Dr Mark Yeatman Sheppard

FRCS FRACS 1919 – 2022

Dr Mark Sheppard was the fourth of five children of Bernard Aubrey and Constance Ethel Sheppard. Ethel’s father was Dr John Yeatman, who practised medicine in Auburn and later lived with Bernard and Ethel. He probably influenced Mark to do medicine.

Mark was educated in Brighton, and subsequently at Pulteney Grammar and St Peter’s College with the aid of scholarships. He served in the Cadet Corps from 1933 to 1936 and completed an accelerated wartime MB, BS at Adelaide, graduating in 1942 while performing part time Army [CMF] service.

Mark became a resident medical officer at the Royal Adelaide Hospital (RAH) in 1942 and married Mary Alexandriana Bidstrup, a nurse at the RAH, in June 1943. Their loving relationship lasted 75 years.

In January 1943 he enlisted in the Australian Army Medical Corps’ Second Australian Imperial Force (2AIF) as captain, joining his brothers Digby and David who were serving overseas. Fortunately, he was posted back to Adelaide before embarking on the Australian Hospital Ship Centaur in Brisbane. The Centaur was sunk by a Japanese submarine off the Queensland coast with few survivors.

He completed his war service in Katherine and Darwin where the birth of his first child John Mark in 1944 was toasted by his Commanding Officer in the Darwin Officers’ Mess.

At war’s end he returned to Adelaide as assistant to the Director of Surgery at the University and Senior Registrar at the RAH. He entered general practice on Woodville Road with Doctors Waddy, Lyall and Russell, working long hours and studying surgery. He was a clinical assistant from 1948 to 1965 and gained his FRACS in 1953, sailing to England with his family in 1954.

In London he worked at Harrow Hospital, and with Rowden Foote, who specialised in varicose vein surgery, becoming an expert and later publishing on preventing recurrences in the ANZ Journal of Surgery, and in Phlebology.

After receiving his FRCS in 1956, he returned to Adelaide, where he practised in North Adelaide, private hospitals, and was visiting surgeon and director of the Varicose Veins Unit at RGH Daw Park for 20 years until 1980.

He was elected to the AMA(SA) Council in 1961 and remained until 1967, serving as Vice President for one term before being elected as President in 1965. He was also a director of the Medical Defence Association.

In 1968 he served in Vietnam as Surgical Team Leader, dealing with war injuries as well as conducting civilian surgery.

Mark enjoyed sailing, tennis and golf. He developed a small farm, and had a holiday house at Victor Harbor. He and Mary enjoyed long walks and they played bridge into their 90s.

Retiring in 1990, Mark entered Walkerville Nursing Home when Mary’s health deteriorated. She died in 2018. In this difficult time he enjoyed the love and affection of his children and their families, to whom he had been a model of kindness, modesty, fairness, idealism and morality. His values and his considerable support of charities were underpinned by a deeply sustaining Christian faith.

He is survived by his children, Mark, Felicity and Cecily, and their families.

Dr Peter Joseph