The Kellaway Years
Patterson’s successor, Charles H Kellaway, was also a Melbourne medical graduate. During the war Kellaway had spent time with Sir Henry Dale at the Lister Institute in London, where he developed a passion for biomedical research. When he arrived from London in 1924 to accept the Directorship, his main priorities were to acquire a cadre of aspiring scientists and raise money to supplement the £2,500 pa provided by The Walter and Eliza Hall Trust. In late 1927, he obtained the first direct funding for medical research from the Commonwealth Government, providing a precedent for the development of the National Health and Medical Research Council grants system, in 1936. He established three departments: physiology, headed by himself; biochemistry, headed by Henry Holden; and bacteriology, headed by the young Macfarlane Burnet.
In 1925, Kellaway sent Burnet to the Lister Institute, where he worked on bacteriophages and secured his PhD. Upon his return, Burnet continued to make seminal discoveries in bacterial and phage genetics but moved more and more into virology. Together with Neil Hamilton Fairley and Harold Dew, Kellaway himself focussed on hydatid disease and venoms of snakes, spiders and mussels. Fairley went on to a major career in tropical medicine, first in Bombay and then in London and was responsible for the chemoprophylactic program to treat malaria that was so critical for the Australian army during the second world war.
Four of Kellaway’s small staff - Kellaway himself, Wilhelm Feldberg (a refugee from Nazi Germany), Neil Hamilton Fairley and Macfarlane Burnet were eventually to become Fellows of the Royal Society.
Following the Bundaberg tragedy in 1928, when 12 children died following vaccination against diptheria, Kellaway was appointed chairman of the Royal Commission. There was intense public interest in the issue and Kellaway did an excellent job, which raised the profile of the fledgling Institute.
A young Frank Macfarlane Burnet with Charles H Kellaway
Kellaway adroitly steered the Institute through the Depression, avoiding the threat of closure, and by 1939 it was producing high quality results. With the outbreak of the second world war, the Institute’s interests shifted to include infectious agents affecting Australian soldiers in the tropics. Mindful of the devastation caused by the flu pandemic following the previous war, Burnet became deeply involved in trying to develop an effective flu vaccine.
When the hospital –now The Royal Melbourne Hospital- moved to its new premises in Parkville, Kellaway seized the opportunity to gain new, custom-built laboratories in a wing abutting Royal Parade. In 1944, when he accepted an invitation to head the research laboratories of the Wellcome Foundation Ltd in London, the torch was passed to Macfarlane Burnet.
