About the Author

Neil Thompson was born and bred in Bondi, son of a schoolteacher and a WWII Bombardier who served in New Guinea. He graduated from Sydney University Medical School in 1965, having had many long vacation jobs—ranging from loading goods trains at Central Rail Station, to working as a groundsman at Sydney University Oval and painting the fence and toilets. His main recreations were club cricket with Waverley and Sydney Uni for many years, and tennis.

After hospital resident years, he went to England for four and a half years’ training in surgery, and settled into orthopaedics after working in six large hospitals and being influenced by some very fine surgeons and teachers. He completed his training in Sydney, then worked in the outer western suburbs before formally responding to the need for a resident orthopaedic surgeon in Lismore in 1976, and settling there with his English Suffolk-born wife and three young children. From the outset, he found great scope for his particular interests of trauma injuries and children’s conditions.

He managed to negotiate the medical mill before spending twenty-five years in solo consultant practice in the Richmond Valley, thus meeting many doctors in the area and thereby being able to observe medical proceedings from the inside.

In memoriam. Dr Neil Thompson died on 30 October 2021. This edition is offered in his memory, so that his work stays available to the families and communities it describes.