Graeme McLeish was born in Melbourne on 6 June 1930. His father, Roderick Simpson McLeish, was a salesman and his mother was Doris, née Hague. From Spring Road School he gained a scholarship to Scotch College, Melbourne, where he was Dux of the school in 1947 and school captain in 1948. He held RMO posts and was registrar in obstetrics and gynaecology in Melbourne before coming to England in 1960 to hold posts in Queen Charlotte's and Chelsea Hospital for Women, leading to registrar/locum consultant in the Portsmouth Group Hospitals. He held similar appointments in Lewisham, St Peter's and St George's Hospitals. He was a member of the British Medical Association and the Australian Medical Association, and was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine. Returning to Melbourne, he was appointed gynaecologist to the Royal Melbourne Hospital and tutor and examiner in gynaecology for the University and for the Royal Australasian College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. He was member, honorary secretary and Chairman of the Victorian State Committee of the RACOG, and member of the Australian Society of Gynaecological Oncologists. He was a member of the Victorian cancer of the ovary study group, and Chairman of the MAC of the Freemasons' Hospital in Melbourne. He wrote a number of papers on gynaecological subjects. He was a member of the Victoria performing arts medical society, of the Prahran food and wine society, the lawn tennis association and the Kew golf club. In the mid-1950s he married Valerie Dawn Cope, a nurse who trained at Prince Henry's Hospital. They had twin daughters, Vivienne and Suzanne, and three sons, Alastair, Evan and Hamish. Mrs McLeish later married another Fellow of the College, Ralph Denison Upton.