By 1969 the Department was able to provide small animal holding facilities, along with an adjacent laboratory. Later a small animal operating theatre also became available. Dr Peter Henderson,[35] an ophthalmologist from Professor Crock's Department, made significant contributions, particularly with regard to the design and development of several instruments used in microsurgical anastomoses. The first major grant from an outside body was made in 1968, and the first of several grants from the NHMRC and the Potter Foundation were made in 1969. Additional operating microscopes were purchased with funding from these sources. In that year Bernard’s appointment was upgraded to Senior Research Fellow, a position he held until 1975. During this time he was joined by some young specialists from other Melbourne hospitals and the first of his trainees from overseas.

Dr Thelma Baxter,[36] a histopathologist, who held part-time appointments in my Department and also the Department of Pathology on campus, undertook detailed studies of the sutured micro-vessels, and later the lymphovenous anastomoses, from slides prepared by a technician in my Department. The microsurgical techniques were also used by another research group in the Department studying kidney transplantation in the rat. Bernard's role was recognised in publications arising from these studies. The group worked well together, providing the opportunity for discussion, criticism and presentation of the work.

After four years, Bernard's enthusiasm and ambition remained great. He was not one to just take things quietly, he wanted to move along perhaps more quickly than I was able. Jim [Angus] may remember that at the end of 1966, the year after I arrived, the University was having considerable financial problems. I was never able to meet his growing financial and staffing requirements from Departmental resources. He was also irritated by the financial and administrative requirements of the Department and the central University offices. So things were difficult. Nonetheless between 1968 and 1972 the microsurgical project was kick-started academically and financially.

Now I was never a party to the [Microsurgery] Foundation.[37] Syd Sunderland was never party to the Foundation. Both he and I thought that a little odd but, nevertheless, we accepted it. John Connell was a vascular surgeon, Keith Henderson was a neurosurgeon, but neither was active in the research field. You folk were all active in the administration and the fund-raising and the organisation, so I didn't play a role in the Foundation and I don’t claim to have, and it doesn’t upset me. But what I feel is that there was a period when it was essential that the whole project had academic recognition and support to get it rolling. I think these four years were very valuable. Now after that, for various reasons as I said, Bernard was anxious to proceed more quickly than I think I could. So he subsequently arranged to put his applications to the NHMRC and other bodies through the hospital. In 1973 and '74 that’s what happened.

We still had funds in the University, we still had people receiving payment, we still had equipment being purchased, so there was a transition from about 1972-75 when there was a bit of a joint exercise. Later, the Hospital established the Microsurgery Research Advisory Committee[38] and all the funding was then maintained through the Hospital. The Foundation, as I understood it, was concerned with fundraising, rather than academic- or research-orientated issues. You were fund-raising. He needed funds and you did it very effectively, and that was great. But the Microsurgery Research Advisory Committee in the Hospital was there to look at the work being done, the people being attracted from overseas,[39] the hospital appointments they were given to enable them to participate in the work, sometimes clinical, certainly research, and to facilitate their use of the hospital's physical facilities such as its experimental research facility that I think was mentioned.

Witness to the History of Australian Medicine