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| Tomislav Gavranic 1937-2025 Croatian doctor of Aboriginal Health in Australia |
| By Nenad N. Bach and Darko Žubrinić |
Published
04/3/2025
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Human Rights , People , In Memoriam , Education
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Unrated
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Biography of Tomislav Gavranic written by his son Peter
Tomislav Gavranic with his grandson. Source.
Biography of Tomislav Gavranic
Written by Peter Gavranic (son of Tomislav Gavranic)
Parents
My parents migrated to Australia in 1925 (father) and 1934 (mother). Choosing your name as a migrant can be interesting. My father's full name was Petar (= Peter) Gavranic Peplic Nadal. In Croatian there are 3 different versions of the letter C, which makes it very hard to translate into spoken English. Most migrants wrote it correctly as the soft C = CH in English. (The English C on its own is pronounced as a K, which I am now stuck with!). Dad kept it as C only, which then made it the hard C in English (= K, with no resemblance at all to the Croatian pronunciation). He elected to leave out the Peplic and Nadal. I suspect that he would have saved himself a lot of angst, if he had elected to use Peplic (or Peplich) or Nadal (Nadal is actually a Venetian name not Spanish). I believe that Peplich could even have passed muster as an English name, if faintly odd. What do you think? Golly I forgot to tell you that Gavranic translates as Raven! It's a bit late to anglicise it after all these years!
Childhood
My childhood was spent on a cane-farm in a multicultural cane-growing and timber-cutting community at El Arish (it was a soldier settlement from the Palestine Campaign) north of Tully. Primary schooling (1942-1948) was in a multicultural state school (Aussie, Scottish, Italian, Greek, Croatian and Finnish) where I had wonderful dedicated teachers, to supplement the intensive educational atmosphere at home, where it was drummed into me that "education was salvation" (my first language was Croatian). Wartime was an exciting time, with my father joining the VDC (Volunteer Defence Corps), troop and artillery trains regularly chugging past our house and sweeping search lights lighting up the horizon at night, as well as American planes flying overhead. At school we had "trench-drill" to hide from enemy planes (which never came, thank God - they went over Townsville!).
1937
1937: born in Tully of Croatian parents, both born in 1900. Dad was left an orphan by the age of 12. He avoided military service by destroying his right ear drum with hydrochloric acid (used in soldering)!!! He was quite multiskilled and became a sugar smuggler. My mother came from a conservative, religious family. She regretted not going to high school for financial reasons (her male members of the family gained preference).
Mum and Dad got married in 1921 at age 21. They lost two male children in infancy due to the post WWI privation on the coastal islands of Croatia. Dad became a sugar smuggler but eventually the escapade came to a sorry end.
Learned a lot of useful information from the farm animals that stood me in good stead in my medical career.
1934 - 1947
1934 to 1947: took that long to correctly diagnose that my father's recurring attacks of excruciating abdominal and back pain were due to (bilateral) kidney stones! This put me on the path to being a patient-orientated doctor.
Meantime the Wall Street crash got my father going bankrupt, which he did not exit till 1948. The family tensions resulting from the bankruptcy made me permanently averse to going into debt (even for buying a house!). After dad's kidney problems were fixed, dad sold his farm, paid off his bankruptcy and bought a productive market garden at Mona Vale on Sydney's northern beaches (1949). After the death of my parents I was able to sell the Mona Vale property, which allowed me to buy my first house (for cash! in 1980), together with some money left over for investment!!
1949
1949: a completely wasted year, as the NSW schooling system was so far behind the Queensland system it was not funny. Is this still a problem in our education systems in our country? I also matured very early, with hormones kicking in at age 12 (due to the stresses of my father's illness), way ahead of the boys in class (but not some girls!). I will not go further, as one could write a novel about my adolescent problems (personal and social), as a field study in how not to address these matters. I also developed very severe, embarrassing acne which did not help matters. I finally found out how to treat acne properly in 1996!
Standard treatment is still hopeless - see later. I did very well on the IQ tests and gained a (very rare) scholarship to North Sydney High.
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1950 - 1954
1950 -1954: North Sydney High, a selective high school. It was a very good academic and sporting school. I obtained a maximum leaving pass. During this time I developed episodic attacks of palpitations with severe light-headedness (hence fear of dying...making the attacks worse!). Went to GP, referred to Cardiac Clinic at RNSH. Diagnosed as having a "third heart sound, of no concer" - says him! Feelings of impending death are taken very seriously by the patient!
The attacks kept on coming but with less frequency and severity as I got older - and I did not die.
One day, I was reading our medical text-book in 4th year and there it was: self-diagnosed attacks of hyperventilation! I became an expert in diagnosing and treating this rather common problem in general practice, not by breathing into a paper bag (carry a bag all day in your pocket?) but by clasping your hands over your mouth and nose, and slowing your breathing.
