Earle Hackett;EARLE HACKETT, who has died aged 88, started talking "on the wireless" by chance, but it became one of his passions.
Having gone from Ireland to Adelaide, Australia, in 1958 to be deputy director of the Institute of Medical and Veterinary Research, the cultivated pathologist and haematologist had quickly become an energetic force in the circles of Max Harris, Geoffrey Dutton and Ken Inglis, as a book reviewer, art critic and wittiest after-dinner speaker in town. He was soon appointed chairman of the board of the Art Gallery of South Australia (SA), and chairman of the SA Crafts Council.
Seeking wider outlets for his energy, he sent some scripts on an unattractive topic, blood, to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). Fortunately they went to the right person, Dr Peter Pockley, the ABC's first director of science programmes. Dr Pockley and senior producer Robin Hughes recognised Hackett's potential, and the series Insights on Bloodwas broadcast in January 1967 to mark the 100th edition.
When the Whitlam government was looking for new commissioners with broadcasting experience to invigorate what it saw as a staid ABC, Earle Hackett was appointed in 1973 and became deputy to chairman Prof Richard Downing. Together they were a liberalising influence.
Hackett became acting chairman in November 1975, when Prof Downing died of a heart attack. The commissioners had the added shock next day of the Whitlam government being replaced by a hostile coalition, which accused the ABC of bias during the constitutional crisis.
The new government imposed severe budget and staff cuts and even proposed replacing the whole commission. Hackett put his job on the line during hard and bitter bargaining, and succeeded in substantially reducing the cuts.
Out of respect for the chairman, who counselled moderation, threatened strikes were called off. His skill in steering the ABC through the turbulent months until his term ran out prompted The Agenewspaper to declare: "During his brief period at the helm, Hackett proved himself to be an articulate and formidable defender of the ABC."
Earle Hackett was born in Cork in 1921 to a well-off Church of Ireland family, who had been doctors for four generations. His father was a dentist and doctor, and from an early age Earle was already referred to as "the little doctor".
He later recalled that "a woman named Nora O'Riordan came every day to do the ironing, and then spent the rest of the day talking to me. She wove a web of words about what might be what, and where might be where; quite a simple enquiry from me would provoke half an hour of answering; she was, I think, the only positive teacher I ever had, and she could not read or write."
Aged seven, he was sent to Epsom College in England to rid him of the Cork brogue and learn to "talk proper". He studied arts and medicine at Trinity College, Dublin, and graduated as a pathologist and haematologist in 1946. His thesis on blood groups of the Aran Islands is still quoted.
He edited the college magazine and was an all-Ireland half-mile champion athlete. He became reader in pathology at Trinity and, with a senior colleague, set up the first blood bank in Ireland. He married a nurse, Eileen Carroll, who had been born of Irish parents in Swaziland, and they had three children, Jane, Sue and Johnjames. With little prospects of promotion, or excitement, in 1950s Ireland, he applied for the Adelaide position, and moved his young family to Australia in 1958.
As well as his busy cultural activities in Adelaide and the ABC, Hackett played a leading role in the medical profession, and was president of the College of Pathologists of Australia. Finding administration irksome, he retired early from his official positions in Adelaide and freelanced as a broadcaster, medical writer and boulevardier.
He served on the Sackville Royal Commission into drugs. His book Blood: The Paramount Humourwas a best seller. He was also a consulting editor for the Readers' Digest. He put forward radical ideas about medical education at conferences and in talks on the ABC, such as Utopian Medicine, in which he deplored the excessive academic orientation of medical education and advocated detaching medical schools from universities."Medicine has far more in common with cooking than scholarly pursuits," he maintained; "doctors should have a nude painting or statue in their consulting room to remind them that medicine is a combination of art and science."
Sadly, his passion for blood blighted his final years. Settled in Sydney from 1986, he was approached by a businessman to be chairman and medical consultant of a private blood bank company which would store people's blood for future needs.
Despite the misgivings of family and friends, Earle promoted the project enthusiastically. The company floundered and court action followed. Although Earle was not involved, his professional standing and confidence were seriously diminished, as was his hallmark joie de vivre.
He retired from public life, and from contact with many of his friends. Ireland became his solace. He spent long periods there each year, recapturing the simple pleasures of his youth, fossicking in the mud flats at low tide for native oysters and crabs, and, as the tide came in, chivvying his net for the shrimps clinging to the seaweed.
In 2006, against his doctor's advice, he insisted on flying to Ireland for the transit of Venus and his brother's 80th birthday. It was two years before he was well enough to return to Australia, where his second wife, Dr Karin Lemercier, cared for him during his slow decline.
Earle Hackett is survived by his brother Ronald in Cork, his wife Karin, his children Jane, Sue and Johnjames, his stepchildren Chris and Louise, grandson Rupert, son-in-law Jon Lemon, and a brother, Ronald, in Cork. At his request, his ashes are to be scattered in the Irish Sea.
...
Earle Hackett: born April 26th, 1921; died April 5th, 2010