The opportunity to write
Dr Cook wanted to write the story of his life and he collected a vast array of papers he had prepared through his career. A serious accident late in his life limited his chance to do it.
I met Dr Cook’s daughter, Robin McIntyre by chance at a golf tournament in Sydney in 1985, when she was on furlough from her job as Head Physiotherapist at Royal Darwin Hospital. We had both finished with first marriages and within a few months we were a couple. During those months Cecil Cook died; I attended his funeral but I never met him.
The need to write
Two quite different stories about Cook prompted me to write A Vision for Australia’s Health: Dr Cecil Cook at work. Elizabeth Riddell wrote on Cook in Unsung Heroes and Heroines of Australia (1988), a summary based on a slim folder of Cook’s papers. Tony Austin wrote a refereed article in the journal Aboriginal History (2019) – Cecil Cook, scientific thought and ‘half-castes’ in Aboriginal History (1990) and two books on Cook. Robin allowed Tony unfettered access to photocopy Cook’s papers in her home but Austin wrote critically of Cook, focussing on only some of his actions as Chief Protector of Aboriginals. Robin was distressed by the criticism and by the concentration on one aspect of his dedication to the health of all Australians; she wanted the story of his whole working life told.
On Robin’s urging, some years later I turned my attention to Dr Cook’s collection of papers. Thousands of pages in drawers, cupboards, boxes, briefcases and folders became many archive boxes. I decided on 10 themes and 10 eras to sort the papers into subject clusters, through time. Researching and writing the Ms took over a decade and multiple versions and many people helped me. My advantage over other writers about Cook was the access to his private papers. I wanted my book to explain Cook’s objectives, attitude and actions in the context of his time and as an academic historian advised me, ‘do not excuse the inexcusable’. He was referring to Cook’s continuation of the Commonwealth’s policy to take children described at that time as mixed descent into his care and custody as Chief Protector.
My experience in understanding organisations and how people work in them gave me an insight into how Cook worked, supported by his writing. Cook and my father experienced the same period of Australia’s history, part of my inheritance. These background elements gave me the resources to write the book.
From analysis and writing to the biography
A biography relies on the subject character’s development through the years. Cook worked on many different subjects at the same time, some of them quite complex. To better understand a complex subject – its origin, development and results, I divided some eras into two streams. For the 1930s, health and medical services needed to be separated from Aboriginal protection and welfare. For the 1950s, I separated health and welfare from the NHMRC. Experiments with mixing subjects and chronology take time and need compromise.
Looking back on the printed book is vastly different to looking forward when writing the manuscript; the macro perspectives emerge more clearly. The final chapter summarises the book’s themes revealing the variations and the consistencies in Cook’s career. Three major themes were prominent – policy proposals for Indigenous well-being, health literacy as the basis of whole-of-life health and Cook’s persistence and determination.
My book is a credible history of Cecil Cook’s working life in public health, epidemiology and disease prevention in many different settings and it is a doorway to informed scholarly research.