This week’s speaker was Dr Wayne Ottoway, a highly experienced dentist who has served two terms as National President of the Australian Dental Association and is a member of the Australian Dental Council.

He is also a well-known hockey player and coach. In his spare time, Wayne is a devoted fan of the BBC Doctor Who television series, to the point that he has built life-size replicas of a Dalek, a K9, and the TARDIS.

Wayne is also passionate about the evolution of teeth, the variation of dentition between different animals, and the history of dentistry, drawing on his fine collection of rare books, articles, artifacts, and dental instruments.

His presentation traced the oldest known evidence of dental treatment to ‘a 59,000-year-old Neanderthal tooth from a Russian cave that shows signs of having been drilled with a stone tool’, and then spoke of the history of dentistry in ancient China, Egypt, Europe, and South America.

Finally, Wayne described the development of dental technology through to the current state of modern anaesthetics, high-speed drills, composite fillings, digital imaging, CNC milling machines, and dental implants.