I perfected this breathing technique to a fine art, eventually (with the help of a similar minded physiotherapist) and finally at the Salvation Army drug rehabilitation centre in Canberra (rather common in drug addicts). In its milder forms, it is very common in general practice, but who listens to me? It is much easier to listen to the drug reps and is more profitable to give medication / psych referral for its many symptoms.
1954
1954: entered Sydney University medical school on a Commonwealth Scholarship. The failure rate was colossal, as you know. They were basically theoretical years. I was always close to the top, getting distinctions and high distinctions. However the bus trips from Mona Vale were very tiresome.
1957 - 1961
1957: disaster struck in the shape of TB (? caught on the buses to University or? from my girl-friend's family). Luckily the triple therapy cure had just been found some years before. The story of how the drugs were discovered reads like the best spy thriller ("The Greatest Story Never Told" by Frank Ryan - ISBN 1-874082-00-6). However, it was still standard therapy to stay bedridden for some 2 months initially, which made one really weak (and softened one's bones, I now realise). In total I spent some 6 months in the unit. Drug therapy continued for a total of 2 years, as you would remember. Sadly, I had to miss a whole year of medical school. I made a decision not to aim for top marks anymore, but to coast along for a pass at graduation (while playing table-tennis).
- While I was in the TB unit, my "girl-friend" just stopped visiting me one day. The story of our sad, unusual romance accords with "life is stranger than fiction". She eventually succeeded in re-contacting me in 1990 (after trying unsuccessfully for years), saying she was well into MS (whose very first manifestations appeared when I was in the TB hospital) from which she eventually died. She told me about her most unusual and complex family history. All her marriages had unhappy endings. She had only one child, a boy.
- I was utterly shell-shocked for 6 months, walking it off by walking every lunchtime round and round the local oval. Thank God Dulcie was so supportive.
- Prof Fred Hollows asked me to join his team, which I was not able to do.
- CSIRO wanted me to give advice on a vegetable growing venture at an Aboriginal centre in Central Australia (where I went with their team).
- The Institute of Aboriginal affairs in Canberra got me on their board.
- Met activist Gordon Briscoe, who remains a great friend to this day (and is pushing to get my life story published). I very foolishly declined to have my 1976 speech published in the MJA. This was a major mistake on my part, which I have regretted ever since, but I remembered the nasty Chinese invasion article!
When I returned to Medical School, I just studied enough to pass (but still managed a "credit" in gynaecology!). We were encouraged to visit country hospitals in our holidays, as you know.
Pulley and I decided that if we went to a Mental Hospital we would be able to do lots of physical examinations because we thought psychiatrists would not be doing them, which was, indeed the case! On one such visit I learnt how to do hypnosis, by being prepared to act as a guinea pig for a visiting hypnotist (at no cost to us, while the GPs paid $100!) This skill has stood me in good stead on many occasions, as the technique used is also an easy way to calm people down, without necessarily hypnotising them. It complemented my breathing technique (see above).
I met a nurse on one of these occasions, to whom I was eventually engaged, but she opted to stay in Orange, so things did not turn out well - see below at 1963.
1960: mum died from a stomach hemorrhage (at the age of 60). So sad she did not see me graduate.
1961: MB BS (Sydney University); (or was it 1962?).
1962
1962: Resident Medical Officer (RMO) at Townsville Hospital, which was a wonderful teaching hospital. I went there (with Peter Short) as it offered a proper training programme for General Practice (some 6 weeks training in various specialties), hospital housing and twice the pay of NSW! There was no such GP orientated programme in NSW at the time, as I understand. Furthermore, I loved the tropics, in contrast to the NSW graduating doctors. I also met up for the first time with Aboriginal Australia, as the resident doctor on Palm Island including being visiting doctor to the nearby Fantom Island leprosarium. I have written a whole essay on my experience there, which I will forward to you later.
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1963 - 1967
1963: married Dulcie Vegar (another descendent of Croatian migrants) at Innisfail, North Queensland. She has been of huge help to me in my work and to our children over the years.
1963-1964: Opted to get some quick money (bought a Valiant car) by working as an assistant GP at Green Valley in Sydney's west, when it was being opened up. Elected to get back into hospital work but this time opted to go to Darwin (= tropics again!).
1965-1967: Resident Doctor at Darwin, Katherine and Alice Springs Hospitals; daughter Mara born. Sadly, she never stopped crying and reduced Dulcie to a shambolic mess. Cured by going home to Dulcie's parents for one month-cured on the first night! Since then I have never got worried about crying babies (they now say it is "reflux" = really a cop out diagnosis), but I have not found the secret of managing the mothers!
