days a week, I've got a lot to clean up," he said, looking around at the shelves in his waiting room overflowing with journals, books and even his old university lecture notes, to which he still occasionally refers.
"Imagine if I died suddenly, the nightmare this would be," he said.
