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home near the Thomson River in 1947. The mother, Heung See, then moved to Brisbane. Kenneth matriculated at
All Souls having had a distinguished final year being a prefect, dux of the school and captain of rugby and cricket.
He was a star player in the school’s rugby union team, playing at full back. During the war, he was in the North
Queensland all-schools team chosen to play a service team stationed in the area.
Kenneth entered the University of Queensland to study medicine. Following graduation as Bachelor of
Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery in 1955, he worked at Brisbane General Hospital for his Resident year. During
the post-war years, Katherine Hospital was frequently without permanent medical staff. Doctors were flown down
from Darwin for a weekly clinic. Matron Ruth Fisher and her staff ran the hospital. Dr Moo was appointed to
the Katherine Hospital in 1957, the year of the ‘big flood’ when the hospital was cut-off from the township of
Katherine. On 11 March 1957, as the flooded Katherine River began to inundate the hospital grounds, Dr Moo
acted quickly to transfer all patients to the doctor’s residence, where the piers allowed two metres of safety.
The flood rose to the floorboards of the hospital. The patients spent four days in the doctor’s house until transferred
back to the hospital.
Sister Vona Stephenson came to Darwin in May 1957 and transferred to Katherine Hospital some months later.
She had trained as a nurse at St Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne. She met Kenneth and returned to Ulverstone,
Tasmania, for their marriage on 29 August 1959 in the Anglican Church there.
During 1959, Kenneth Moo studied at Sydney University and graduated with the Diploma of Tropical
Medicine and Hygiene. He returned to the Katherine Hospital. Father Frank Flynn, ophthalmologist, and
Dr W D Refshauge, Commonwealth Director of Health, recommended that Kenneth Moo have the opportunity to
study ophthalmology under Professor Gerald Crock at the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital in Melbourne.
From 1961 to 1963, he studied this discipline. Father Frank Flynn assessed his work as brilliant. Kenneth Moo
returned to Darwin and took charge of the eye clinic from 1964 until his death. As the only eye specialist in the
Territory, he was confronted with a large trachoma problem among Aboriginal communities. Dr Moo travelled
extensively and conducted regular clinics at the other three main hospitals in the Territory. At the time of his death
in 1980, he was the Senior Ophthalmology Specialist in the team at Darwin Hospital. Dr Charles Gurd, Northern
Territory Director of Health, said in 1980, ‘The respect earned by the late Dr Ken Moo, who had for 15 years led
the fight against eye disease in the Top End could be a model for the perseverance, political and racial impartiality
and medical competence for the localised trachoma program’.
In 1978 Kenneth Moo was the first appointment by the Commonwealth Government to the prestigious position
of Chairman of the Northern Territory Ethnic Council.
Kenneth and Vona Moo had three sons who all attended and matriculated from Darwin High School. Kenneth
did not live to see the academic achievements of his sons. In 1995, all sons—Stephen Kenneth Moo (Bachelor
of Business in Accounting), Gregory Francis Moo (Bachelor of Aeronautical Engineering, Bachelor of Computer
Science) and Andrew Moo lived and worked in Darwin. There were by then six grandchildren: Corinne, Olivia,
Letecia, Daniel, Elise and Chloe.
Kenneth Moo died on 26 July 1980 in the Darwin Hospital of a malignant paraganglioma. Bishop Kenneth Mason
and Bishop Clyde Wood officiated at a memorial service at Christ Church Cathedral in Darwin and he was buried
in McMillans Road Cemetery. A ward at the Royal Darwin Hospital was named in his honour. A memorial bust is
housed in the Board Room at the Hospital and a Ken Moo Memorial Fellowship is awarded annually in the field
of medicine and/or nursing.
Dr Kenneth Moo will be remembered as a great family man who enjoyed outdoor life such as fishing.
His contribution to the improvement of eye disease in the Northern Territory was enormous.
E Kettle, Health Services in the Northern Territory, 1991; M Moo, The Moo Family History, 1995.
VALERIE ASCHE, Vol 3.
MOO, LINOY: see WONG, LINOY
MOO, SUE CHING: see YUEN, ESSIE
MOO YET FOR (1847–1927), carpenter and market gardener, and MOO WONG SEE (1860–1938), homemaker.
Moo Yet For was born in the Canton region in 1847 and his wife Moo Wong See was born in Hong Kong in 1860.
This husband and wife team were the ancestors of the large Moo clan that originated in Darwin and has now spread
throughout Australia. The Moo family, who were of the Hakka dialect, had originally lived in northern China but
over the years they moved to the Canton area where they then settled. The Hakkas had been persecuted in their
own provinces and so over the centuries they drifted south into the Kwangtung and Kwangsi provinces where they
were never totally accepted. They were given the name of ‘guest families’ and were always considered ‘outsiders’.
The men were known to be hard working but the Hakka women differed from other women in that they were often
found to be working alongside their men in the fields doing manual labouring work. Foot binding, which was a
custom as far back as the Sung Dynasty (960–1126AD) for women from wealthy families, was banned among the
Hakka women.
Moo Yet For came to the Northern Territory, initially on his own around 1879, and found work at John Lewis’
station at Port Essington as a carpenter and cabinet maker, a trade at which he was most proficient. In 1889 after
working in Palmerston (now Darwin) for a few years, Moo returned to China to bring out his wife Moo Wong
See and their son Pompey who was born in 1878. Apart from their eldest daughter, Linoy Wong, who was born
in Palmerston in 1891, the rest of their children were born in Brocks Creek. Their second son Con Moo Fatt was