In the meantime, I was taken aback at the health state of Aboriginal children coming in from the Flying Doctor planes. Became an expert at reviving near moribund children with severe malnutrition and diarrhoea by using IV infusions in the leg.
Many had severe anaemia from hookworm infection.
Did a 6 month term in obstetrics and then looked after a lot of dehydrated and anaemic (hook worm) Aboriginal children in the children's ward. Some had CNS fungal infections which needed regular painful injections.
Sent to Alice Springs as relieving obstetrician (Caesars were done by the local surgeon, but none occurred in the month I was there). Looked in on the Aboriginal ward - no hookworm here (too dry) but diarrhoea still a major issue. I was captivated by the Alice Spring landscape, especially the sunsets, with their sparkling reflections off the surrounding rocky landscape.
1967 - 1970
1967-1970: Decided to be closer to my in-laws at Innisfail, so opted to be a Registrar at Townsville Hospital: son Peter born. Had extensive experience in structured terms in medicine, TB and chest, obstetrics, psychiatry (including electric shock therapy for depression), and geriatrics. I ended up running the Outpatient and Casualty department and discovered the great value of Social Workers. I made arrangements with our pharmacist to use different coloured water as placebo sleep and stress medication. It worked wonders and influenced a cohort of junior doctors! However, the outpatient department had to eventually run at 3-5 minute medicine, which was worse than Green Valley! At this point, I decided to give up clinical medicine and do administrative work instead.
1971 - 1972
1971-1972: My best option was to join up with the community arm of the Northern Territory Medical Service. So started my career in the Flying Doctor service, as well as doing community medicine, quarantining planes and ships, visiting the gaol, doing public service medicals, army recruiting exams etc. Many stories to tell! In the middle of my now relaxed medical career, the Departmental Head advises me that a big alumina mine was opening up in Eastern Arnhem Land and that he wanted me to go there to help out the doctor who had been posted there. In return he would give me 12 months off to do a Public Health Diploma course at Sydney University. How could I refuse such an offer?
I found myself working in an Australia I never knew existed. A whole new perspective on Australia opened up with the discovery of traditional tribal aboriginals and their history. I was thunder struck and all churned up inside to discover that I had been taught "fake history", (as had all Australians) since 1788 (more particularly from the time of the Myall Creek massacre in 1828, as I have discovered since). The massacres did not finally cease till 1928-1932 (north of Alice Springs).
Of course, there were other things to do on the mine site itself: daily clinics for the workers, quarantining ships and planes, caring for the X-ray machine etc.
My life can be divided into two epochs: before and after my discovery of Aboriginal Australia.
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1973 - 1975
1973: Diploma of Public Health from Sydney University (on a scholarship from NT health).
1974-1975: Community Health, Flying Doctor, hospital doctor and later administrator of health services in Eastern Arnhem Land. Deeply involved in Aboriginal and mining issues. Adopted into the Marika aboriginal clan.
I now discovered that the department had really sent me to Sydney to become an administrator, which was a job I absolutely loathed. So I resigned and went to work on Groote Eylandt (a big island in the Gulf of Carpentaria), where there was an older manganese mine and a mission.
1976 - 1978
1976-1978: Saw an advertisement in the MJA about a new Health Centres concept for the ACT by the Whitlam Labour Government, which would employ government GPs. I thought this was a fantastic concept (partly because this was how the country hospitals were run in Queensland in my childhood), but the advertisement was signed by a huge number of ACT GPs who stated that any doctor taking up the offer, would be ostracised "by the undersigned GPs".
I ignored the GP threat, signed up and had my car and all goods sent down at Government expense (as at that time the NT and ACT were under the same government administration!).
Found to my astonishment that Canberra had a large Croatian community, whose social workers were the Croatian nuns. As my native tongue was Croatian I had a ready-made clientele. I was soon introduced to our frustrating worker's compensation issue (NZ has a much more sensible "no fault" system, which was denied Australia thanks to our lawyers and doctors), aggravated by the introduction of computers into the public service. The computers made typists increase their typing speeds to such levels that they led to painful arms and some suffered a form of hypnosis (falling off their chairs). Being Croatian was also a problem: before I came you might have, say 50 Croatian compo cases spread across 50 Canberra doctors. I come along and suddenly, there are 50 compo cases attending just one doctor = highly suspicious (but the situation is the same!).
Gave a landmark talk on my experiences in Arnhem Land at a major health conference in Canberra (1976) which got me linked into Aboriginal issues in a big way for ever more:
1976 and beyond for many years: hosted (at home) and cared for the health of Aboriginal delegates who came south to various conferences, to teach about bark paintings at ANU, land-rights issues and identity issues; (befriended a number of local Aboriginal families); one lady from Weipa, who was fighting the mining companies, helped look after Dulcie's dying mother at our place.
