Albert Coates

Sir Albert Ernest Coates OBE, FRCS (1895–1977) was an Australian surgeon and soldier. He served as a medical orderly in World War I serving on Gallipoli, and as a senior surgeon for the Australian Army Medical Corps in World War II in Malaya. His primary school teacher, Mr Leslie Morshead, later Lt-Gen Sir Leslie Morshead, CO 9th Div AIF, offered to teach Albert at night school. He studied languages and sciences, and at 18 years sat the matriculation equivalent, receiving 5 distinctions. He left his apprenticeship and obtained work at the Melbourne and subsequently Wangaratta PO while he studied pre-med subjects to facilitate his enrollment in the University of Melbourne medical school.

First World War service In 1914 Coates enlisted in the 7th Battalion as a medical orderly and the following year served on Gallipoli. Coates was one of the last to leave the peninsula on the night of 19/20 December 1915. His battalion was then transferred to France in March 1916 and fought in the battle of the Somme. His skill as a linguist came to the attention of his superiors and in February 1917 he was attached to the intelligence staff, I Anzac Corps. Sir John Monash and British authorities recognised his ability and, at the end of the war, he was invited to apply for a commission in the British Army. Coates preferred, however, to go home to Australia where he found employment in the office of the Commonwealth censor in Melbourne.

POW Burma-Thailand Railway The operating theatre at the prisoner-of-war hospital, Nakom Paton, Thailand, where Coates was Chief Medical Officer. In May 1942 the Japanese moved Coates to Burma. At the Kilo-30 and Kilo-55 camps on the Burma-Thailand Railway he cared for hundreds of prisoners of war under deplorable conditions. Coates subsequently described his medical practice at Kilo-55 to the International Military Tribunal for the Far East: in a bamboo lean-to, with his only instruments a knife, two pairs of artery forceps and a saw (used by the camp butchers and carpenters), his daily work consisted of 'segregating the sick from the very sick . . . curetting seventy or eighty ulcers during the morning . . . and, in the afternoon, proceeding to amputate nine or ten legs'. He was knighted in 1955 and in 1981 was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (Civil) for his "services to the handicapped and veterans".

A statue in honour of Sir Albert Ernest Coates is located in the main street of his home town of Ballarat. A laneway in the Queen Victoria Village is named Albert Coates Lane in his honour.

On 8 September 2006, the University of Ballarat renamed its student union building the Albert Coates Complex.

The Sir Albert Coates Oration is an annual event at the University of Ballarat. thumb