Trevor Pickering was a consultant surgeon at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Adelaide, South Australia, a member of Australia’s first successful transplant team and president of the Australian Medical Association (AMA). He was born in Adelaide, South Australia, the only child of Hilda Hale Bleckly and George Joseph Sydney Pickering, on 30 April 1934. From the age of five, he never wavered in his conviction that he would become a doctor. Trevor attended Rose Park Primary School, where in his grade two class photograph he can be seen standing side by side with his future wife, Marilyn (‘Lindy’) Chartres. His senior schooling was at St Peter’s College, where he was awarded house colours and won the headmaster’s prize. Trevor studied medicine at Adelaide University, marrying Lindy in his final year. After graduating, Trevor spent an intern year at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, and then accepted a position at the Ashburton Public Hospital on the South Island of New Zealand. The plan was to spend 12 months in New Zealand before returning to a rural general practice in South Australia. However, at the urging of the Ashburton Hospital surgeon and with Lindy’s unequivocal support, Trevor instead headed to London as a ship’s surgeon with the FRCS in his sights, Lindy accompanying him and pregnant with their first child. Trevor sat the written primary exams but was then bedridden with a severe case of flu and was unable to go into London to take the oral exams. Devastated, and down to their last £30, Trevor and Lindy scoured the ‘situations vacant’ section of the *British Medical Journal*. Warwick Hospital offered Trevor the post of house surgeon, and they moved into the tiny flat above the pathology lab. (Years later, Lindy still remembered the smell!) From Warwick they moved to Aylesbury – where ice constantly covered the insides of the flat windows, and Trevor studied in the kitchen huddled in blankets – and then to Cuckfield and Bury St Edmunds. After three years of combining work, study and new fatherhood, Trevor was finally able to send a telegram to his parents: ‘Just call me mister!’ The Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) in Adelaide immediately offered Trevor a position as a senior surgical registrar, and thus Trevor began an association with the QEH that was to last 35 years. It was here that, in 1965, Trevor assisted Bill Proudman on the donor side of the first successful live kidney donor transplant in Australia. Trevor also worked as an emergency surgeon at the Adelaide Children’s Hospital, was a visiting surgeon at regional hospitals in Murray Bridge and Snowtown, consulted at the St Agnes Medical Centre and was a consultant vascular surgeon at Modbury Hospital. For a time, he was also the vascular consultant on the QEH Jepson unit, returning to general surgery in about 1980. As a surgeon he was measured, calm, reassuring, compassionate and highly respected. Trevor gave some 20 years of his life to medical politics, holding many positions, including president of the council of the Physiotherapy Association in South Australia, vice president and president of the AMA (South Australia), and treasurer, vice president and president of the federal AMA. He is the only South Australian to have achieved the double presidencies. Trevor was a stabilising force in a combative period of medical politics following the introduction of Medicare in 1975, advocating for measures to maintain high standards of care. Trevor served as chairman of the Peer Review Resource Centre, which established peer review and quality assurance in Australia, and was on the executive of the Australian Council on Hospital Standards. He served on the Medical Benefits Schedule Revision Committee and made significant contributions to aged care. In 1990, he chaired the AMA (South Australia) working party on euthanasia, which took the first steps towards accepting euthanasia for patients with terminal illness. Trevor’s most enduring legacy to the AMA was the establishing of a new constitution. Trevor engaged Sir Robert Cotton, a recently retired Australian ambassador to the United Nations, to undertake a constitutional review. This culminated in the Cotton Report, wide-ranging debate, and a personally and professionally punishing three years, in particular in fighting the anti-centrist sentiment of the Victorian and New South Wales branches. The eventual reform of the structure of the AMA was the greatest achievement of Trevor’s leadership. Trevor’s reflections on power, written after his AMA experiences, hold strong resonance for the contemporary world: ‘Generally, if the possession of power does matter to an individual then maybe that person should not have power vested in them. Some people have to accept power and authority, but they must be chosen carefully. An organisation will function properly if power is distributed wisely and tempered with wisdom, justice and compassion.’ Trevor lived his life by two simple principles which he took on at an early age and never wavered from: ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ and ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself’. ‘Once these principles are accepted’, said Trevor, ‘respect for others, truth, empathy, compassion, tolerance and humility naturally follow. These principles in no way interfere with one’s search for goals along one’s journey in life, but simply determine the manner in which they are achieved. A fierce determination to succeed should never ignore these qualities.’ Trevor continued to serve the profession in retirement, notably as a member of the disciplinary tribunal of the then Medical Board of South Australia. He also spent a day a week mentoring Guy Maddern, professor and head of surgery at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital who said of Trevor: ‘he knew it all – the personalities, the tactics, the realities and the history.’ Trevor was a man of quiet and modest self-assurance who lived with integrity and compassion. As a surgeon he was generous with his insights, experience and care of not only patients but also colleagues, students and trainees over a lifetime of surgical service. His huge contribution to medical politics was achieved with careful and respectful negotiation, making all stakeholders feel heard and seen. He earned many accolades over his career, including an OAM (Medal of the Order of Australia), yet it was the Gold Medal of the AMA that he valued most highly as true recognition by his peers for what he had achieved for the profession. In their many happy years of retirement together, Trevor and Lindy travelled Australia in their caravan, embarked on cruises with friends, and re-acquainted themselves with London and the UK on visits to their England-based daughter. An avid photographer, Trevor was rarely seen without his camera over his shoulder, and he leaves a magnificent photographic legacy of their travels. Trevor and Lindy were together for seven decades, celebrating their 63rd wedding anniversary just a few days before Lindy died. Trevor died on 29 July 2021 at the age of 87 and was survived by his children, Cheryl and Craig, and by his grandchildren Alex, Thomas, Martha and Saskia.