January 1 is not just the first day of the new year. It is the first day of Jon Kochanski's new life. After 49 years as a doctor, he has retired.
"I think I'm going to miss it a lot more than I realise," Dr Kochanski said, sitting in the Watt Street surgery he'd occupied for the past 44 years as a general practitioner.
He planned to finish up last week, but then word spread about his retirement.
"Because it was so busy, I just couldn't shut down," Dr Kochanski said. "People were ringing up all the time."
On the final day of 2019, and his last as a GP, the waiting room was finally empty. Instead, Jon Kochanski was going through hundreds of patient files - "I don't want to count them!". He also stepped out of the surgery to make one last round of house calls. Among those Dr Kochanski visited was his oldest patient, 97-year-old Thomas Anderson.
"It was a race to see what happened first; me reaching 100, or him retiring," said Mr Anderson.
He is disappointed his doctor of more than 30 years won the race.
"I don't want him to retire," Mr Anderson said. "He's kept me alive for a long time."
The son of Polish refugees, Jon Kochanski came to Newcastle in 1971 after finishing his studies in Sydney. He planned to stay a year working in local hospitals. Instead, he made a life and a career here. In the process, he has made a lot of friends among his patients.
"It will be quite sad saying goodbye to my old regulars," Dr Kochanski said.
For more than 40 years, Jon Kochanski was the doctor for the Wanderers rugby union club. Since 1975, he had been a port doctor, attending to the medical needs of visiting seamen.
"You just didn't know what you were going to get," he said. "I saw numerous cases of malaria, I saw not infrequently tuberculosis.
"I became a VD expert! I knew more about gonorrhea, syphilis and herpes than any other GP in this town.
"I'm searching for a doctor to take over the shipping."
Jon Kochanski felt it was time to retire. Increasing corporatisation was changing the industry and solo practices like his were disappearing. What's more, he said, it was hard to run a practice in the CBD these days, with numbers dwindling, because, frankly, "the town's f..ked".
"I think we've had too much disruption," he said. "It's just not the town [CBD] it was."
So while many wake up with a hangover, Jon Kochanski is opening his eyes to his future.
"I'm going to be possibly a bit lost," he said.
"But I have a caravan and I've upgraded my fishing boat. And I've bought a '66 Mustang, which I've wanted for many, many years. So I've got some toys.
"I think I'm right."
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