Arch Magazine | Edition 29 2021

I N P RO FIL E

The good doctor JOHN KEARNEY CONTINUES A FAMILY TRADITION OF GENEROSITY, MAKING ONE OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT DONATIONS IN THE HISTORY OF BOND UNIVERSITY

by Ken Robinson

J

ust how far back does the Kearney family’s connection with Bond University go? “Gumboots in the mud,” says Dr John Kearney OAM. “There have been three generations involved now: my parents, myself, and one of my daughters who studied here. But my parents had gumboots in the mud here, right from the beginning.”

In fact the relationship stretches back even further than the University’s notoriously muddy 1987-1989 construction phase, caused by two of the wettest years in Gold Coast history. Dr Kearney’s parents, eminent barrister Dr John F Kearney AM QC and Dr Alison Kearney, moved from Melbourne to the Gold Coast in the 1970s and immediately began campaigning for the growing city to have its own university.

“My parents both went to Melbourne University, as I did, and we were always hankering for a university on the Gold Coast,” Dr Kearney says. “We were particularly keen on a private university to provide benchmarking for tertiary education in Australia. Mum and Dad were very closely associated with the Friends of Bond (established in 1987) and I was at a lot of the early functions for the first-year students. I obviously wanted the University to have a medical school.”

All three got their wish, thanks in part to a series of generous donations to the University that extend to this day.

The senior Kearneys are memorialised in the names of two University facilities they helped establish: the John and Alison Kearney Library and the John and Alison Kearney Law Library. They are also

| 2 |

responsible for the John F Kearney Moot Court, the John F Kearney Law Gold Medal, and contributed to the Legal Skills Centre and the School of Sustainable Development.

The couple were equally generous with their time over the years, welcoming students and academics to their historic Mudgeeraba home Jabiru for celebratory and fundraising events. The University recognised these many contributions by awarding a Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, to John F Kearney in 2000, and a Doctor of the University, honoris causa, to Alison Kearney in 2009. Now their son has been honoured with the naming of the Dr John Kearney Anatomy Laboratory following another gift that continues a family passion for education, social justice and community service.

“I was about eight when they built the first laser and I thought, I’m going to use that one day.”

A young John Kearney brought science to the mix. He never considered following his father into law, especially after reading about a Cold War invention straight from the pages of a sci-fi novel. “I was about eight when they built the first laser and I thought, I’m going to use that one day,” he says. After graduating with a medicine degree and Honours in surgery, the young doctor moved to the Highlands of Papua New Guinea where he ran a hospital. It was there that he was

inspired to further his studies and specialise in a field that relies heavily on the use of lasers. “I couldn’t get any eye work done in New Guinea,” he says. “There was only one ophthalmologist in the country and he was too busy to come and visit my area, so I came back to Brisbane to study ophthalmology.”

Establishing the Gold Coast Eye Clinic in 1984, Dr Kearney witnessed the birth of Bond University and taught at its Graduate School of Science and Technology before it was deemed to be unviable and closed during the turmoil of the young University’s early years. “That was sad but it was necessary to maintain Bond as a viable institution in the face of great economic difficulty, and I could understand that,” he says.

The school would later be reincarnated as the Faculty of Health Sciences & Medicine where Dr Kearney continues to teach as an Associate Clinical Professor.

Although he was now back in Australia running a successful practice, Dr Kearney’s stint in PNG had sparked a lifelong commitment to addressing the pressing need for basic eye care in Outback Australia and in neighbouring developing countries including East Timor. He says the most urgent problem is the simplest to solve and does not require surgery. “It is just the supply of glasses - there’s no one to supply the glasses or fit them,” he says. “If a teacher hasn’t got glasses or a student hasn’t got glasses, they can’t read the blackboard or the lessons.

And the second most important thing is cataract surgery, and they’re in no position to perform that.”