The piece de resistance was, and I don't know how we achieved this, but I rang the New Zealand owner of Rising Fast, the pride of the Australian turf at the time and arguably one of the finest horses ever. The owner agreed to parade the horse – we had 20,000 people attend. Just as we off-loaded Rising Fast and got him onto the oval with a strapper there proudly walking him across Princes Park, a band strikes up and starts to march towards the horse. Well! I don’t know how I survived that because I was history. He was lifting the strapper at least two yards off the ground. He was set to bolt. He would have gone clean over the outer retaining wall, had he gotten away. So we stopped the band in full parade. That doesn’t happen too often.

But that introduced me to Bill Kilpatrick because he had an interest in that [event] and helped us. And I subsequently met him again in the early 1950s when the first doorknock appeal was held in Australia. It was for cancer, it was new and it had huge publicity, and the Chief Executive running it became a politician, Don Chipp. And we ran that and I remember The Herald front page was “Money in Cascades”. People took to it but now, of course, it's been over-worked. So we’ve got to come up with an idea like that, a new idea that produces “money in cascades” so that these people can keep doing the fantastic things they do.

Laurie Muir: Tony and I tried to start a rose day at Werribee Park but it didn't take off. But we picked it up in another way – the Daffodil Day – that has really taken off for the Anti-Cancer Council. And the other one, again for the Anti-Cancer Council, is Relay for Life. The gentleman who thought of this, an American, who lost a patient, was determined to raise more money for cancer research, went to an oval in his own state and ran for 24 hours and raised US$30,000 or something. Today, with events like that on the one day all over America, they’re looking at something like $300 million raised per annum. And ours has taken off, it’s gone national last year, and I think we’re looking at raising over a million dollars. What Tony has illustrated is that he hasn’t just raised funds for the Institute, he’s raised awareness. That’s the other half of our job, always.

Dick Bennett: All of this indicates the great value of networking. Great people attract other great people. They recruit them and they form a great cause. They have a lot of energy and ideas and they get things done. It seems to me to be all associated with, and greatly promoted by, good networking.

Wayne Morrison: I'd like to take this opportunity to acknowledge what has been the backbone of this place in terms of the fundraising. These people who have just spoken have not only raised money for us, but for institutes all over Australia. The generosity of the donors who get bled time and time again is unbelievable. I just don’t know how they cope with being harassed. But without that, so many institutes would be destitute.

I had sleepless nights, time and time again, after taking on the specter that Bernard left me of raising all this money. Now it's up to $3 million a year that this place invests in research. If it were up to me to physically fly the banner, we’d all be out of business. It’s just extraordinary the energy and persistence that you people have. I’m just so grateful for that, and can’t repay you enough.

Laurie Muir: I'd like to make special mention of one of my successors, Ron Walker. He’s been quite extraordinary in fund-raising. He can stand over Premiers and Prime Ministers like no-one else I’ve ever known. He’s so persuasive and doesn’t take no for an answer. And he puts our case so well that he and the current group have raised more money than we ever thought possible.

Lunch

Witness to the History of Australian Medicine