London and Llandough, 1953–1956

Abstract

In London I found a cheap bed-sitter flat in Earls Court which was a favorite area for Australians. Remarkably I was able to become registered as a medical practitioner after one week which demonstrated one of the great advantages of being in the British Commonwealth at that time. For the first couple of months I did locums in various London hospitals. I bought a very small used car, an Austin Seven, and then spent 10 weeks touring Europe and staying in youth hostels, reaching as far south as Venice. A highlight was a week in Bayreuth where I heard Wagner’s Ring and also Parsifal. On return to London I attended some postgraduate courses and eventually was accepted as a house physician at Hammersmith Hospital, where the Postgraduate Medical School was located. One of the senior physicians there, Charles Fletcher, told me of an upcoming new program in pulmonary medicine at Hammersmith, and he recommended that I spend a year at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Pneumoconiosis Research Unit in South Wales. There I was exposed to modern respiratory physiology for the first time. I fell in love with it, and decided to concentrate on that area.