Ernest Barclay Drevermann was born at Bairnsdale, Victoria, and educated at Melbourne Grammar School. He was an excellent pianist and was undecided whether to go on with his music or do medicine. However, he chose medicine and graduated at Melbourne University in 1936. Music was always an outlet for his feelings and when worried about a patient he would always relax by playing his favourite Beethoven or Chopin.

He was a junior and senior resident medical officer at Royal Melbourne Hospital and then worked at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute under Charles Kellaway, where he became involved in the blood bank which had just started under Lucy Bryce and Ian Wood.

So began his long association with the Australian Red Cross Transfusion Service, Victorian Division. After his return from the War he was deputy honorary director and then honorary consultant until his death in November 1973. He was appointed honorary research resuscitation officer at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, honorary consultant, Royal Women's Hospital and honorary consultant, St George's Maternity Hospital.

He saw service as a captain, AAMC, AIF (2/13 AGH) 1941-45, was taken prisoner in Singapore and spent three years on the infamous railway. At one period he was in charge of a gang of Tamils and had no other contacts for six months. His only book was the Bible which he read through three times. From then on he delighted in confounding various padres with his biblical knowledge, as he had a very impish sense of humour. A tall, wiry man, he weighed under eight stone on his return from Thailand, and was nicknamed `Shadow' by his troops. ‘Drev’, as he was known to all, was one of the first great resuscitationists. He had an enormous private practice spread over wider Melbourne, as well as his public hospitals. His usual working day was from 5 am till 11 pm and he was then often called out during the night. Frequently at night he would meet a patrol car. The officers all knew his car and would say ‘Want an escort, Doc?’ He would be rushed through the night, much to his amusement, for he was a Peter Pan at heart.

He was a very cultured man with a great love of his devoted wife and daughter, a great interest in Australian history and music, and utterly devoted to his patients and his friends in the medical profession, who were legion.

In 1969 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons and in the same year he was made a Member of The Royal Australasian College of Physicians, being subsequently elected to Fellowship in 1973. The Australian Medical Association awarded him its Fellowship in 1972. It gave him the greatest pleasure that he was a Fellow of the two senior colleges and also of the AMA and the knowledge that he had been so honoured helped him through his last painful illness.