Dr Rawson remembered

Frank Rawson cropped

FEBRUARY 2017

22 January 1924 -12 January 2017 DR FRANK Rawson has recently died, a week off his 93rd birthday. 15 years retired, the General Practitioner in Deloraine for over 40 years had been presented 1993’s Citizen of the Year Award on Australia Day.

Arriving from a comfortable 16 years’ upmarket practice in Yorkshire, England, with his family, to a home and practice that had exhausted his savings. Frank immediately started work as he turned 42 in 1966; removing a drill piercing the late Nat Hancock’s finger.

As one of countless emergencies he had gone on to attend to in Meander Valley, Frank became one early advocate for stationing an ambulance in Deloraine. And prior to today’s well-trained paramedics, he and other Deloraine doctors had treated patients from the moment the state emergency services’ helicopter ambulance had landed them in the town’s football ground.

Consequently, Frank had maintained the right choice he had made in answering the English newspaper advert placed by Dr Peter Wood about the practice in Deloraine; a decision propelled by memories of his Preparatory School music lessons in England, with world famous concert pianist Tasmanian- born Eileen Joyce.

Joining with Dr Ray Swannell’s Westbury G.P. practice four years later had resulted in 24/7 call-outs from Gowrie Park to Westbury for Frank, demanding great effort and sacrifice. Yet in skill, kindness, compassion and care, he had found time to know his patients well.

And knew many he did. His son says, “Wherever he went in Tasmania, he met people he had brought into the world.”

Photo | Picture supplied.