News Review
16 MAY 2025 ausdoc. com. au
Jimi Hendrix, jail time and life as a’ 70s doctor
Dr Bob Brown in the Tarkine rainforest, Tasmania, in 2023.
PHOTO: ROB BLAKERS / BOB BROWN FOUNDATION
Rachel Carter Chief of staff at Australian Doctor.
Dr Bob Brown reflects on medicine, politics and protecting the planet.
IN SEPTEMBER 1970, a 25-yearold Dr Bob Brown met a patient he would never forget.
“ It was around 8am, and he was brought up on a trolley from the ambulance with his girlfriend following behind him.
“ He was dead, and he had been dead for hours. There was nothing I could do.” The patient was Jimi Hendrix. The guitarist was dead at 27 from pulmonary aspiration after taking barbiturates.
Beyond his music, Hendrix’ s philosophy struck a chord with the young Dr Brown, who that night was in charge of the ED at St Mary Abbots Hospital in London.
“ I met him, but I did not. In fact, I only really got to know him after his death.
“ And I am glad I did, because he has been a motivation down the line as well.
“ He said:‘ You have got to stand up to them. The bigwigs want to spread you like Jell-O over a piece of bread.’”
Now 80, the former Greens leader and GP is still standing up to them— his most recent criminal conviction was just last year for trespass after an anti-logging protest near Snow Hill Forest Reserve in Tasmania.
He remembers being“ intrigued” by the bush since childhood.
“ The more I saw of nature, the more I became aware of the interrelationship between myself and nature, which had nurtured me into life.
“ I felt the nourishment, both the mental and physical, which nature affords us.”
When his mother and a local Presbyterian priest suggested he study medicine, it sounded good.
“ It was the healing component, those things that motivate so many other doctors to take it up— the basic feeling that you would like to make people well.
“ To get them from being ill and in pain to health and happiness.”
He graduated from the University of Sydney in 1968 and spent two years at Canberra Hospital before moving to London to work as a locum.
The Hendrix encounter was not his only brush with fame during that time.
His hospital was the set for the 1971 gangster film Villain, starring Richard Burton.
“ Richard was dressed up in bandages in the back of an ambulance,” Dr Brown recalls.
“ The doors spring open, and he runs away; they were doing this a couple of times to get the shot.”
With the ED temporarily overtaken by the crew, Dr Brown was approached by a concerned chief nursing officer who needed help with a patient with a suspected heart attack but was unsure how to interrupt.
“ I said,‘ Well, I will show you sister,’ and walked straight through the set to the crew screaming,‘ Cut! Cut!’
“ I thought I was just adding a bit of realism, but it did not make the final
‘ I would ride my bicycle in on a Friday afternoon, sleep at the practice and ride home on Monday morning.’
film,” he laughs.
He then took a three-month locum GP job in Tasmania, keen to see Lake Pedder before it was flooded to create a reservoir for a hydro-electric scheme.
“ I had always been intrigued by the Tasmanian tiger,” he adds.
“ I instantly felt at home, like this was the place I wanted to be for the rest of my life.”
He remembers this time as“ the age of old general practice”.
“ People sometimes brought half a dozen eggs or a cauliflower along to the doctor.
“ If there was a particularly difficult issue, often domestic, you would ask people to come back in the evening and spend some time chatting with them.”
The Launceston practice’ s three GPs asked Dr Brown to join permanently, but he wanted to spend time bushwalking and river rafting instead, so agreed to provide cover just on weekends.
In 1973, he paid $ 8000 for a cottage nestled in the tiny town of Liffey, near the eponymous Liffey River, 52km from the practice.
“ I would ride my bicycle in on a Friday afternoon, sleep at the practice and ride home on Monday morning with a backpack full of groceries.
“ One time, I forgot the key and had to climb in the back window.
“ I was just hoping the police did not arrive as I was making my way in.”
Dr Brown discovered that Tasmania had“ wildlife everywhere”: bandicoots, quolls and more.
He even helped establish a Tasmanian tiger research centre, analysing evidence that the animal may still exist.
“ I was sceptical from the outset, but I really wanted to discover if there were any left.
“ In the end, all we did was endorse the fact that they had become extinct in 1936.”