Peter Charles | Sports Podiatrist Bardon, Brisbane

Sports Podiatrist & Director, Shoes Feet Gear

Peter consults at Shoes Feet Gear, 148 Boundary Road, Bardon — a sports podiatry clinic and run specialty store in Brisbane's inner west, adjacent to Mount Coot-tha.

Qualifications	BSc (Biomedicine), University of Queensland, 2000 B Hlth Sc (Pod), Queensland University of Technology, 2004
AHPRA Registration	POD0000963146 — Verify my registration
Registered since	December 2004 (21+ years)
Memberships	Member, Australian Podiatry Association (MAPodA) Member, Sports Medicine Australia (SMA) Member, Sport and Exercise Podiatry Association (SEPA) — View SEPA profile
Special interests	Running injuries, biomechanical assessment, prescription orthotics, junior and school sport injuries, footwear prescription
Clinic	Shoes Feet Gear, 148 Boundary Rd, Bardon QLD 4065

Clinical approach

Peter's clinical philosophy is straightforward: keep people active. The research on movement and fitness is unambiguous — regular physical activity is one of the most powerful determinants of how long people live and how well they live. Sport and exercise also matter for mental health, for managing chronic conditions, and for the social connection that comes from being part of a sporting community — particularly for children and teenagers. When Peter resolves someone's pain, he isn't just fixing a foot problem. He's helping them stay in the game, in every sense.

With over 21 years of clinical experience focused almost exclusively on injury and sport, Peter's caseload looks very different from a general podiatry practice. Most family or general podiatrists will see the occasional sports injury or difficult paediatric case in their clinical week. Peter's days are full of them. That depth of specialist exposure — seeing complex, persistent and previously unresolved cases day after day — builds a pattern recognition and clinical instinct that is difficult to replicate in a general setting. It is why patients with difficult problems that haven't responded elsewhere tend to find their way to Shoes Feet Gear.

Background and experience

Peter grew up in Central Queensland with a deep love of competitive sport — enough to move to Brisbane for boarding school to pursue an elite basketball program. He went on to complete a Bachelor of Science (Biomedicine) at the University of Queensland and a Bachelor of Health Science (Podiatry) at QUT. The biomedical science foundation gives Peter a broad understanding of musculoskeletal problems that informs his clinical reasoning across complex cases.

Graduating in 2004, Peter immediately founded Gladstone Podiatry with his wife Rachel — a large group podiatry and footwear practice that grew to become the region's leading clinic. In 2010, Peter and Rachel opened Shoes Feet Gear in Bardon, combining a specialist running store with an attached sports podiatry clinic. The integration of retail and clinical practice is deliberate: footwear selection and podiatry treatment are inseparable parts of the same problem. In 2019, Gladstone Podiatry was sold to allow full focus on Shoes Feet Gear.

Peter has supervised final-year podiatry students at QUT and has served as a Queensland board member of the Australian Association of Podiatric Sports Medicine, helping to shape the professional development of sports podiatry in Queensland.

Peter took up running after meeting Rachel, herself a runner, and has since completed marathons. He still surfs regularly and plays touch football — firsthand experience of training, racing and managing load that informs how he works with athletes at every level, from junior school sport through to masters competitors and elite athletes.

Footwear expertise

Since 2010, Peter has worked as a prototype wear tester for major running shoe brands including ASICS, Mizuno and Nike. Brands draw on his combination of clinical, retail and running experience to get feedback on prototype models before they reach market. The insight into shoe design — often one to two years ahead of release — directly informs how Peter prescribes footwear for patients, particularly runners managing injury or transitioning between shoe types.

Clinical content

Peter has written clinical content across a range of lower limb conditions treated at Shoes Feet Gear:

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