Barry Normand John Walters, FRACP, FRANZCOG ad eundem (1950–2024)

Barry Walters, a legend of Australian Obstetric Medicine, has died after a long incapacitating illness and a much shorter battle with the COVID-19 virus.

The elder son of jewellers, Wallace and Lucille Walters, Barry was born at St Vincent's Hospital, Melbourne: his father used to say, ‘he was born there because he wanted to be close to his mother’! Within 2 years, the family moved to Perth, which then became his home for the rest of his life. After winning a scholarship to Scotch College, he excelled in every subject and eventually became Dux of the school in 1967. He studied Medicine at the University of Western Australia (UWA) and, for most of the time, was the top student, including his final year, graduating with the AMA Gold Medal in 1974. His widow, Tamara, recalls her first memory of him at the first lecture of the year in the first year of medical school, ‘sitting with his rowdy friends right behind me, making wisecracks as I was trying to listen to the lectures. We didn't think very much of each other in those days. But the more time we spent together, the more I realized that he was the smartest man I had ever met. He was funny and made me laugh, and most of all, he was kind’.

After first thinking that he would like to do neurology, he then changed his mind to a career in paediatrics, with an initial job in neonatology at King Edward Memorial Hospital (KEMH), Subiaco. There he realised that there were many medical problems in obstetric patients that were not being well addressed, and he saw a need for a specialist obstetric physician in Perth. So he and Tamara headed over to England, where he worked first in Oxford for a year with one of the then two doyens of obstetric medicine, (the late) Chris Redman, and then for 2 years with the other, Michael de Swiet, at Queen Charlotte's Hospital in West London, home of the Institute of Obstetrics. During this time, he obtained his FRACP.

Returning to Perth, he initiated the obstetric medicine unit at KEMH, where he became Physician to the Diabetes service, although his interests were much broader than diabetes. He was available for medical advice in many obstetric crises, and many mothers (and their babies) owe their lives to his wise advice. He would drop everything to see a sick patient, often left picnics and parties, and would then not be seen for hours. Like his mentor, Chris Redman, Barry wanted to cure pre-eclampsia and had endless ideas about studies and research, writing and lecturing extensively on this, as well as other subjects. He was a founding member of the Obstetric Medicine Group of Australasia (OMGA) from its first meeting in Leonard's Mill, SA in 1992, and attended almost all the annual meetings on both sides of the Tasman. In 1998, he was appointed Clinical Associate Professor at UWA, and in 2003, was appointed Clinical Professor of Medicine at the newly opened medical school of the University of Notre Dame in Fremantle. Later, after the 2005 amalgamation of OMGA with the Australasian Society for the Study of Hypertension in Pregnancy (ASSHP) to form the current Society of Obstetric Medicine of Australia and New Zealand (SOMANZ), Barry served on Council and was its President 2009–2010. He had earlier helped to initiate the International Society of Obstetric Medicine (ISOM), and organised the first ‘Medicine and Pregnancy’ meeting of the various national and international groups in Fremantle 2003, which included contributions from North America and South Africa as well as Australia, New Zealand and the UK. He was honoured by the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RANZCOG) with a Fellowship ad eundem in 2005, and was made an Honorary Life Member of SOMANZ in 2017.

Barry contributed to the medical literature both with papers, where he was not afraid to be critical and/or controversial, and chapters in established textbooks, including Michael de Swiet's magisterial Medical Disorders in Obstetric Practice through its four initial editions, as well as several other international texts. He was an initiator of the first Curriculum in Obstetric Medicine for Australia.

Alongside his passion for obstetric medicine, Barry was devoted to his wife, Tamara, and his children, Asher, Ella and Sophie with their seven grandchildren, who were a source of enormous joy to him. The family cared for him over the long years of his fronto-temporal dementia. He was also a faithful member of his local synagogue. The Jewish prayer room at Karrakatta cemetery was crowded to ‘standing room only’ for the final farewell, where the rabbi reminded us of ‘what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God’ (Micah 6:8). Barry was a good example of that. Farewell to a great man and a good friend.