DX 22's over there. Yeah.

(Off screen) Sam, get off that silly Xbox please. Isaac, get ready for school. Come on boys.

Yes, Mum.

Ninety-nine per cent of the scientific community said that it was not possible, and I was seen as

somewhere between a dreamer and a clown.

Music

Not far from Sydney is the picturesque country town of Camden. It was here that Professor Graeme Clark

began what was to be a lifelong quest, one which transformed people's lives

and opened up new frontiers in Science and Medicine

His vision was sound - sound for the millions of people who could not hear

The development of the Bionic Ear or Cochlear Implant would not be an easy journey, and demanded courage,

determination and an insatiable thirst for knowledge - traits that were apparent very early in Graeme's life.

I don't remember too much after I was born till I was about three or four, but my parents told me

I was a bit of a handful. They told me that I used to wake up early and I've got a photo of them

taking me for a walk - poor parents!

I had a lot of energy and that attitude continued as I grew up till my sister came along, and then my brother

Graeme was three years older than I was and he was always the big brother and there was always

a lot of activity going on around Graeme.

As I grew up I was always saying to Mother,

'What can I do now?' And she'd find things for me to do

and then I'd say the same again. And so she did have a hyperactive child on her hands.

I think that's what I remember most, that I actually didn't walk till I was two because I didn't need to...

he provided all the energy in the family!

That energy found many outlets. Growing up in this small country town, the young Graeme was free

to wander, riding his bike for miles, exploring the countryside he loved.

There was also sport, and cubs, and getting up to tricks with the kids next door.

And of course they did a famous trick with me where they dug a great big hole in the ground and put mud in it,

and then thought that I wouldn't know what was going on, camouflaged it. No, I wouldn't know, even though I was

watching it for days! And because I wouldn't walk over it, they actually pulled me over it, and what a surprise I had!

As a young boy, Graeme read widely, and was inspired by the story of Louis Pasteur and also Madame Curie.

By the age of ten he'd already decided he'd be an ear doctor, to help deaf people like his father, Colin,

pharmacist and optometrist for the local community.

In the pharmacy I would love to experiment with all the pharmaceuticals that he had, make smells,

surprise people with the various potions that I had been able to create, and worked with the chemist's material

and was known by the shop girls as 'the bunsen burner boy', who had come home from school. I learned too

at an early age that people did want certain things like contraceptives and others, and they wouldn't always

speak it in a loud enough voice for Dad, so he'd ask them to speak up loudly, so all the people in the shop

could hear, and they were embarrassed. And I tried to save him the embarrassment by going and saying,

'I'll get that for you', and knew where these things were. But I don't think I could have wished for a better

mother or father. They both had different talents, they both interacted in different ways.

My mother was a creative person. She was a very gifted pianist, could sight-read at a young age,

and was an artist. She was in the Sydney Art Group and had scholarships.

And so I inherited some of those artistic, creative talents I think from Mum. My father was much more

the common sense practical person, ran a very good pharmacy.

He was always very wise, not that my mother wasn't. She had a more intuitive wisdom. My father had a more

practical wisdom. But combined they were great parents, and I think we as children realised that.

Yes, I can remember my father saying, 'Never try and cheat the taxman', so I don't! Are you listening?

Yes, he always brought us up to do the honorable thing and he certainly treated us all well as his family, yes.

He was a good man, but so was Mum, and I remember Dad saying, when Mum died, 'Your mother was...

you would describe your mother as pure in heart', and I thought that was a really lovely way of expressing

what he felt about her, but he was equally, totally honorable, yes. No, they were great people.

My brother was good because he was ten years younger than me,

and so in a way I brought him up almost like a father.

He sadly died some years ago, but it was really lovely having both a brother and a sister.

Bruce was very smart. He was very passionate about sport.

He did very well at school when he came back to the local high school. He was rather a home body, Bruce.

But Bruce had an amazing compassion

and he had the ability to care for everybody.

