David Imrie Fitzpatrick, the sixth of seven sons and the eighth child of John Fitzpatrick, a tanner and farmer, and of Ada Rosina (née Imrie), was born at Heyfield, Victoria, Australia on April 5, 1899. He was educated at Heyfield State School; Sale High School, Melbourne, and Queen's College of Melbourne University. On graduating in 1923 he was resident medical officer at Melbourne Hospital for one year. He married Dr Mary Waite in 1924 when they purchased a practice in New Norfolk, Tasmania. After the birth of their first two children they went to England where he served as a casualty officer and resident surgical officer at Becket Hospital, Barnsley, and then passed the FRCS in 1930. Returning to Australia in 1932 he went into practice and then into partnership with Dr G A Hagenauer. In 1935 he was elected to Fellowship of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons and was also appointed medical officer to the 4/19th Prince of Wales' Light Horse Regiment. He built up a very busy surgical practice in Sale and the surrounding area where he did a large amount of elective and emergency surgery. He also did much accident surgery, especially among the farming community. He was president and later a life member and life governor of the Sale Ambulance Service. He was also honorary surgeon, and later consultant surgeon, at the Gippsland Base Hospital for some 53 years which included many years as an active member of the committee of management. It was for his services rendered to that hospital and to the community that he was appointed MBE in 1973. He was a member of the council of Sale High School for many years, devoting much attention to the grounds where an arboretum is named after him. Throughout his life he maintained an interest in farming, at one time owning two dairy farms, and he cultivated many practical countryman's skills. He retired from practice in 1973 mainly because of deafness, but he retained an active interest in medicine, being freely available to give advice and frequently attending postgraduate meetings. He also learnt bookbinding at the school of printing in Melbourne and for several years put that new found skill to good use by restoring many books for the Sale Historical Society Museum, the hospitals and his many friends. His first wife, by whom he had five children, died in 1941 and he then married Betty Nairn, by whom he had another son, in the following year. At his death in 1985 he was survived by his second wife and his six children. Of two sons by the first marriage, one was a veterinary surgeon and the second a medical practitioner. The three daughters of that marriage graduated respectively in science, medicine and architecture.