Dr Cormack and his wife Karen moved to the small North West community almost three decades ago to be the sole GP in the 'one doctor town', but as of yesterday, the title lays in someone else's hands.

Dr Cormack said it was a sad moment when he handed over the practice, but was recognised for his hard work in the community at a barbecue last week.

"There's bound to be a little bit of sadness in leaving, we're not leaving Hughenden yet but probably will eventually," he said.

Dr Cormack said moving to Hughenden in the eighties wasn't as much of a culture shock as may have been expected, and his background may be the key to finding exactly why the doctor and his wife spent so much time in the small town.

"It's not a bad place to be at all, when we moved here I had been living in southern Queensland, saw the job going and thought it seemed like a good idea at the time," he said.

What started as a decision on a whim soon turned into a lifestyle the pair would keep for the next three decades.

"It wasn't a culture shock for me at all, I was born west of the range myself and was used to the small towns," he said.

"My wife is from a country town as well but more northern New South Wales so she was more accustomed to the beach - originally she was trained as a school teacher but we thought she could do better looking after things at the surgery and she was really quite good at it, she would've been there 20 years with me now."

In a time of much media debate and discussion regarding the retention of health professionals and in particular doctors, Dr Cormack says there's no trick to keeping doctors around if you find the right people.

"It was a lot easier for me because I was brought up in a similar area, but the spouses and the children are the hard part, getting them on board," he said.

"You're on call for a long time as the only doctor in town but otherwise it's not a lot different and we all work away at the same sort of thing and go home at night - whether you're in the city or the country, people have the same illnesses and injuries."

Dr Cormack said one notable difference between urban and rural medicine was accountability.

"Accountability is different in the country to what it is in the city, our bosses here are all in the city and they don't realise this, but accountability happens in the post office and the grocery shop where you can't avoid people," he said.

"There's no clocking off as such."

The Hughenden Town and Country Club announced a bursary in Dr Cormack's name at last week's community barbecue for aspiring rural medical students, something he said was a huge surprise and possibly even a little over-the-top for the shy town doctor.

He did say however he believed if universities and training institutions continued to provide rural medical applicants with a little favourability, the shortage of health professionals in regional areas could eventually fix itself naturally.

"There are people who like living in the country and their partners don't always like it but if they do it's a good opportunity," he said.

"At James Cook University they actually consider where people come from when they are allowing them into the medical course, and country people tend to get a tiny bit of preference which I think should help with getting rural doctors.

"It can be a culture shock for some moving to places like this but if it's not, for example if you grew up in a rural area, people are more likely to accept it. "For me it was more of a shock working in the city than working out here to be honest."

For now Dr Cormack and his wife will continue living the retired life in Hughenden, before considering moving on to visit one of their five children or to experience somewhere entirely new outside of the North West.