I became involved with home births with an old lady GP, who graduated from RPAH in 1944. She told me how penicillin was so precious at that time that it was extracted from a patient's urine and re-injected! Home births I generally found to be very easy births. Very interesting to have the whole family looking on! We never had a major catastrophe or bleed. Of course I was a very seasoned obstetrician, as I told you before. Dr Rich kept it up for many more years.
In her later years, I became her driver, when she did births in the surrounding rural properties (miles from Canberra and ambulance help. We had no mishaps).
I also ran into Dr Trevor Beard, who had moved from Tasmania to ACT. He had eliminated hydatid cysts from New Zealand and later Tasmania, which were world beating successes - but the continental extent of Australia made it impossible to repeat his previous successes, so he moved back to Hobart.
However, he had developed a new interest: the prevention and treatment of hypertension by low salt eating (there is much more to this than just ceasing table salt. The main problem by far is the hidden salt in processed food). He became only one of 3 world experts in the field (one is a Texan ophthalmologist, who has also written a book on the topic: "Eat Right - Electrolyte)" by Rex Hawkins, which I value greatly. Since then, Trevor has died at 90 (from a knee operation!). He has written a most informative book, which is still in print ("SALT MATTERS").
The third expert (Prof MacGregor) is the only one left standing! He is in London and makes occasional visits to Australia in his crusade against salt. He also has written a book "Salt, Diet & Health" by MacGregor and de Wardener.
I also got to meet Trevor Beard's dietitian, Wendy Gray. For some years we provided low salt public lunches at the Canberra Tafe for trainee chefs. We are now trying to arrange these lunches at the Heart Foundation in Canberra. I keep in regular contact with her.
1978: Dad got killed at age 78 by a car entering a hardware store at Mona Vale.
1979
1979: Head-hunted to head the Aboriginal Section of the NSW Health Commission, which suited me perfectly at the time. I left Canberra to live at Mona Vale till I sold the property. I became a part-time lecturer in Aboriginal Health at Sydney University; co-founded the "Manly-Warringah-Pittwater Aboriginal Support Group" on Sydney's northern beaches, which is still going strong.
Discovered AA as a major therapeutic tool in dealing with alcoholism, from an Aboriginal man in the Health Commission whose job it was to deal with alcoholism (in the Aboriginal community). I owe so much to his practical teaching on alcoholism, which allowed me to become somewhat of an expert on the subject. His autobiography ("Along my Road" by Harold Hunt) makes quite interesting reading. He is still going strong at Penrith at age 92. We make contact regularly.
Resigned after one year, as I saw no productive future in the position. Much more to be told.
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1980 - 2014
1980 to retirement in 2014: When I resigned I elected to go back to Canberra, where I bought my first house (paid for in cash from Dad's property!). I must tell you that contacts are so, so important in one's life and I had them in buckets by 1980. We moved to Queanbeyan, where I established a bulk-billing practice with the previously mentioned lady GP, with Dulcie as the head receptionist (she converted quite some people to country and western music!). She was a wonderful receptionist, as were some others. Home visits were routine. I attended (and sometimes took patients to) AA, which I still keep in contact with.
I set up a really unique surgery (even if I do say it myself).
A major innovation was the painting of a whole side of the consulting room with blackboard paint, on which I could draw the patient's history and then discuss the issues (using different coloured chalks for different but connected issues), while the child drew its own theme nearer the floor (I soon found out that you could tell a lot about the atmosphere at home from these children's drawings). Hence, I never gave sweets to kids. I also must have been the only male doctor to a women's refuge in the state!
1994: Head of the committee that established the Croatian Nursing Home in Canberra. I suspect the stress of it all must have taken some years off my life.
1993 to 2014: doctor to Salvation Army drug and alcohol rehab in Canberra, with weekly clinics.
1994: Re-discovered Tasmanian Dr Beard and his salt issues. He died from complications of knee replacement surgery at age 90. We (his nurse and myself) did our best to continue his work and held regular low salt lunches at the CANBERRA TAFE school for trainee chefs (at which I would give a talk on low salt eating).
1995: One day the science master at the local high school told me of a talk he heard on the radio by a dermatologist (Dr Molloy from Sydney) of a new non-drug approach to skin disease. I was excited, as I had never been able to get a proper grips with dermatology especially acne, (which can be socially crippling). I made contact with the doctor, who had his practice at Bondi Junction. Wow, I was introduced to a whole new world I never knew about.
1998: closed the practice and continued working part-time at the Rehab Centre and in various local practices. I also did locums in Far North Queensland until my retirement in 2014.
2004: awarded an OAM for my commitment to:- Aboriginal Health
- People with alcohol dependency
- The Croatian community.
2007: Mara and Peter both got married in the same year! I am afraid I was a rather absentee father but the children seemed to fit in whenever they had to change schools. They did say that they would never be doctors.
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