Dogged In The Best Scottish Tradition, Gp A Stickler For Highest Standards

The Age

Thursday July 3, 2008

William Darvall

ANDREW NOEL FRASER

DOCTOR

10-4-1916 - 1-5-2008

ANDREW Fraser, a tireless doctor who served patients in the northern suburbs into his late 80s - despite having a stroke when he was 79 - has died of a brain hemorrhage at the Austin Hospital. He was 92.

Fraser was also unflagging in his work for the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, having been one of the college's 50 founding members in 1958.

He worked at the Ivanhoe Medical Clinic for 46 years and left in 1996 only because he suffered some disability from a stroke at his desk the previous year. However, he resumed work as a locum in other practices and at the staff clinic at the Northern Hospital, finally hanging up his stethoscope in his late 80s due to frailty and deteriorating speech and hearing.

Fraser was born in Kew, the only child of Ruby and Andrew, an electrical engineer. When his father was posted to Canberra, he boarded at Melbourne Grammar until he matriculated. Then it was on to Trinity College as a resident while he studied medicine at Melbourne University; he rowed in the first crew and graduated with first class honours in 1939.

In 1940, he was a junior resident medical officer at Royal Melbourne Hospital, where he met Ellen Rutter, a young nurse. From 1940 to '45 he was in the field ambulance of the army's medical corps and was promoted to major; he served at Gaza in the Middle East, at Tobruk in North Africa, and in New Guinea.

In 1943, he found time to marry Ellen. After the war, he went to Yarram as a replacement for his father-in-law, who had died, and practised alongside his brother-in-law, Jack Rutter. After valuable experience there and the birth of Anne in 1946, the family returned to Melbourne in 1947, and he practised in Brunswick.

In 1950, he joined a practice in Ivanhoe that became the Ivanhoe Medical Clinic in 1960. The family settled in Darebin and grew with the birth of Andrew in 1951, and Fiona in 1953. Anne became a nurse, Andrew an engineer and Fiona a GP like her father. Ellen died in 1988, followed by Fiona in 1994 and Anne in 2004, after long and draining illnesses from the family scourge of breast cancer.

Late in 1988, Fraser married Diana, widow of John Starr, a former partner, and they enjoyed a full life for almost 20 years, with involvement in the arts and their loving, blended family.

Fraser continued to enjoy his connection with the Melbourne Club, Trinity College, the MCC and the Cyclops lunch club. He was a long-standing member of the Melbourne Scots, and had a love of all things Scottish. As one speaker at his funeral service at Trinity College said: "The only event that would keep him from the St Andrew's dinner, the Robbie Burns night, a malt whisky tasting or the mid-year dinner dance, was the event for which we are here today."

Conservative to the laces of his polished shoes, Fraser was driven, determined, dogged and tenacious. He was evangelical about proper intellectual, ethical and moral standards in medical practice, and although tireless in his work, he was famous for falling asleep at almost every meeting he attended. He was adored by his faithful patients. One woman who rang to see him urgently was told that he had just gone on long-service leave; she elected to wait the three months.

Fraser is survived by his wife Diana, son Andrew and granddaughters Ingrid, Amy and Jennifer.

As a child, William Darvall was Andrew Fraser's patient; he joined him as a medical partner in 1967.

© 2008 The Age

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