People Australia

Hedley McMeekin, 1949

Tribune (Sydney), 23 February 1949, p 8

Hedley James Parker (Mac) McMeekin (1916-1986) medical practitioner and Communist 

Birth: 25 February 1916 at Warrnambool, Victoria, son of native-born parents James Parker McMeekin (1885-1935), clerk, and Emily Hanchen, née Gerstman (1881-1967). Marriage: 1947 at Broken Hill, New South Wales, to Dorothy Helena Casey (1920-1996), born in Adelaide, South Australia. They had three daughters. Death: 18 February 1986 in a private hospital at Adelaide, South Australia; usual residence Colley Terrace, Glenelg, Adelaide. Religion: nominally Presbyterian. 

• Graduated MBBS University of Melbourne, 1940. Had moved to Broken Hill, NSW, by 1943 and was resident doctor at the hospital before entering private practice. Practised in Patton Street.
• Joined the Communist Party of Australia. Leading communist in Broken Hill for many years.
• In 1947 stood as a Communist candidate for Broken Hill Municipal Council and, in a by-election in March 1949, for the State seat of Cobar. According to an ASIO informer, the doctor was thrown in the Darling River by a crowd which took exception to his views when conducting a public meeting at Burke. The press, however, reported that he was “manhandled” and the shirt torn from his back.
• Associated with the Australia-USSR Society. Sometime vice-president of the Alma Sporting Club.
• Was a member of the Doctors’ Delegation to the Soviet Union in 1961.
• Still resident at Broken Hill in 1980 living with his daughter, Dorothy, a nurse.
• Cause of death: hepatic encephalopathy (6 months), chronic liver disease (4 years) and diabetes mellitus (4 years).

Sources
John Playford, Doctrinal and strategic problems of the Communist Party of Australia, 1945-1962, PhD thesis, ANU, 1962, p 425.