He was a really beautiful person.

In 1946, when Graeme finished primary school, Camden did not yet have a high school.

So it was off to Sydney Boys' High, spending weeknights with his grandparents

and then home for the weekend, a one hundred and thirty kilometre round trip.

The following year he began boarding at Scots College, where his sporting ability was soon noticed.

School terms were busy with rugby, cricket, cadets and study,

and Graeme made the most of his holidays back in Camden.

For me, to be in a country town, and free, with parents who were guiding me to do different things

was a really wonderful opportunity.

Graeme used his father's glass blowing equipment to make his own testing materials.

He set up a laboratory at home and experimented with plants, developing his dissection skills

whenever and wherever possible.

Yes, I did some slightly unusual things, but they weren't illegal I might say at that stage.

I did simple experiments in my mother's laundry to try to look at the biological side of things.

And so when I went to Medicine it was exciting. To learn about sexual and asexual reproduction in flowers

turned me on! And then we did all sorts of things, dissect stingrays and so on. Then of course to do

Anatomy in our second year and dissect the human body, that was very stimulating.

At the University of Sydney Graeme was already heading down what almost seemed a predestined path.

My real love was Function and Physiology.

I was starting to really get to love that, and in my third year of Medicine I was so taken with it

that I took my textbook away on holidays and finished up with a First Class Honours result

and an offer of doing research.

That same year Graeme discovered another love.

Well, I was fifteen, and I was at MLC Burwood with Robin, his sister, and she asked me to go up

for the weekend to Camden where they lived in the country. And so I went, and another friend.

They got off the train at Campbelltown and two pretty MLC girls were on the train, and I took notice.

And I remember Graeme, walking along the platform at Campbelltown Station, in a brown sports coat,

and slightly wavy hair, and a nice smile on his face.

Then I went in the afternoon, to give them a little bit of entertainment, took them out to the local golf club.

And that was quite a bit of fun!

I remember him saying what a terrible shot he'd done and I thought it was pretty good.

They had never played golf and I thought I was pretty good. And I gave them some instruction, and I thought

it was really quite nice being able to hold Margaret from behind and show her how to play these shots.

Yes, that night, I remember they had a clock, the church clock, it struck every quarter of an hour,

and I had trouble getting to sleep. Maybe it was excitement too. I don't know!

But it was early days. They were both young, and needed to focus on their studies.

Graeme began his clinical training, working with patients in the wards. He loved this part of it so much

that he spent much of his holidays gaining experience with Dr Crookson, a local doctor and surgeon.

He was the epitome of the old-fashioned doctor who did everything. And he took me under his wing. He'd let me

go and watch and maybe even do a little assisting when he did gastrectomies, taking out the stomach of some

of the locals, and all sorts of operations, let me take blood from some of his patients.

Graeme's passion for all aspects of medicine saw him top his final year at Sydney University.

Over the next few years Graeme crammed in a range of surgical experience,

with residencies at Sydney's Royal Prince Alfred and Royal North Shore hospitals.

He was also seconded to the busy casualty department of the Wollongong Hospital.

Here, Doctor Clark operated on patient, Clark, with anaesthetist, Clark, in the Clark Theatre.

Coincidences seemed to come Graeme's way. At RPA he was appointed Registrar of Brain Surgery,

and then of Ear, Nose and Throat, both areas intrinsic to his future work.

He had also, by chance, met up again with Margaret Burtenshaw,

whom he had most definitely not forgotten over the last five years.

We got together again when I was over the problems of working like a slave as a resident

at Prince Alfred and the North Shore hospitals.

And then I met Margaret again after our youthful friendship and knew that she was the right one.

She was the nicest girl I'd ever met, and still is.

I went round to visit Robin who was in a little flat in my suburb. She had done Pharmacy and I hadn't seen her

for a while and I thought, 'Oh I'll go around and see Robin'. And when I was there Graeme visited

and well, from that time, you know, we found we had a lot to talk about.

