John Harvey Drew was a general surgeon. Born in North Sydney on 21 December 1932, he was the son of Edward George Douglas Anderson Drew and his wife Elizabeth Ida. Her father, John Cappie Shand, was a general practitioner. He was educated at Griffith High School in New South Wales and attended Sydney University passing his MB BS in 1956. Having trained at the Royal Newcastle Hospital in New South Wales, he came to the UK and was a surgical registrar at the Victoria Hospital in Romford, Essex and the Epsom Downs Hospital in Surrey. He passed the fellowship in 1963. On his return to Australia in 1964 he passed the FACS, became a tutor at the Royal North Shore Hospital, Sydney and honorary surgeon at the Ryde District Hospital in New South Wales. He married Angela Mary Curry in 1963. She was the granddaughter of Sir Samuel Instone, the British shipping and aviation entrepreneur. They had five children, Tony, Edwina, Simon, Melanie and Greville. When he died on 5 March 2014 aged 81, he was survived by his wife Diane, four children (his son Simon predeceased him), daughter and son-in-law, Sharon and Lockwood, and several grandchildren.