<p><b>March 1962</b></p><p><i>He was a young man then and it was long, long ago. Yet when he thinks about that day in 1962 it’s as if the 50 years since have vanished. The elderly doctor is young again, back at the Box Hill Hospital on thatlate-summer morning. </i></p><p><i>“I’d just delivered a baby when the senior mid-wife came over and asked me if I could step in and help out with another delivery. The woman’s doctor couldn’t be found. Of course I agreed. The missing doctor was a partner in our medical practice and the patient was Wendy Rowe. I knew Wendy and her family, liked them, and was more than happy to help out.”</i></p><p><i>Ron Dickinson pauses. It is April 2011 and he has not told this story often. He is now 85 and living a happy retirement, a long and satisfying medical career well behind him. Home is a big house perched high on a green bluff with commanding views of Australia’s wild southern ocean. A perfect place to retire. Nearby is a pretty winery and he and his companions are seated at a wooden table in a shaded court yard. The doctor’s visitor has asked for his memories of that single traumatic day, decades earlier. Dickinson, who has barely touched his lunch, pushes it aside. A thoughtful man with a gentle manner, he becomes halting when describing the events which followed on 2 March 1962.</i></p><p><i>"It was an incredibly distressing event and still crystal clear in my memory. At first the delivery proceeded normally. In those days there was no way of telling in advance that anything was wrong, and there was no reason for any suspicion. Ultrasounds weren’t yet available and I knew Wendy had two healthy girls already. So there was absolutely no indication that anything was wrong, or was likely to go wrong.”</i></p><p><i>But then, quickly, everything changed. "The baby started to come out. Head first, everything OK. But then I saw that there were no arms. And then no legs. The little girl had only a torso and a head. It was a terrible shock. Shocking and disorienting. I had not seen anything like that before.”</i></p>