125 Stories for 125 Years

125 Stories for 125 Years

Edward 'Weary' Dunlop

1907 - 1993

Sir Edward Ernest (‘Weary’) Dunlop was born in 1907 and grew up in country Victoria. After school he started an apprenticeship in a pharmacy in Benalla and moved to Melbourne to study at the college in 1927.

After completing his pharmacy studies, he was awarded a scholarship to the University of Melbourne’s Ormond College to study medicine. He excelled at university and graduated in 1934 with first-class honours. A successful scholar, he also excelled on the sports field, representing Australia in rugby with the Wallabies in 1932. In 1935 he joined the Royal Melbourne Hospital as a junior resident and graduated in 1937 with a Master of Surgery from the University of Melbourne.

Enlisting in the Australian Army in 1935, he was commissioned into the Australian Army Medical Corps. In May 1938 he leftAustralia for London as a ship’s medical officer. In London he attended St Bartholomew’s Medical School and became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons.

When World War II broke out, Weary was sent to serve in Palestine, Greece, Egypt and Indonesia. He treated the casualtiesof a recent attack on the island of Java, but was soon taken prisoner by the Japanese and transported to Burma to assiston the Thailand–Burma Railway. As a commander, Weary had to decide who was fit enough to work and also cared for the wounded, sick and malnourished soldiers.

In 1945, Weary returned to Australia and dedicated his life to caring for former prisoners of war, lobbying governments to support the veterans. He continued to work as a surgeon in Australia and parts of Asia until 1967. Through his involvement with the Colombo Plan, he taught medicine in Thailand, Ceylon, India, Sri Lanka and South-East Asia.

During the course of his life Weary received numerous honours and awards in recognition of his civic, sporting, educational, military and medical achievements. These included Officer of the Order of the British Empire (1947), Knight Bachelor (1969), Companion of the Order of Australia (1987) and Knight Grand Cross (1st Class) of the Most Noble Order of the Royal Crown of Thailand (1993). He was an Honorary Fellow of the Imperial College of London, an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, honorary life member of the Returned & Services League (RSL) and Life Governor of the Royal Women’s Hospital and the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital. In 1977 he was named Australian of the Year and in 1988 was listed as one of the 200 Great Australians.

When Weary died in 1993, more than 10,000 people lined the streets of Melbourne for the state funeral of the man they called ‘The Surgeon of the Railway’.

‘I have a conviction that it’s only when you are put at full stretch that you can realise your full potential,’ Weary once stated.