It did impact on me at one stage because I'd been comfortably going along with grants from the Research Foundation, small ones but they sustained me. It was David who took me aside one day and said, "It’s time you tried to find your money outside the Hospital". And I had to apply for an NHMRC research grant ,which I got in 1975, and I was probably the first NHMRC grantee at the Hospital.[96]

Thereafter, I was expected to get my own money externally. It was often added to by the Research Foundation. They stood behind me. Every five years they would say, "We will guarantee your salary if you are unable to get it externally". But David pushed me into the outside world and I'm sure he later pushed many others into the outside world.

He also had a strong appreciation of what [basic] scientists added to research. He had an early relationship with Dick Cotton, and his own research group was built up around a core of basic scientists, of whom Dick was one. And professionalism in a laboratory sense slowly crept in through the Research Foundation. Then, a really sustained kick in the pants to go elsewhere and find your money first and only come back if you couldn't find it elsewhere.

Ann Westmore: I see a number of heads shaking in agreement. Are there others who had this experience?

Peter Phelan: There was a great interest in NHMRC funding by the Research Foundation.

Ruth Bishop: The NHMRC system of awarding grants was also evolving.

Bernard Neal: I was on the NHMRC for a number of years and I've been staggered by its growth. I remember how excited we were when we had a whole $13 million to dispense across the country. It’s probably more like $300 million now.

Frank Oberklaid: The Children's Hospital was very different from other paediatric hospitals. For example, it was one of the first to conduct psychological research whereas at some of the other hospitals, it was purely clinical. And none of them had attached paediatric research institutes. I think that differentiation has become less. But in those days, this was the place to do your training. And the culture, ethos and expectation was that you would undertake research.

Peter Phelan: The Royal Alexandra Hospital for Sick Children [in Sydney] had a research institute. It was seen as an isolated group in some quarters. Whereas in Melbourne, it [the Royal Children's Hospital Research Foundation] was always part of the mainstream.

Susan Sawyer[97] : In terms of that culture of change, in my generation the expectation was that you would do a higher degree. Where did that come from?

Peter Phelan: David really started it, as Ruth said, as a way of encouraging the scientists (including medical graduates) because they had been axed from the Hospital to a very large extent and were smarting at the encouragement of purely clinical people. Then I built on what David did, almost to give the expectation that if someone saw their career as an academic paediatrician, part of their training would be a higher degree.

Bernard Neal: This was part of the function of the Hospital being in postgraduate medical education myself. We organised the lecture program with the expectation that a pretty high percentage of Registrars would be seen as trainees for scholarships at the College of Physicians and so forth, and we were proud of our high success rate. Everyone around the Hospital participated but the basic organisation of it took place from this Hospital appointment of the then Postgraduate Co-ordinator.

Witness to the History of Australian Medicine