Eight

Caroline Frazer was part amused and part embarrassed. Here was her husband, who towered over everyone, climbing in and out of the window of a little Mini. He could only just fit by manoeuvring himself, legs first, into the car they’d picked up for a pittance. The driver’s door didn’t open, so visitors would watch her husband climb in through the window and start the car. Not that it mattered to Ian Frazer; it was a steal at the price they’d paid and did the job of getting him to work each day.

Appointed senior lecturer in the School of Medicine at The University of Queensland, he finally had his own research laboratory. Not that anyone could call his new digs flash: he was housed in the basement of the dialysis building at the Princess Alexandra Hospital and it looked more like a cupboard than a state-of-the-art science space. In fact, they called it the broom closet. Ian knew, from the moment he had accepted the job, that the heavy workload he had taken on would ensure this lab became his second home. He was required to teach, run research, and conduct diagnostic tests for the hospital. But on day one he walked in as though he owned the place, unaware of the rumours that had filtered through staff rooms ahead of his arrival. Ian Frazer, so the rumour spread, had wanted to charge the job interview panel for his time. It wasn’t anywhere near right; nothing like that had happened. But the story was told and retold, and everyone was looking out to meet Ian Frazer. Some were intrigued. But just like the unflattering sandals he wore to work in Scotland, or the broken Mini he arrived in each day, the latest waffle – even if true – wouldn’t have bothered the young scientist. It wasn’t that he didn’t care what people thought; he just went about the job in his own way. He’d done it at school, often to the annoyance of his teachers. He’d done it as a young doctor. And not long after his arrival in Queensland, Ian took it upon himself to comment on the government’s inability to deliver an AIDS service. While many medicos supported his thinking, it was a different thing to come out publicly and say it. Soon after, Ian found the health minister on the other end of his phone, threatening that he would be out of a job by Monday. Ian smiled; he wasn’t employed by the government and knew he would be turning up to work on Monday.

His hard work was paying off, but luck had also been kind to Ian Frazer in Melbourne. It was an opportune time to work on HIV because he had been studying a cohort of men who had sex with other men. The fact that many of them were immunosuppressed patients had also given him the opportunity to look for HPV that might contribute to anal cancer. That had put him on the map, but now in his little Queensland laboratory, with hardly any resources and limited funds to do anything, he knew he had to think of a grand plan. He had to build a state-of-the-art laboratory, in terms of research, funding, and even bricks and mortar. And he was given enormous latitude from The University of Queensland to do just that. He started thinking like a businessman and developed a plan. He needed funds and, with both hands out, he started seeking them. He was indefatigable in applying himself to the task, and it wasn’t long before he started getting good results. His research money came from the two grants he had won, but that was just a start; he needed a big injection of funds first, and then skilled staff to deliver research that would make a difference, not just to mice, but to men.

With Caroline in charge of making a home for the family in a rented house in Highland Terrace in the university suburb of St Lucia, Ian nutted out his vision in the same way a company chief would go about his business strategy. He worked away at his brief: HPV would take a big chunk of the research agenda because there was so much more to learn. But as the appointed clinical immunologist, he was also required to hold two or three outpatient clinics a week, seeing patients with everything from asthma to lupus. The clinical side focused on transplant immunology – tissue typing relating to kidney, liver, lung, heart, and bone marrow transplants. With his background in HIV, he was startled at the ignorance that shrouded any political or public discussion over HIV/AIDS in his new city. He wanted to bring to Brisbane the clinical research that he had been doing on HIV/AIDS in Melbourne, to set up a specialist service, but Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s conservative government fought any decent discussion. Ian rolled up his sleeves and worked, even visiting gay bars and pubs to establish how underground the gay movement had become in response to the growing public antagonism over HIV/AIDS. The process made him more determined than ever to ensure that HIV testing could be done in a confidential clinical climate. But he knew it had to be done publicly, with the government looking on.

He was fortunate that Noela Strachan headed the clinical side of his operation, but he knew he needed a world-class research assistant, and the money to fund that position. The Lions Kidney and Medical Research Foundation, won over by Ian’s enthusiasm and sell job, came to the party quickly, and he sent out the feelers to see who he could attract to Brisbane.

