Lindsay Clifford Mollison is a retired Consultant Physician in Gastroenterology and Infectious Diseases. He was the founding member of the Kakadu Action Group (KAG) that led a campaign to prevent mining in the Coronation Hill area of the

Northern Territory The Northern Territory (commonly abbreviated as NT; formally the Northern Territory of Australia) is an states and territories of Australia, Australian territory in the central and central northern regions of Australia. The Northern Territory ...

Kakadu National Park Kakadu National Park is a protected area in the Northern Territory of Australia, southeast of Darwin. It is a World Heritage Site. Kakadu is also gazetted as a locality, covering the same area as the national park, with 313 people recorded liv ...

in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Early life and education

Mollison was born at St George's Hospital in

Kew, Victoria Kew (;) is a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria (Australia), Victoria, Australia, 5 km east from Melbourne's Melbourne central business district, Central Business District, located within the City of Boroondara Local government areas of Victor ...

in 1956. His father was a professional wood turner and his mother a shop assistant. He was educated at Auburn Central School (now Auburn Primary School) and then

Melbourne High School Melbourne High School is a government-funded single-sex academically selective secondary day school for boys, located in the Melbourne suburb of South Yarra, Victoria, Australia. Established in 1905, the school caters for boys from Year 9 t ...

(where he was a prefect in his senior years at both). He graduated from school in 1974 with General and Special Exhibition Prizes in the Higher School Certificate examinations. He then attended the

University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Its main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb nor ...

from 1975 to 1981 graduating with

MBBS Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery ( la, Medicinae Baccalaureus, Baccalaureus Chirurgiae; abbreviated most commonly MBBS), is the primary medical degree awarded by medical schools in countries that follow the tradition of the United King ...

in that year. He was active in various non academic roles at University including being editor of the journal Speculum, and President of the Melbourne Medical School Students Association. His early working professional life was in the

based at

Royal Darwin Hospital Royal Darwin Hospital (RDH) is a 360-bed Australian teaching hospital located in Tiwi, Northern Territory, a northern suburb of the Territory capital Darwin. It is part of the Top End Health Service, which covers an area of . RDH is the only t ...

with rotations into

Arnhem Land Arnhem Land is a historical region of the Northern Territory of Australia, with the term still in use. It is located in the north-eastern corner of the territory and is around from the territory capital, Darwin. In 1623, Dutch East India Compan ...

and the regions around Kakadu. Later he returned to Melbourne where he qualified as a Fellow of the

Royal Australasian College of Physicians The Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) is a not-for-profit professional organisation responsible for training and educating physicians and paediatricians across Australia and New Zealand. The RACP is responsible for training both ...

. It was during this period of studying that the mining threat to Kakadu became apparent and he began the KAG. Subsequently he returned to the Northern Territory as a Consultant Physician for several years. In 1994 he moved with his family to

Perth Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia. It is the fourth most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of 2.1 million (80% of the state) living in Greater Perth in 2020. Perth is ...

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

, to take up University Teaching Hospital posts.

Kakadu Action Group

In the late 1980s the

Australian Government The Australian Government, also known as the Commonwealth Government, is the national government of Australia, a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Like other Westminster-style systems of government, the Australian Government i ...

was considering allowing gold mining by

BHP BHP Group Limited (formerly known as BHP Billiton) is an Australian multinational mining, metals, natural gas petroleum public company that is headquartered in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The Broken Hill Proprietary Company was founded ...

in the

at a site known as

Coronation Hill Coronation Hill is a sandstone outcrop within Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory of Australia. The area had been briefly mined for uranium at El Sherana in the 1950s and in 1988 proposals for new mining of gold were made. When min ...

. Opposed to this plan was the

Kakadu Action Group Kakadu is the German word for cockatoo Kakadu may refer to: Places Australia * Kakadu National Park, a protected area * Kakadu Highway, a highway in the Northern Territory * Kakadu, Northern Territory, a locality Plants and animals Australia ...

which met regularly in the

Australian Conservation Foundation The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) is Australia's national environmental organisation, launched in 1965 in response to a proposal by the World Wide Fund for Nature for a more co-ordinated approach to sustainability. One high-profil ...

's offices in Glenferrie, Victoria. Australia. It was brought together by Mollison to oppose the proposed mine. To achieve this the group also organised and participated in various public meetings. It was being surveilled by the Australian Government with archives of its meetings still held secretly by the Government (due for release in 2026). Influential letters from Mollison were published in the "To The Editor" section of the

Melbourne Age ''The Age'' is a daily newspaper in Melbourne, Australia, that has been published since 1854. Owned and published by Nine Entertainment, ''The Age'' primarily serves Victoria, but copies also sell in Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory ...

newspaper. The themes were to protect the wilderness of the entire park for present and future generations from any further encroachment by mining interests and to recognise the links between these spaces and the Australian psyche.

Professional life

During his time working in the Northern Territory Mollison researched First Nations Health and contributed to knowledge about it. In particular he discovered the importance of HTLV-I infection in central Australian First Nations people publishing the first reports of known disease associated with it in Australia and finding new links to common diseases afflicting these people due to infection with it. His groundbreaking insights and research has led to major efforts to further understand this disease in Australia although to date his work seems to have been under recognised. During his working life in

, particularly at Fremantle Hospital, he helped to bring international trials of novel Hepatitis C medications to Australia and the State. Many of the drugs he and his team worked on are now mainstays of day to day therapies offering cures to patients with

Hepatitis C Hepatitis C is an infectious disease caused by the hepatitis C virus (HCV) that primarily affects the liver; it is a type of viral hepatitis. During the initial infection people often have mild or no symptoms. Occasionally a fever, dark urine, a ...

. He established a private Gastroenterology Practice and Hepatology Practice which continue to provide medical advice and therapies to the people of Western Australia (WA). During his time in WA he completed a MPH at

UWA The University of Western Australia (UWA) is a public research university in the Australian state of Western Australia. The university's main campus is in Perth, the state capital, with a secondary campus in Albany, Western Australia, Albany an ...

. His team organised several international conferences on Hepatitis (the Annual Indian Ocean Hepatitis Meeting) during the early 2000s Mollison became a snow sports Instructor in 2011 and has taught in Italy and Australia and has taken holiday groups skiing in France, Switzerland and Italy. He enjoys

Bushwalking Hiking is a long, vigorous walk, usually on trails or footpaths in the countryside. Walking for pleasure developed in Europe during the eighteenth century.AMATO, JOSEPH A. "Mind over Foot: Romantic Walking and Rambling." In ''On Foot: A Histor ...

. He is a keen ocean swimmer and has achieved some ocean swimming milestones including the 20 km crossing of the Indian Ocean from

Rottnest Island Rottnest Island ( nys, Wadjemup), often colloquially referred to as "Rotto", is a island off the coast of Western Australia, located west of Fremantle. A sandy, low-lying island formed on a base of aeolianite limestone, Rottnest is an A-class ...

. He has two adult children and numerous grandchildren.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mollison, Lindsay 1956 births Living people Australian activists Fellows of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians Australian conservationists 21st-century Australian medical doctors 20th-century Australian medical doctors University of Melbourne alumni People from Kew, Victoria University of Western Australia alumni Medical doctors from Perth, Western Australia People educated at Melbourne High School