William Ernest Martin Renton-Power was a consultant surgeon in Rockhampton, Queensland, Australia. He was born on 18 July 1937 in Gladstone, Queensland, where his father, Martin Renton Power, was a meat inspector. His mother was Mary Elizabeth (‘Mollie’) Renton Power née Kingston. In later life, he claimed that his ambition to be a surgeon began when he was about six, after being introduced to a surgeon who had treated his grandfather during the Second World War. His parents having the means, he was educated in a series of Catholic schools in Gladstone and Brisbane, attended the University of Queensland for two years (from 1956 to 1957) and eventually graduated MB BS from the University of Melbourne in 1961. The following year, when he was a junior resident medical officer at Brisbane’s Mater Private Hospital, he married Ursula Wilson, the daughter of a dairy cattle farmer in far north Queensland. He then took up short-term positions in hospitals in Darwin and Alice Springs (from 1963 to 1964), returning to Melbourne as a surgical registrar at St Vincent’s Hospital. During these early years he enjoyed a stint (from 1968 to 1969) as a registrar at St Anthony’s Hospital in Cheam, London, where, he later proudly recalled, he worked under the tutelage of Richard Harrington Franklin, Aubrey York Mason and Patrick Michael Kelly (Renton-Power was always appreciative of and grateful to his mentors). In late 1970 he and his growing family removed to central Queensland, where for more than 30 years he maintained a private practice in Rockhampton (from 1970 to 2002), while also serving as a visiting general surgeon or, later, a full-time staff surgeon (from 2003 to 2008) at Rockhampton Hospital, popularly called the Base Hospital. In the former role he was gracious and attentive and had many loyal patients; as the latter, he was, in the operating theatres, often demanding, impatient and abrasive (nurses, in particular, were unlikely to enjoy working with him). As one colleague said, over the decades he virtually became ‘an institution’ at Rockhampton Hospital. During his many years as a general surgeon at Rockhampton Hospital, Renton-Power claimed several firsts or other distinctions. One was as the first surgeon in the city to practise operative cholangiography, another the first in the region to achieve a successful repair of a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm. He also introduced to the hospital oesophagectomies for oesophageal cancer and the Whipple procedure for treating pancreatic cancer. Always eager to teach, he had begun as a demonstrator in anatomy at Melbourne University’s medical school in 1967. From the early 1970s until 2012, he served as a part-time lecturer in surgery at the University of Queensland medical school’s Rockhampton campus. Much later, in Victoria, he was a part-time senior lecturer in surgery at Monash University medical school’s Mildura campus. In 2008 he was delighted to receive the University of Queensland’s Mervyn Neely prize for clinical excellence in surgical teaching. Renton-Power turned 70 in 2007 and, while there was no mandatory retirement age for surgeons in Queensland (or in the rest of Australia), he was undoubtedly under some pressure to make way for someone younger and perhaps less set in their ways. About that time the hospital prompted his retirement by appointing a full-time general surgeon. ‘It was time for me to make way for the new surgeon. I am pleased the hospital has recruited a young and energetic new surgeon,’ he said diplomatically but somewhere disingenuously. In truth, he was unwilling to leave surgery and had few if any thoughts of how to spend his retirement. Almost immediately he sought out several locums, at Mildura Base Public Hospital in north-western Victoria, Honiara in the Solomon Islands and at Mount Isa in outback Queensland. He also entertained hopes of returning to something like his old post: in December 2011, after he learnt that the director of surgery at Rockhampton Hospital was on extended leave, he wrote to apply for the position. It was in vain; his age, personality and old-fashioned way of doing things told against him and there is nothing to suggest that his application was seriously considered. In his early years, he played rugby and cricket and enjoyed fishing. But from the mid-1970s his principal leisure pastimes were reading works in Latin and ancient Greek and, above all, bridge. A member of the Rockhampton Contract Bridge Club for nearly 50 years, his name can be seen on almost all its honour boards. Occasionally its president, he was a very regular attendee and one of its best players. Living very close to the hospital on the Range, a suburb of Rockhampton, he and his wife became well-known in the city’s Catholic community. Both attended church regularly, but while both were highly conservative religiously, Ursula was especially devout (she became a major figure in Rockhampton’s anti-abortion movement). In later years they became disillusioned with liberal Catholicism and sought out a church that conducted the traditional Latin Mass. They raised five daughters and a son, all of whom were sent to private schools. Status was important to Renton-Power, and he was often pompous and sometimes pretentious. Yet, he was, to the end, a loyal and faithful husband and companion to his wife, a good provider for his family, and a staunch supporter of those he considered close friends. The epitome of political incorrectness, he was not so much a conservative as a reactionary, the views expressed by the cultural left would typically cause him to adopt a diametrically opposite stance. When required, he could be friendly, even charming; he was always intelligent, engaged and competitive. Whether liked or disliked, he was unforgettable. In any gathering he stood out and had that indefinable quality called ‘presence’. Always immaculately dressed, a pipe – before he gave up smoking – and a bow tie were his trademarks. After a long battle with prostate cancer, which had spread long before its impact had been fully appreciated, and several stays in hospital, William Renton-Power died in the Mater Private Hospital in Rockhampton in the early hours of 15 December 2021. His funeral service took place at St Joseph’s Cathedral in Rockhampton a week later. Many from the bridge club, and all of his family (save his youngest daughter Anna, who had predeceased him), attended.