DTR IF HONOUR OF SIR CHARLES BIC TON
BCKBURN, RHACELLOR F2ERITU UIVERITY
Uip SYDR'.. JYDfm 12th NOVEMBER. 1965
Speech by the Prime Minister. Sir Robert Menzies
Chancellor and Ladies and Gentlemen
. Then I was born, Charles Bickerton Blackburn was between
twenty and twenty-one years old, and as I have a firm conviction
that all happiness will be mine if I can attend his 100th
birthday, I have a very great privilege tonight to be allowed to
speak about him.
But before I speak about him, could I tell you that my
memory has be titillated a little by some of the remarks that have
been made along the table, and to my left by the Vice-Chancellor
who like me suffers the fate of being in his own right, a
graduate of the University of Melbourne,
Reference was made tonight by you, Chancellor, to Robert
Strachan Wallace who was the Professor ol Lnglish in my time at
the Melbourne University, and so parochial are the people in
Sydney that when many years afterwards I was invited inadvertently
I can only assume to have lunch at a celebrated club in Sydney,
I arrived I shed my hat and coat and I walked into the smoking
room and there my host said " I would like to introduce you to
Sir Robert 4allace" and I stood off about three yards I'm sure
I've told this to some of you before today and looked at him and
said ' Hence in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,
Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea
1hich brought us hither
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the Children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.
That's Wordsworth lads, and good stuff." ( Laughter) After that,
of course, they realised that I wasn't unacquainted with him.
I hope Professor Mitchell will take a note of that.
And then when I heard the Chancellor tonight do us the
singular favour of doing a little Lucretius into English it is
not his customary practice I was reminded of a very great
classical scholar in my time at the University,( and I think Vice-
Uhancellor in yours) Professor Tucker. He was a great man, he
was a wonderful scholar and he had a nice dry wit as a classical
scholar should. One day we were sitting in the lecture room, one of
these terrace lecture rooms and he was addressing us, no doubt
on the subject of Latin and two or three of the fellows you'll
be surprised at this they probably turned out to be medical
students in the long run; they were not very interested in this
but they wanted to have a bit of fun, so one of them with that
excruciating form of wit which I believe is still current in the
undergraduate body, brought a dog in and sooled the dog down the
steps and the dog, not unwilling went down had a look around,
walked up on to the dais and stood there with shouts of undergraduate
laughter this was the wittiest event of the year. I
suppose it was expecting that Professor Tucker would be a little
incommoded by this. He just stopped in the middle of a sentence, / 2
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bent down, patted the dog on the head and said, " Well, puppy,
did you come in with the others?"
Now having got off these highly irrelevant reminiscences
of mine, may I tell you that I'm here and my wife is here
because we both suffer from an enormous admiration and a deep
affection for Sir Charles Bickerton Blackburn now to be known,
as I realise, as Chancellor Emeritus. Might i suggest, air,
that you should do something about Prime Ministers. ( Laughter)
( Applause) * ihen I have gone at long last to live in the street
in ' Melbourne which is now I believe called Haverlook Avenue
I think it would give you and myself great pleasure if people
would say, " That's where the Prime Minister Emeritus lives."
Of course, there is nothing half so insignificant as a Prime
Minister when he is a Prime Minister; nothing quite so
contemptible as a Prime Minister who is no longer a Prime
Minister, and I put in this little plea. You might do something
in the academic world Prime Minister Emeritus. Oh, this
attracts me, enormously.
Now, when I agreed to come down here, I found my mission
a little sketchy to~ a because certain things have happened
around the world whi require a great deal of painful thought;
I said to myself, " What is it about Sir Charles Bickerton
Blackburn that makes him a legendary figure, not only in this
university but in the whole of the Commonwealth of Australia.
iihat is i{ about him?" Well, of course, he is a great physician,
and that's a pretty good thing to be with very great respect
to you Chancellor that's a pretty good thing to be. The
older I get, the more respect 1 have for great physicians.
He' 8 a great educationist because for many years he has
been the hancellor of this reat and famous university. In
the whole of that time he didn't ever seem to me to flag or
fail in any way. He was everywhere, he did everything. I
couldn't get within half a mile of this place wiThout encountering
him. A great educationist. And the history of the
University oFcSydney has been enriched by the fact that he
has been Ohancellor and has held the standards high. Now this
is a very great thing to be, in addition to being a great
physician. He has been a great citizen, and that, if I may say so,
is rather more important than being either a great physician or
a great educationist. He's been a great citizen. I will
undertake to say that there are thousands and thousands of
people in Sydney who, when they thought about the university
also thought about Charles Bickerton Blackburn and this is
tremendously important because if your Chancellor is and this
is still the simple truth a great citizen then the people
take the university to their hearts and to their minds ana don't
regard it as something remote and apart,
And above all these things again, he is a great human
being alert, alive, warm-hearted and almost omnipresent.
