Russel Pardoe, 29 years old, freshly graduated in medicine with scant surgical experience, was working at Mawson Base in Antarctica in 1961, with the Australian National Antarctic Expedition. When mechanic Allan Newman suffered a cerebral haemorrhage, he was challenged.
Having never witnessed or participated in neurosurgery, Pardoe nevertheless had to act.
He got in touch with a surgeon in Melbourne and, communicating by Morse code, got advice on what to do. He was required to fashion medical equipment out of dental tools and testing his techniques first on a seal, he set about his surgery using a cook and two geophysicists to assist. Medical action man ... a young Russel Pardoe while serving in Antartica in the 1960s.
Pardoe drilled through the skull twice to relieve the critical pressure, then kept the dangerously ill man alive for two months before enlisting the aid of Russian, US and commercial aircraft to take his patient the 9600 kilometres to Sydney. The trip was in stages in forbidding weather and Pardoe stayed with his patient throughout. Newman, who was carried off the aircraft on a stretcher at Sydney Airport in January, 1962, made a full recovery. Pardoe was persuaded to do a lecture tour and talk about his experience.
When it was announced in 1963 that he had been awarded the MBE, Pardoe was mountaineering in the Southern Alps of New Zealand.
Russel Pardoe was born in Brisbane on October 14, 1932, to an electrical engineer, Leonard Pardoe and a nursing sister, Mollie (nee Freeman). He grew up in Northbridge, Sydney, and went to Barker College, where he won the shot put in a Combined Associated Schools event, setting a record, and distinguished himself in rugby. He attended Sydney University, continued playing football and suffered concussion so serious he had to take two years off from study, filling in some of that time working as a labourer.
During his undergraduate years he served with a reserve Australian Army unit, the 1st Commando Regiment, acquiring skills as a paratrooper, mountain climber, frogman and pilot of planes and gliders.
He graduated in medicine and surgery in 1958 and did his year's residency at Royal North Shore Hospital. Pardoe worked in several countries, including New Guinea. In 1961, he went on the first of two assignments to the Antarctic.
During a visit to the Snowy Mountains, he met a very young hospital matron, Silvija Silic. The couple married in 1966. They migrated to the US, where their four sons, James, Mark, Anton and Stefan, would be born.
Pardoe did a year's residency at Roswell Park Memorial Hospital, Buffalo, New York, in 1969 and in 1971 completed his residency in plastic surgery at Stanford University.
He became an associate professor, chief of the division of plastic surgery at Stanford and the director of the burns unit at Santa Clara Valley Medical Centre. He also participated in a program in Central America run by Interplast, a humanitarian organisation founded at Stanford University to provide free reconstructive surgery in developing countries, primarily to children with cleft lip and palate and burn scars.
In 1979, Pardoe opted to go into private practice as a plastic and reconstructive surgeon and moved his family to Eureka, California. He acquired a reputation for outstanding expertise in treating burns. His son, Anton, said: ''A doctor to his core, Russ was one of those rare caregivers who treasured his patients, whether they could compensate him or not. He was known to make house calls and would always go out of his way for his fellow physicians, no matter how tired he might be.''
A patient, Bob Welsh, said: ''The first time he walked into the examination room, his poise, confidence and elegance instantly assured me I had nothing to fear. He was brilliant and entertaining and I always left the room wishing I could have spent more time with him.''
At the age of 77, Russel Pardoe was diagnosed with a brain tumour.
He fought the illness with the help of friends and colleagues but died on February 17.
He is survived by his widow, his four sons, four grandchildren and a younger brother, Anthony.
Malcolm Brown, 'Pardoe, Russel (Russ) (1932–2011)', Obituaries Australia, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://oa.anu.edu.au/obituary/pardoe-russel-russ-16846/text28742, accessed 8 September 2024.
14 October,
1932
Brisbane,
Queensland,
Australia
17 February,
2011
(aged 78)
Eureka,
California,
United States of America