And it wasn't, yes, that was November of a year, and we were engaged by the next April.

On the 27th of December 1961, Graeme and Margaret married.

Three days later they were on their way to the U.K.

We went to England, as most did those days, to get post-graduate training

in surgery at the Royal National Throat, Nose and Ear Hospital and the

Royal College of Surgeons of England and Edinburgh. So I'm a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons

in General Surgery and then also in Ear, Nose and Throat Surgery.

Returning to Australia, Graeme and Margaret were now expecting their first child, and needed a stable income.

So my father had a friend who was a pharmacist and then an ENT specialist here in Melbourne,

and he was looking for a partner, so I came to Melbourne as the surgeon

in the partnership and earned my living that way. And that's how we got back to Melbourne

and I was in that private practice for three years.

Graeme was frustrated at being unable to help profoundly deaf patients, and believed there had to be a way.

And I took out the latest paper to read to be up to date, and saw this article by Blair Simmons where he'd

actually stimulated one profoundly deaf person who had some hearing sensations but couldn't get

speech understanding. And I said there and then - it lit the fire in the belly, a bushfire - that this is really what

I wanted to do. I wanted to be, for better or worse, I wanted to help people who were profoundly deaf.

For some reason that was what I'd been sort of working towards, unbeknownst to me sometimes,

and that's where I really found a fit.

So it was arranged. Graeme was offered a research position at Sydney University.

The family made the move late in 1966 -' Graeme, Margaret, and their two daughters,

Sonya, not quite three, and Cecily, just sixteen months old.

When I left private practice to go to Sydney University to do what I believed to be important basic

neuro-physiological research, there was no likelihood necessarily that it would work, because

ninety-nine per cent of the people - the scientists of the day - said it would not work.

And I was seen as foolish and other things. I was called 'that clown Clark', and there were comments made

that it would be as successful as putting a light-bulb in the backside and turning the electricity on so

that was the attitude, and so I left in that climate to give up my partnership and become a poor PhD student.

Yes, we had a car that packed up when we were thinking we'd take a trip back to Melbourne and visit

people in Melbourne, and it stopped, and never went again. So we left it at Gundagai tip.

We didn't have money to buy another second-hand car so I had to travel everywhere by public transport

or good will of friends. But it turned out to be a blessing because there's nothing like standing at a bus stop,

waiting for a bus, to think. And I learned at the University of Sydney to think.

And that's the difference between being a surgeon and a research scientist.

You have lots of mental challenges that you've got to think through.

The trick with cochlear implants is not getting people to hear. That's actually easy. You can put a wire

in the ear and you can send a current down it and people will hear something. The trick is getting them to hear

something that's useful to them, and what's useful is hearing speech in particular, for communication,

and making that as clear as possible.

Graeme's thesis focussed on exactly this problem - how to enable speech recognition

through electrical stimulation? He knew that twenty thousand nerve-endings in the brain

are involved in normal hearing. Through his research he worked out how to electrically stimulate the

important nerve-endings, using just ten or so electrodes.

To Graeme it made sense, but he had to turn that theory into reality. There was a lot of work

still to be done, and his three year term at Sydney University was now over.

As one door closed, another opened. In 1969 the University of Melbourne was looking

to appoint a Foundation Professor of an entirely new department.

The chair of Otolarangology was the first in this country and it was at a time when Ear, Nose and Throat work

was not necessarily seen as elite, academically. It used to be thought of as taking out tonsils and snotty noses

and so on. Of course, times have changed and it's one of the high flyers now, but at that stage

the University of Melbourne, the academic side was more into the traditional subjects like Ancient History

and Mathematics and they didn't even see a place for Medicine, but certainly not Otolaryngology.

This break from tradition, and Graeme's appointment as Chair, produced a groundswell of criticism

and ridicule directed at Graeme by many of his peers.