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Frederick Clindening

In 1897 Dr Clindening (who had been boy number 373 to enrol at Princes) took the unusual step of purchasing a medical practice at Kiukiang, 400 miles up the Yangtze river in China. Here he remained tending the sick for 12 years, including during the Boxer Rebellion and the Great Flood of 1910. 

Dr Clindening led an event filled life. Early in his working life in South Australia he was appointed Warden of Goldfields and was a chainman with the telegraph survey. With only basic medical experience he set off for further training in England and was made ship’s doctor when passengers and crew succumbed to malaria while in Java. On another occasion he was shipwrecked enroute from England to Japan and with his wife, covered 60 miles in an open boat to reach Saigon. During the First World War he commanded an ambulance train, travelling 120 000 miles and transporting 60,000 men.

He died in England in 1958, three months short of his 100th birthday.