The duck story begins around 2020, with a young girl we'll call Gloria — for that is absolutely not her name — who was eleven or twelve years old when she began developing what everyone thought was Tourette's. There's no good time for that kind of thing, but there's something particularly cruel about it arriving just as you're figuring out who you are. It gets old fast.

So Gloria, her family, and Dr Stuart set off on a journey together — consulting specialists, trying new approaches, chasing answers. After a couple of years, slowly, quietly, she started to get a little better.

Along the way, Gloria had noticed something about Dr Stuart. He always wore cufflinks. His socks always matched his watch strap. And his tie too. So when the time felt right, she turned up with a gift: ducky socks, a ducky tie, ducky cufflinks, three little rubber ducks — and a handwritten note, now framed on his office wall, that read: "Thanks for helping me get my ducks in a row :)"

A very sweet and thoughtful gift, so of course Dr Stuart put the three ducks in a row right on top of his monitor. And that, it turned out, was a mistake — in the best possible way. Every child who came into the room after that wanted to hold one. He even lent one out to a kid who did a full Maggie Simpson and sucked the squeaker clean out of it.

That was the day Dr Stuart retired the lollipops. In their place: little rubber ducks. To date, he has gifted over 3,000 of them to the children who've come to see him — a vast, yellow quacking flotilla spreading out across Perth and beyond, spreading joy and earning him the nicknames like “The Duck Doctor” and “The Quack”.

And in return, patients, friends, staff, and perhaps the occasional mischievous family member have gifted ducks back to him, swelling his wild and growing menagerie.

A small act of kindness from a young girl who just wanted to say thank you — and somehow, it became something much bigger than either of them could have imagined.

Thank you Gloria.

*Dr Stuart would like it known that he does NOT need any more ducks!