Ewan Corlette was a descendant of a distinguished Manx family of Huguenot origin with strong and on-going links to the medical profession. His father, Cyril Ernest Corlette, MD ChM (Univ Syd), DPH (Cantab), FRACS, was one of the earliest graduates of the medical faculty of the University of Sydney. He had a life-long attachment to Sydney Hospital where his career spanned from Resident Medical Officer (1894-95) to Honorary Surgeon (1900-28). Noel, Ewan’s brother, was also a respected member of the Sydney Hospital medical staff who taught surgery to generations of medical students. Noel’s son Peter was an ear, nose and throat surgeon in a rapidly growing area of southern Sydney and had a medical graduate among his children.

Ewan Corlette was born in 1908 and attended Cranbrook School, Bellevue Hill, from 1920 to 1925. He studied medicine at Sydney University, then the only medical school in New South Wales, from 1926 to 1931. Following his father’s footsteps he did his resident training at Sydney Hospital (1931-3) and later continued postgraduate training, according to the fashion of the day, in the United Kingdom. He gained membership of the Royal College of Physicians (MRCP) in 1937.

After his return to Australia he took up practice in Orange, NSW, and served as Honorary Physician at the local hospital. In 1940, very soon after the outbreak of the world war, he enlisted in the AAMC and was sent, with the rank of Major, to the Middle East. Ewan Corlette was attached to the 2/2 Casualty Clearing Station, part of the 8th Division, which served in Palestine and Egypt. Following the unprovoked Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour and their rapid occupation of eastern Asia, his medical detachment was sent to Java in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) where they were captured by the Japanese. He was imprisoned in Changi, a district which is now the site of Singapore International Airport. He and his fellow captives linked up with "Weary" (later Sir Edward) Dunlop’s force, which was among the first group of prisoners of war to work on the notorious Burma – Siam railway line. Ewan Corlette and his men probably suffered as much, if not more, than any other Australian service men during the World War II, in prison camps such as Konyu, Hintok, Kinsayok and Tamuang. He and his fellow members of the AAMC gave medical comfort to their fellow soldiers and prisoners of war without sufficient nourishment, effective medication, adequate surgical instruments, pathology or radiology services. Cholera, dysentery and malaria affected troops and medical staff, including Ewan Corlette, alike. A glimpse of their suffering is provided by the fact that at the end of hostilities and delivery from captivity his body weight was about half of that at the time of enlisting. He was discharged with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. His bravery was recognised by the award of MBE, (Military Division) and he was mentioned in dispatches for distinguished service.

In 1946 he commenced practice as specialist physician in Macquarie Street, working from his father’s consulting rooms. He was appointed Honorary Relieving Assistant Physician at Sydney Hospital and rose to the rank of Senior Honorary Physician. He served on the Board of Sydney Hospital for many years beyond his retirement from the active staff at the age of 65 years. His other medical commitment was to the Repatriation General Hospital, Concord which he served as Visiting Physician. He left consulting practice in 1980 due to ill health and moved to live on a property near Tamworth. Sadly, in 1984, he suffered from a devastating stroke, which left him hemiplegic and aphasic. He was released from his suffering in July 1986, at the age of 78 years.

Ewan Corlette was a shining example to his younger colleagues at Sydney Hospital who admired his clinical knowledge and skills. Sadly but understandably he never overcame the bitterness caused by his infernal and brutal war-time experiences so poignantly expressed in an Anzac Day address in Tamworth, one year before his incapacitating cerebro-vascular accident: “I recall an occasion sitting in a leaky tent in Siam in teeming monsoonal rains and surrounded by mud, holding the hand of a nineteen year old soldier, whilst he died from the effects of a haemorrhage complicating severe dysentery, knowing that given the tools I could have saved his life ...”.

Note: This tribute did not appear in the relevant volume of College Roll, as the College was unaware of Dr Corlette’s death until 1995