William Douglas Friend was visiting surgeon at the Royal Brisbane Hospital. He was born on 22 September 1924, in Brisbane, where his father Percy Alfred Friend was a sheep-farmer. His mother, Dorothy Frances, née Webb, had served as a staff nurse with the 2nd Australian General Hospital in Egypt and France during the First World War, and was awarded the Royal Red Cross medal in 1918. His grandfather, Dr William Simpson Webb, had qualified in London. Bill was educated at the Slade School in Warwick, and the Church of England Grammar School in Brisbane, before going to the University of Queensland. His studies were interrupted when he joined the Royal Australian Air Force in 1944, as an aircrew trainee. After demobilisation, he returned to university with a Freemasons' scholarship and qualified in 1949 with the William Nathaniel Robertson medal. After two years as resident medical officer at the Brisbane General Hospital, he and his wife, Creina, sailed steerage on the *Orontes*, arriving in London on a freezing February morning. He joined the primary course at the College under Slome, Last, Stansfield and Hadfield. His wife went into labour on the morning of the anatomy paper, but he managed to get to Queen Square just in time. This was followed by the St Thomas's course for the final FRCS, which sent him to various outpatient clinics in London, and to watch the masters of the time in their clinics and operating theatres. To make ends meet he took a locum orthopaedic registrar job in Guildford, just in time for a major railway accident, when the driver died at the controls. Bill had to cope with eight compound fractures among many other injuries. Having passed the FRCS, he sought advice from Sir Gordon Gordon-Taylor who arranged for him to start as resident surgical officer at the Royal Portsmouth Hospital in 1953. There he worked under Bernard Williams, John Younghusband, Tom Fenwick and Robert Campbell - a very happy year in which he received what he always regarded as wonderful training. Vascular surgery was then in its infancy, and his chiefs sent him up to St Mary's to watch Charles Rob and Felix Eastcott. He repaid them by providing them with freeze-dried arteries, thanks to the help of the local coroner in Portsmouth. At Portsmouth he also worked with Darmady, who was developing a prototype dialysis machine. Bill looked back on this experience with affection and would tell the tale of a memorable emergency admission of several elderly admirals in acute retention of urine following the Coronation Naval Review at Spithead in 1953. John Kinmonth was then director of the surgical professorial unit at St Bartholomew's, and on the recommendation of Felix Eastcott, Bill was appointed to the unit, though it meant a daily commute from Portsmouth to London. The professor, Sir James Paterson Ross, told him "You won't do as much of anything as you did in Portsmouth, but at least you will see how everything should be done". During these six months at Bart's he met celebrities such as Frank Gerbode and Michael de Bakey. When Sir James retired, Gerry Taylor offered Bill a permanent post on the unit, but he decided it was time to go home. He obtained a post as ship's surgeon on the *Tasmania Star* and became visiting surgeon at the Royal Brisbane Hospital in 1956, remaining there until he retired in 1984. This stint was interrupted by a four-month spell as leader of a civilian surgical team in Bien Hoa, Vietnam. He continued his interest in flying with the Royal Flying Doctor Service, being President of its Council from 1974 to 1977. He married in 1950 Creina Ernestine Chenoweth, a physiotherapist. Of their five daughters, Jennifer became a doctor, Annabel is a physiotherapist and Philippa is a nurse. Their son, William, became a Qantas pilot. A keen sailor, Bill's *Sea Prince* won the first Brisbane to Gladstone yacht race in 1949. He died on 3 May 1998.