A LEADING
LEGACY C
After 27 years serving the Order of Malta Australia, Dr. Ian Marshall AM AE KC*SG KGCMG (Ob) GCM is closing a chapter of leadership and leaving behind a trail of charitable work and cherished memories.
onfrère Dr Ian Marshall is the first to admit he didn’t enter the Order of Malta willingly at first. As a practising family doctor he became involved in palliative care in its early days at Mt Olivet Hospital in Brisbane where a number of the hospital Board were already members of the Order, including the first Queensland Chairman of the Order, the Honourable James Douglas, Professor Teresa Cramond, Mr Kevin J. King, and Mr Bernie Knapp. “I relented in 1993,” Ian says. “I became involved because I was one of the first General Practitioners in Brisbane involved
2019 Australian Hospitaller
in palliative care at Mt Olivet Hospital. At the time I joined, the Order was only 19 years old with about 150 members overall, and around 15 members in Queensland. H.E Albrecht Boeselager told me that once you join, the Order takes your little finger, then your arm, and eventually consumes the whole of you.” Slowly but surely, Ian discovered this for himself. In 1995, just two years into his membership, Ian became State Chairman of the Order. In 2005, he was made National Hospitaller, responsible for the oversight of the Order’s charitable and humanitarian
works in Australia and its near neighbours. In 2013, he was appointed President of the Australian Association. In acknowledgment of his ongoing charitable and humanitarian work, His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI conferred on Ian the honour of a papal knighthood in 2012 by creating him a Knight Commander with Star in the Pontifical Equestrian Order of St Gregory the Great. Ian studied medicine in Queensland and initially trained as a surgeon including a stint with the pioneering cardiac team at The Prince Charles Hospital. He was 41
