George Bedbrook

Sir George Montario Bedbrook was an Australian medical doctor and orthopaedic surgeon, born in Melbourne in 1921 and dead in 1991, who became the driving force behind the Australian Paralympic movement. He graduated in medicine from the University of Melbourne in 1944, lectured in anatomy there, qualified as a surgeon, and worked in orthopaedics in the United Kingdom for three years before returning to Australia in 1953. At Royal Perth Hospital he founded the Department of Paraplegia in 1954 and later headed the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery from 1965 to 1975. Challenged by Ludwig Guttmann in 1956 to bring organised sport to disabled people in Australia, he helped send the first Australian team to the Stoke Mandeville Games in 1957 and organised the first Commonwealth Paraplegic Games in Perth in 1962. He served as president of the International Medical Society of Paraplegia, later the International Spinal Cord Society, wrote two books on the care of spinal cord injuries and paraplegic patients, and helped to found the FESPIC Games.