90 Years of Bernie

A familiar name and for many a familiar face in our Region, and rightly so... Bernie Huxtable is a remarkable man who has done many remarkable things, at 90 years old, he sat down and shared some of his experiences with me describing his life as ‘constantly exciting.’  

Born in Woollahra Sydney, in 1929 Bernie, like many his age was affected by World War II. “My Father went off to the war at very short notice in 1940, he was captured in Singapore and survived four years of captivity, and another six months of ill health before he returned. He was away from us for about five years. It was a huge change in everyone’s lives.

I grew up in the depression and was the eldest of four children, money was very tight. There was a lot of bare footed kids wearing cutdown old trousers from their older brother, their lunch might have been a bread and tomato sauce sandwich, which I didn’t mind the look of, but my mother wouldn’t give me that, I’d get a nourishing vegemite sandwich.”

“I didn’t get an allowance until I went to boarding school, I think I got a shilling a week, we would go downtown on a Saturday, you could buy a tin of sweetened condensed milk for elevenpence which was nearly a shilling, or you could save up your money and every second week you could have a thing called an American chocolate... I could hardly bear to save up for two weeks in a row,” Bernie laughed.

“Quite often people wouldn’t pay Dad for his work or they would pay in-kind, I came home one day and saw two live crabs tied up to our tree in our garden... a fisherman had brought them in to pay the Dr (my Father). It was a completely different world.”

Growing up Bernie mentioned there was family pressure that he should study medicine, “There was a lot of Huxtable Doctors, they would say, ‘It’s your duty to be a Doctor’.

I think I did want to be a Doctor. I wasn’t terribly ambitious; I didn’t get interested in medicine until I had just about got through the course. Once we got into hospitals and started treating people, I found medicine very interesting. It was also very challenging, and I had to work terribly hard for a long time in my life, long hours and not many holidays, but it was always very interesting.”

At Sydney’s Prince Alfred Hospital, there I was inspired to do my higher degree in Medicine. Later on in my life I was the first consultant physician here in Orange.

A lot of my time was spent doing Cardiology, the idea of operating on the heart was strange, people thought it wasn’t possible. They eventually developed heart and lung machines, that was a great advancement, that happened around the time I was still training.

I put in the first pacemakers here a long time ago, I started Coronary Care here in 1966, so that’s been going for 53 years. We had no idea just how advanced it would all become.”

Bernie couldn’t single out a certain memory from his Medicine days, though he did say, “If you can manage to pull somebody back or make some great diagnosis that changes their life, well then you come home to your wife and you say, ‘well I’ve had a nice day today.’ There’s lots of times when you can’t do very much for the patients except do the best you can to make them feel comfortable.  There’s always something you can do for a patient, no matter how sick they are. That’s one of the arts of Medicine actually.”

Bernie retired in 1994, after 40 years in medicine.

There’s not much in our community that Bernie hasn’t put his hand to, he and his wife, Colina are very keen bird watchers, he played a vital role in ‘Friends of the Botanic Gardens’ bird walks, he has been involved with Rotary for 56 years and when I asked what he was most proud of he took a moment to reflect.

“I’m proud of anything I did to help the development if our hospital. We did our best to encourage students and residents, to want to come to Orange. So, we gave them a good time when they came here, we taught the best way we could, we took them out and about. We enthused them so we got a lot of good people on staff.

“The second thing is being able to help and start a sheltered workshop here, now known as Wangarang. When we started that I was the foundation Vice President, then I became the President, and when I was President, we built Wangarang, it’s a beautiful building.

“We had no government money, I collected about a dozen people to start the sheltered workshop, it was in a room that we hired on Franklin Road. Email Factory were very good to us, they gave us a cheque for $100 which was a lot of money in those days, they would pay us for the work that we did, so we morally decided we should be giving it to the people working there, which pleased them very much. We pretty soon outgrew that room, so we got the use of the old drill hall, the numbers grew, we got more work, more trainees, we gradually accumulated some money. Toward the end of the 60s we were given a two for one building subsidy, so we started a campaign to raise more money and we designed and built Wangarang. I am a life member of the organisation.”

When I asked Bernie what his favourite Rotary memory was he didn’t hesitate to choose, “On Thursday night this week when they turned on a surprise dinner for me,” Bernie laughed, “They gave me a presentation, the Male Voice Choir sang some songs which was lovely and they sang happy birthday to me so that was nice. It was a lovely night. Rotary has given me so much more than I have given Rotary. If you feel in your life that you need to do something for your community, it gets a lot of different people to work together.”

After not long meeting Bernie it becomes very apparent that he is a very humble and kind man, and if this story doesn’t prove it, this last quote will. Thank you Bernie for sharing your life stories with us!  

“I don’t wish to live in a palace, I don’t wish to earn a million dollars a year and I don’t wish to fly on a private jet somewhere... I am very content with my life, proud of my family and what I have given to the community.”