“Freddie” Turner was born in Adelaide, the son of Frederic Boyd Turner, a bank manager, and Margaretta (née Rowe). During his undergraduate years he was a stalwart member of the University hockey team, an activity that he gave up after graduation whilst a resident house surgeon at the Adelaide Hospital (which became Royal in 1939). He next took up a general practice at Tailem Bend, on the River Murray, and continued there after marrying Eileen Funder, a pharmacist, in 1937, embracing her Catholic faith to cement the union.

He enlisted in the AAMC in March 1940 with the rank of Captain and later was posted to the Northern Territory (1942-44). He was promoted Major in July 1944 and then served in PNG and adjacent northern islands until December 1945 as Deputy Assistant Director of Medical Services on three separate headquarters staffs. Towards the end of his Army career he achieved the rank of Lieut-Colonel and was posted OC Medical Division,
104 Australian Military Hospital in Adelaide (1951-55). He was finally transferred to the Reserve of Officers in 1955.

After his discharge from active service in 1946 Freddie joined a small group of GPs in a south-western suburb of Adelaide and became an honorary assistant physician at the Adelaide Children’s Hospital, with duties in a medical outpatient clinic, later becoming an honorary physician before accepting the role of honorary relieving physician in 1964.

He practiced as a consultant physician after becoming a member of the College in 1948 whilst still retaining a part-time association with his old general practice. In 1968 he added to his commitments by becoming part-time Medical Officer at the Ashford House School for children with cerebral palsy conducted under the auspices of the Crippled Children’s Association of SA, and his interest in these unfortunate children led to a Fellowship of the College of Rehabilitation Medicine in 1979. He also co-initiated a campaign for the provision of housing for handicapped persons. The award of Membership of the Order of Australia in 1990 was in recognition of his devoted endeavours in this field.

Altogether, this is the record of an exemplary life of service which almost is all the more remarkable because of the personal travail that almost overwhelmed Freddie when his wife died tragically in 1952 of an embolism after childbirth, leaving him with the baby and five other children, aged from 4 to 13 years. He battled on alone with his bereft family until he married his second wife, Janice Moriarty, a registered nurse in 1954, and three more children were born to the family. Jan was pleased to provide the photograph that clearly shows what an amiable man he was. He died at the age of 81 of a myocardial infarction.