Frank is originally Malaysian Chinese but trained and worked in England and Scotland before heading to New Zealand with his young family.
"At that time it was very hard to get into GP training and I was working in [UK] hospitals and they're all trainee posts. We changed jobs every 18 months so it was not very satisfactory," Frank recalls.
"My younger brother bought the practice next door [the former Town Centre Surgery in Turangi] and wanted to go back down to Palmerston North so he asked me if I was interested in taking over the practice."
The Liaw family soon settled into life in Turangi. Son Lee and daughter Jolyn were raised in the town and Frank and Irene worked together at the surgery.
"My family fitted in quite well and my wife, she quite likes small places so we were actually quite happy with it and the children were at local schools. No GP can live in one place for long without their wife's support."
Turangi was then a thriving town with 7000 people, full employment, three GPs and two doctors' surgeries - Town Centre Surgery and Patikura Surgery. For a doctor, it was a very busy time.
As well as weekday surgeries, ambulances brought the sick and injured directly to the doctors to be checked before transport to hospital, or they were called out to road accidents.
The doctors also had to take turns at being on call after hours. For one weekend in every three, from Friday evening until Monday morning, Frank ran Saturday clinics and the rest of the time had to stay near the phone.
If he didn't hang the phone up properly and calls couldn't come through, the operator would blow a whistle down the line to get his attention. He was in constant demand.
"At that time, after midnight if you didn't get called out to see three patients you had a lucky night," Frank says.
"Three days on call was quite harsh on the children. They would ask on a Friday 'Dad, are you on call?' and if I said yes, they wouldn't say anything else. On the weekends off, we'd always try to go somewhere as a family."
The on-call stopped nine years ago after the other doctors in town and the district health board realised that attracting new local GPs was impossible if they were expected to be on call so often. Frank says it took him two years to get used to not being rung every time he heard a siren go off.
Eight years ago he sold the Town Centre Surgery and moved across to the Turangi Community Health Centre to work for Pihanga Health, relieving the stress of running a business and trying to find locums.
After 35 years, he still enjoys his work.
"Oh yes, especially the last 10 years. You learn on the job ... you're always learning new things. As the years go by, you know the families well. I've been seeing quite a few fourth generation patients so you know the background and the history so that makes the work easier, rather than seeing a new patient and asking them from scratch about their history."
Frank says Turangi people's health has improved over the last decade with better home insulation and high immunisation rates.
"In the 80s I'd see five or six children with runny ears a day. Now I don't even see one in two or three months, so children's health has improved a lot."
He credits his long service to the support of his family.
"I wouldn't have been able to live and work here for so long. You need harmony at home and support, and Irene understood. Some days when I got back I'd talk for an hour or two about the day's patients - no names mentioned - and she knew that I needed to talk it out."
He says while he'll miss being a GP, he's ready for the next stage of life. Lee is now a chemical process engineer in Christchurch and Jolyn a chartered accountant in Auckland.
Irene retired eight years ago when Frank moved to Pihanga Health and he's looking forward to doing more travelling.
"I'm good and busy doing nothing," he jokes.
"I want to go to the gym four or five times a week and do some extra fishing."