I don't understand how he's been doing it for 91 years because
I'm sure he started in the cradle. I don't understand how he
does it but wherever you go, you meet him. There he is,
attending a party or two parties or three parties I don't
know how many parties we have in the Commonwealth now let's
say three or four anyhow he's attending and looking around
like that, you know, and still, if you will allow me to say so,
with a remarkably quick eye for a prettT girl. ( Laughter)
This argues, if it needs to be argued, that he's a great human
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being. Now these are the facets of his life and of his
character that present themselves to me.
All I want to do apart from that is to say, " hat have
been the secret springs of his career because you can never udge
any man from the outside, you can never Just look at ffho's qio,
you can never just look at something tha a ppears in a newspaper
or some essay that somebody has written. These will give you
the superficial aspects of a man but it is tremendously important
to get to understand what are the inner springs of his character
and his achievement and this takes us below the surface.
Well, in his case could I say that he has throughout
his life, his professional life, possessed enormous skill, and
skill is not something given to you by a Government. Skill is
not something created by a statute. Skill is not something
created by a system of scholarships or awards. Skill is always
the product of the marriage of a natural talent and a tremendous
devotion to work, a tremendous devotion to knowledge. This
doesn't happen by accident. It doesn't happen by decree. It
happens because the man has in himself that urge to know, that
urge to acquire skill, that willingness to scorn delights and to
live laborious days which ultimately produces in him the top
range of skill an this, if I may say so, has been one of the
inspiring elements in Sir Charles' own life.
And in the second place, being a great physician he
has had a great feeling for humanity, for human beings. ko
physician could be a , eat one who merely acquired skill and then
looked at people as ifthev were objects for study, as if they
represented numbers in a catalogue or even on a computer. e
must have true humanity. The proper study of mankind is man,
and for a great physician this is doubly true because every
human being who presents Aimself to him is his own individual
problem, and he must get inside the mind of the man the heart of
the man, the feeling of the man and by man I include woman.
This is true. There must be a deep instinct for humanity.
argues likeA ndth lte heCnh, a nciefl lcooru rEsem, e rietvuesr, y nwohwo haansd gtrheeant ssokmielblo, d ywho has
a eelin of true humanity and who has enduring usefulness. This
is something worth thinking about. I know most of us are not
in his class in this way; most of us know that as time goes on,
you begin to feel occasionally that you are out of touch with
the new generation, that you are in your ovn generation, that
perhaps these others coming along have thin s you don't understand
and that you ought to try To understand. Bless my soul and
body, this man Has the spirit of enduring usefulness. He's
like Peter Pan, the boy who wouldn't grow up. How true this is.
I've never heard him make an old man's remark have you? I
have always thought that whatever he had to say was a contemporary
thing. He was a boy among boys. Ho was a young man among young
men. This is a tremendous thing, and all the more tremendous to
me ladies and gentlemen when I recall now something that I
dian't know at the time that when I was born for better or for
worse, he was already most of the way throu h1is medical course.
He was a man and I was an infant who would gave been mewling
and puking in the nurse's arms if the family had been able to
afford a nurse. Now the last thing that I want to say about him is that
he has this marvellous capacity for sustained enthusiasm. Now,
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enthusiasm in a highly respectable world becomes a little suspect.
" Oh, I wish you wouldn't say that"...." You sounded enthusiastic
about that" It is proper not to be too enthusiastic to be
reserved to be muted a little on these things. He has the
spirit of sustained enthusiasm, and it is to be contrasted with
the attitude of all too many people in our country who say. " Oh,
why should I be enthusiastic; Ill take what I can and I21h
walt to see what more is comin-to me." This is an attitude of
death death intellectually, death sociall, death politically,
to sa, " I'll take what they give me and I'h wait for the
rest. To have this divine attribute of enthusiasm, this is
so treme dously important and nowhere more importait than in a
university which is the oldest and most historic university in
this nation. This is tremendously important. Some of you
have heard me say in the past, my anxiety, in spite of all that
I have had the opportunity of doinp and it's been a little in
the university field, my anxiety has always been that we will
become too much on the receiving end, too willing to lower
standards, too willing to speak in terms of quantity instead of
in terms of quality. And the answer to that kind of feeling is
to look around and see this grand old man of Australian university
life and to know that he has an enthusiasm in him today, still
has a feeling of worlds to be conquered that could be a marvellous
example to people seventy years younger than himself.
Now, Sir, I didn't intend to speak as long as this,
but when you are speaking about a topic of this kind, it's not
easy or convenient or desirable to be over-brief. But all I
have said Sir, Sir Charles Bickerton Blackburn, all I have been
sayingo is designed to convey to you not only for myself but for
everybody here tonight and I thihk for a million or two millions
or four millions or five millions of people in Australia something
of what we feel about you how thankful we are that you have
been among us, how delighted we are to know that for the next
ten years you will still be among us, because I repeat what I
said at the beg inning that my one remaining ambition is to attend
your 100th birthday party.
Sir and Ladies and Gentlemen, let us drink the health
of this great man. Sir Charles.