Virtual
War Memorial
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GREENLEES Rollo MB BS FRCGP FRACGP

Rollo Greenlees was born on 25th May 1913. He was the only child of Alan David Greenlees and Winifred Mary, nee Thomson; his father, initially from SA, was a mining engineer, ultimately a mine manager, and he lived with his family in Broken Hill, NSW. He spent much of his pleasant and comfortable youth in Broken Hill before being sent down to school, at the age of eleven. He was educated at St Peter’s College and, resided at St Mark’s College in his last year thanks to a bequest from an aunt. He studied medicine at the University of Adelaide, where he graduated MB BS in 1937. Greenlees had contemplated a career as an engineer like his father, but his leaving honours mathematics was insufficient for this degree. He enjoyed surfing, and got into difficulties, and lost his surfboard at a well-known surfing beach, Chiton Rocks, near Victor Harbour, SA, but, was rescued by the sons of Sir Henry Newland and the late Dr John Corbin.   He spent 1938 as a resident medical officer at the Royal Adelaide Hospital. His next appointment was as a ship’s doctor on a Burns Philp vessel in the south-west Pacific, then on to general practice in Ceduna, SA.  Greenlees married Ann O’Brien Dawe, in Melbourne, on 31st May 1940. At the time of their engagement, Greenlees was living at his parent's home, at Sussex Inlet, NSW. She was the daughter of Leonard William and Monica Nora, nee Lyne of Church Terrace, Walkerville, SA. Greenlees and his wife lived in Launceston, Tasmania for some months before returning to Adelaide where they had a son in 1941.

Greenlees served with the RAAF between 1940 and 1945 reaching the rank of squadron leader. He was stationed, initially in Tasmania, for 15 months, and later at Mt Breckan, Victor Harbour, SA. Subsequently, after a disagreement with his CO at Parafield, SA, he was posted to WA, where as he described, ‘all the men who had blotted their copybook were sent’. From there he was posted to Shepparton, Vic, before going to New Guinea for the last ten months before the war ended.  He served on Manus Island, at Madzab and with an American unit. At one time he had taken part in an operational mission where bombs were dropped on Wewak. While he was away, his wife lived with her parents at Walkerville, SA.   

After the war, Greenlees had a short appointment as a surgical registrar at the RAH, and then as a registrar at the ACH between 1946 and 1958. Also, he bought Dr Magarey’s general practice on Stephen Terrace, Walkerville, SA, in about 1952, and commenced 23 years of general practice there. He moved, with his wife and daughters, Jane, Susan and Dinah from Stephen Terrace to St Andrew’s Street, Walkerville, SA in 1954. He obtained the FRACGP in 1964 and FRCGP in 1974. He was the Provost of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners between 1966 and 1968. He was the first geriatrician in the SA Public Health Department between 1969 and 1977 when he retired and undertook a few locums including Kelvinator, Chrysler and Mitsubishi in Adelaide. He wrote, in 1983, a history of ‘The Eucalypts Society’, a group formed in 1910, which was in sympathy with liberal Christianity and progressive thought. His wife Ann died in 2004, and Rollo Greenlees died on 18th July 2005, survived by his four children.

Source

Blood, Sweat and Fears III: Medical Practitioners South Australia, who Served in World War 2. 

Swain, Jelly, Verco, Summers. Open Books Howden, Adelaide 2019. 

Uploaded by Annette Summers AO RFD