Owen William Deacon was born on 22 September 1929 in Karori, New Zealand. He was the son of William Francis Deacon, the manager and foreign representative for Scholl Manufacturing Company and his wife Marjorie née Hunter. After preparatory school in Wellington, New Zealand, the family moved to Birmingham, UK and he attended Sir Josiah Mason’s School, followed by Bishop Veasey’s Grammar School in Sutton Coldfield from 1940 to 1946. After studying at Birmingham University Medical School and graduating in medicine, he did house jobs at the General and Royal Cripples Hospitals in Birmingham. While there he was mentored by the orthopaedic surgeons, J. B. Leather, Francis Glen Allan and Thomas Smith Donovan. In 1957 he moved to Australia and became an anatomy demonstrator at Melbourne University. For the following three years he was a general surgeon and orthopaedic registrar at the Alfred Hospital, Melbourne, working with John Cloke, Harry Phillips and John Clarke McNeur. He returned to the UK in 1961 to the post of orthopaedic registrar at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital and acknowledged the influence of Karl Nissen (also from New Zealand), Donald Brooks, David Trevor, John Cholmeley, Gordon Trickey and Charles Manning. He passed the fellowship of the college in 1961 and returned to Melbourne in 1964 to be appointed consultant orthopaedic surgeon at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. William Eric (Bill) Swaney was head of the department which was developing a high reputation for innovation and research. From 1965 to 1975 he was medical officer to the Victorian Rugby and St Kilda Football Clubs and, in 1972, became orthopaedic surgeon to the Bethlehem Public Hospital. He was senior vice-president of the Australian Physiotherapy Association 1968 to 1972, president of the Australian Knee Society in 1987 and vice-president of the Australian Orthopaedic Association in 1995. Outside medicine he enjoyed playing squash and tennis, bush walking, fishing and driving. A larger than life person, when he returned to the UK in the early 1960’s ‘Deac’ as he was known saved the life of a fellow passenger on the ship by performing an emergency appendectomy. He married Audrey Chapman in 1951 and they had three sons Richard, Simon and Kim, and a daughter, Sarah. When he died on 21 May 2017 aged 87, he was survived by his wife, children and grandchildren.