Bob Tindle was working in the United Kingdom. He held a PhD from the Institute of Cancer Research at the University of London and, after postdoctoral research at the University of Adelaide, spent three years as a scientist at the Charles Darwin Research Station in the Galapagos Islands. After a fellowship at the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research in Glasgow, he worked in the biotechnology industry as director of research at Sera Lab. He was perfect. Ian wanted him, and told him that.

Bob Tindle was not just good on paper, but an expert in monoclonal antibodies, or antibodies that are the same because they are made from identical immune cells that are all clones of a particular parent cell. They had first been derived more than ten years earlier by a couple of researchers in the United Kingdom. Bob set out to make antibodies to a particular protein, called E7, of HPV type sixteen (HPV16). Proteins, which are needed to make the body function, are like bicycle chains, with each link in the chain an amino acid, chosen from a total set of twenty different amino acids. It was known that it was this E7 protein that was responsible for transforming cells, or making cancerous cells, giving rise to cervical cancer.

Ian knew he needed to know more about how HPV worked. It was well known that HPV was sexually transmitted and it wasn’t that long ago that it was found to cause cervical cancer, but science was silent on how it caused cells to transform, what the physiology of it might be, and how it operated. Bob Tindle and Ian Frazer did a deal. Bob had wanted to bring his work on leukaemia into the lab; Ian wanted him to focus on HPV. Ian agreed to stop his work on autoimmune liver disease, started years earlier in Melbourne, if Bob agreed to focus on HPV. In Ian Frazer’s new lab – one funded by the Lions Kidney and Medical Research Foundation – they worked away, and it wasn’t long before the first two major papers would come out of the Frazer lab, one on the E7 protein of HPV16 and one on the E7 protein of HPV18. Ian and his laboratory climbed a couple of further rungs up the ladder of international HPV research.

With Noela Strachan running the clinical operation and Bob Tindle beavering away at his HPV research, Ian also took on his first students. Arriving each day with a packed lunch, courtesy of his wife, Caroline, he would go about his many tasks. He kept encouraging his staff and students to think differently. They were encouraged to read outside their specific interest area, and spend time looking at the broader picture of what they were trying to achieve. That’s how Ian Frazer approached science, and he was trying to pass that on to his students. It was his first gig as boss, and he introduced regular parties, barbecues at his home, and dress-down Fridays. Morning tea each day became something of a religion and it wasn’t because Ian liked to have a chat. In fact, some of his staff thought he was a bit socially awkward. He didn’t like small talk, but he wanted them to talk to each other about their work and share ideas. Ian was a team player and he encouraged that in his lab too. He joined in, inspiring colleagues with stories of new techniques he had read or heard about. Linda Selvey, now deputy head of the school of public health at Curtin University, was Ian’s first student and remembers him coming in full of beans over a technique now used all the time, but not heard of then. Called polymerase chain reaction, it allowed researchers to amplify little bits of DNA. Now commonly used for diagnosis, she remembers Ian detailing what its future would be, and he was spot on.

Frazer’s ability to attract money was also new to many researchers, and the Lions Kidney and Medical Research Foundation poured money into the lab to guarantee that research could continue. Ian was thoughtful too, remembering staff birthdays and ensuring that his staff always received the credit for their work, which he believes he didn’t receive when he left Melbourne and another researcher took over his projects. It had left a sour taste in his mouth – he’d even had a go at his former boss Ian Mackay – and it made him determined that if someone contributed to a project, they should be acknowledged.

David Whiteman, now an epidemiologist at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research, took a year out of medical school in 1987 to do a Bachelor of Medical Science and Ian gave him the glamorous job of looking at genital warts and the different types of HPV that were occurring in Brisbane patients with those warts. His project was almost complete at the end of his time in the lab, so Ian tied up the loose ends and submitted David’s work to a conference in France. He even found funds for David to attend the conference and, discovering his student was set to travel to the United Kingdom with his girlfriend, Ian organised that they both stay with his parents in Scotland. Members of his close-knit team repaid Ian’s generosity and trust by laughing at his jokes, even when they were a bit lame, giving him a copy of a new CD they thought might be to his liking, and working hard in the lab.

