Weary Dunlop

Colonel Sir Ernest Edward Dunlop, known throughout his life as Weary Dunlop, was an Australian surgeon born on 12 July 1907 in Wangaratta, Victoria, who died on 2 July 1993. He trained first as a pharmacist and then in medicine at the University of Melbourne, graduating in 1934 with first class honours in both, and he became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in London in 1938. He also played rugby union for Australia. Commissioned in the Australian Army Medical Corps, he served in the Middle East, where he developed the mobile surgical unit, and he was captured by the Japanese at Bandung, Java, in 1942 while commanding a hospital. As a prisoner he was placed in charge of camps in Java and in January 1943 led the first Australians sent to work on the Thai segment of the Burma-Thailand railway. He is remembered as a surgeon and leader who restored morale in the prison camps and jungle hospitals, and his work is cited as one reason Australian survival rates were among the highest.