Official Opening of the 2017 Australasian Military Medicine Association Conference

Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. I at once acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands around Brisbane, and extend my respectful greetings to Elders, past and present. I further thank Songwoman Maroochy Barambah for her Welcome to Country this morning.

On careful display in the Australian War Memorial’s Second World War Gallery in Canberra are three pieces of fashioned metal.

Their patina is dull, and their purpose – to this layman’s eye, at least – cannot be discerned from their form.

And yet they are among the most significant of Australia’s military medical artefacts.

They are dental instruments crafted by Major Robert Valentine Glasgow of the Australian Army Service Corps, in Taisho Prisoner of War Camp in Osaka in 1945.

He made the instruments from fencing wire, tempered in the camp’s kitchen fire, for Surgeon Lieutenant Samuel Stening, the Camp’s medical officer.

Disease and malnutrition were as rife in Taisho as decent medical supplies were scarce.

In a previous camp, Stening had arranged for all dental cases to be treated by a local dentist, meeting the cost out of his own salary and savings, topped up by reimbursements from patients with money.

When this practice was put to a stop, Stening undertook the dental work himself, using the improvised dental instruments that today sit in the War Memorial.

At this Conference dedicated to the theme “Responding to the Unpredictable: Disasters and Conflict” it seemed right to open with the story of these instruments, which surely embody the proud spirit of Australian military medicine, responding to the unpredictable, throughout our history.

As Governor of Queensland, I am delighted to welcome you all to Brisbane for the 2017 Australasian Military Medicine Association Conference.

I particularly welcome our distinguished keynote speaker and presenters, and delegates who have travelled from interstate and overseas.

In choosing the Royal International Convention Centre for your Conference, you have selected a highly appropriate venue, for contemporary and historical reasons.

It is, of course, a very fine Conference facility, located close to the QIMR Clive Berghofer Medical Research Institute, proximate to Brisbane’s world-class Herston Medical precinct, and a short distance from Gallipoli Barracks, host to members of the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps.

In addition, during the First World War, the showgrounds served as a military recruiting and training camp, complete with a rifle range.

In true Queensland fashion, this did not prevent the annual Exhibition – affectionately known as the ‘Ekka’ – from proceeding throughout the duration of the Great War.

It took the influenza epidemic of 1919 to achieve that, when the showgrounds were used as an isolation ward.

During the Second World War, troops slept in the pig and cattle pens; the bars beneath the John MacDonald Stand became wet canteens; and troop trains departed from the railway platforms normally used by show patrons.

You might say these showgrounds are well versed in responding to the unpredictable.

You might also say Queensland itself knows a great deal about responding to the unpredictable, with our annual experience of extreme weather events, including cyclones.

Queenslanders are deeply grateful for the role played by Defence Force personnel in responding to these devastating acts of nature.

Your Conference is being held in the heart of a community which is proud of our Australian Defence Force bases and the many veterans who have chosen to live and retire in our State.

The wide range of topics to be covered by your Conference underscores the breadth and complexity of modern military medicine.

It is a reminder that in almost no other branch of medicine is the practitioner required to possess such a diverse range of knowledge.

Major General John Pearn AO RFD, the former Australian Surgeon General, once wrote that, “Armed conflict brings out both the best and the worst in men and women, societies and nations, while the exigencies of war and training for war focus the inventive mind.”

I hope that this Conference successfully focuses the inventive minds of all who have gathered here in Brisbane, and I am delighted to declare officially open, the 2017 Australasian Military Medicine Association Conference. Thank you.