At home, Caroline worked around the clock. Their third child, Callum, was born on 16 November 1985, and after renting for six months they finally sold their apartment in Scotland and threw the proceeds into the house next door in Highland Terrace. Ian was travelling and working all hours, and sometimes Caroline thought it was even harder when he came home. She and her three little children would establish a nice routine, with the house running well, and Ian would arrive back from some conference and mess it up. Mealtimes would be thrown into disarray, and she’d have to spend the next week working on rebuilding the schedule. Caroline also learnt not to rely on Ian, asking another father to pick up Jennifer after she had suffered a fall on a school camp, and even coaxing her, on another occasion, to go next door to seek help after Caroline sliced her finger while cutting a pumpkin.

But when Ian was home, he jumped at the chance to help, changing nappies and bathing the babies. And Caroline was thankful that he loved to cook, especially boîte au chocolat and their children’s birthday cakes. He prided himself on the birthday cakes; they were never plain and Jennifer, Andrew, and Callum were treated to robots and fire engines and rockets and ships, all made and iced by Ian. His mother, Marion, was a wonderful cook and he loved starting from scratch just as she always did. It was a bit like building, or a science experiment, adding a bit of this and a bit of that and finding out the consequences. The legacy of that interest lies in the host of Frazer family recipes, where scribblings down the margin show how Ian would modify them to make the end product better.

Within a couple of months of settling in Queensland’s south-east, both Ian and Caroline had found a rhythm and, after going along to an investment seminar, they bought a small timeshare unit at Tangalooma, where they planned to escape to each January for a real family holiday. There at the beach, body surfing, four-wheel driving and fishing, their children loved it. They were as Australian as you could get.

In 1988 they broke their traditional holiday in Tangalooma to make their citizenship official. Ian was on call at the time and could give advice by phone or quickly return by seaplane, if required, so skipping from Tangalooma back to the mainland was not too difficult. On the day they were to become Australian citizens they woke to a sapphire blue sky and perfect waters. They didn’t want to miss a moment, spending the morning on the beach with their children. They waited until the last minute before packing for the seaplane back to Brisbane for the afternoon ceremony at Brisbane’s City Hall. As they were packing, the perfect skies turned grey and then black, the waves grew in stature and the children began to panic, refusing to board the boat to get to the seaplane. Carrying them on, Ian and Caroline watched as their luggage fell around the boat. Andrew started screaming. Trying to console him, they talked about what they’d be doing in a couple of hours – becoming Australian.

It wasn’t a tough gig; they weren’t even required to give up their British citizenship. But it had been touch and go as to whether authorities would allow Ian to participate in the ceremony that afternoon. A prerequisite required that the applicant needed to be in Australia for a continuous set number of days, but Ian’s heavy travel schedule meant he only met the rule by precisely twenty-four hours. That too was a motivating force when it came to the decision to call themselves Australian – it was so much easier to come and go if you were a citizen. The identity shift – from calling Scotland home to the sunny clime of Queensland – was gradual. They had intended to move to Melbourne for only two years. That then became four, before they decided to move to Brisbane and stay.

The Frazers made it back to Brisbane from Tangalooma, dropped their children off with friends, and took a seat in front of Lord Mayor Sallyanne Atkinson. The Scottish couple, in the crowd of hundreds, were anonymous, and didn’t earn a second glance from others or the media. Ian wore his Marks and Spencer suit, bought for his first job interview twelve years earlier, and for the first time in their lives they stood and swore allegiance to the Queen. After a cup of tea, they picked up their children and returned to their St Lucia home as new Australians.

In the same year, Ian received his Doctor of Medicine qualification, but his real aim remained HPV. Bob Tindle continued to be his right-hand man, trying to understand the immune response in patients infected with HPV, and thereby how the body got rid of it. That was the goal then, not a vaccine. So much was unknown about the longevity of the virus and even how common it was. Did everyone with HPV get cervical cancer? How many strains of HPV were there? How many were dangerous? It was hard finding the answers, especially because they were experimenting on mice, not humans. Mice could not contract the virus because it was human specific – it was human papillomavirus, not mouse papillomavirus. Ian had to make transgenic mice to get to the next step, and the best way to learn was from others. He picked up his family and moved, on sabbatical, to Cambridge University.