Peter Dudley Blaxland was a general surgeon in Sydney, Australia and a distinguished sportsman. He was born in Broke, a small village in the Hunter Valley, New South Wales on 15 December 1920, the son of Arthur Dudley Blaxland, a grazier, and Beryl Blaxland née Moses. He was a direct descendent of John Blaxland, whose brother Gregory helped forge a passage over the Blue Mountains, New South Wales, in 1813. He was educated at Broughton College, Newcastle, and then boarded at Sydney Church of England Grammar School. He studied medicine at Sydney University and qualified in 1943. In 1944, he joined the Royal Australian Navy. He was posted to Darwin for a year, as a lieutenant commander, and served on HMAS *Vendetta* and HMAS *Rushcutter*. He later travelled to Antarctica as a medical officer on board LST 3501, later known as HMAS *Labuan*. This sparked an interest in Antarctica - he later took part in an Australian National Antarctic Research Expedition to establish research stations at Heard and Macquarie islands. He remained on the Australian Navy reserve list as a consultant until his retirement. Following his demobilisation, Blaxland went to the UK to train as a surgeon. He worked at St Mary Abbot's Hospital in London and gained his FRCS in 1952. In 1955, he returned to Australia and set up practice as a general surgeon in Sydney. He held a number of honorary and visiting consultant positions, at the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children, Fairfield Hospital (where he was chairman of the medical staff council and the department of surgery), Prince Henry Hospital, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, the Eastern Suburbs Hospital, the Prince of Wales Special Cancer Unit and Sydney Square Diagnostic Breast Clinic. He was a tutor in surgery at Sydney University. He retired in 2000. In 1962, he became a fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, where he was a foundation member of the section of hand surgery. He was also an outstanding sportsman. He was president of the Australian Ski Federation and represented the Australian Olympic Committee as chef de mission at the Winter Olympics at Innsbruck in 1964 and at Grenoble, France in 1968. He represented Australia in 18 world Tornado sailing championships, won the open B-class catamaran world championships at Lake Macquarie in 1968 and was reserve to the Australian Olympic sailing team in Montreal, Canada, in 1976. He was president of the Australian International Tornado Association for 25 years from 1969. In 1955, he married Anna Schulthess, a Swiss national he had met while on a skiing holiday in Austria. She died in 1998. They had no children. Peter Dudley Blaxland died on 23 June 2007. He was 86.