I was looking forward to reading the latest edition of John Murtagh’s work, perhaps the foundation stone for clinical general practice in Australia and beyond. When I began my registrar training with The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners in the 1980s, the idea that a discipline that seemingly covered ‘everything and anything’ could be purposively and succinctly compiled into a single text was effectively unknown. The idea that there was a structured approach specific to the challenges of primary care clinical presentations was similarly unavailable. The education I received was excellent but rather disease and hospital focused, as was the standard approach at that time. Even basic constructs of the clinical process required consideration of a range of texts across medical interviewing and physical examination, as the other texts were written from essentially a disease rather than clinical presentation perspective. Of note, this was prevalent across all medical specialties and not specific to the nascent specialty of general practice.