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HOLLOWS, FREDERICK COSSOM (FRED) (1929–1993), ophthalmologist and humanist, was born on
9 April 1929 in Dunedin, New Zealand, the second of four sons of railwayman Joseph Alfred Hollows and
Clarice Hollows, nee Marshall. The family name was originally Hallows, but on immigrating to New Zealand in
the 1870s, Hollows’ grandfather’s name was registered as Hollows, and so it remained. Hollows was educated
at the North East Valley Primary School, and later at Palmerston North Boys’ High School. Hollows’ parents
were members of the Church of Christ, and he grew up in a home that was non-smoking and teetotal, but with
a strong streak of socialism. Hollows described his father as a sort of ‘Christian Marxist’. Having topped the
New Zealand list in Bible studies in his final school year exams, Hollows attended Glenleith College, a Church
of Christ theological college attached to the University of Otago (Dunedin), to study Arts and Divinity with the
aim of becoming a minister of religion. In the first university vacation, as a naive, non-drinking and non-smoking
Christian, he took a job in a mental hospital, an event that would change his views on life. As Hollows later wrote,
‘Sex, alcohol and secular goodness are pretty keen instruments and they surgically removed my Christianity,
leaving no scars’.
When he returned to university he changed to a straight Arts degree. He transferred to Victoria University,
Wellington, for the third year of his degree, but on invitation from the University of Otago, returned there to study
medicine. Hollows claimed that he never showed any great promise as a medical student, preferring to spend
much of his time ‘drinking, chasing women, rock-climbing and playing billiards’. In 1953, at the end of his third
year of medical studies, he met his first wife, Mary, while working as a mountain guide during the university
break. He graduated in 1956, and worked at Auckland General Hospital, then Tauranga and Wellington Hospitals,
where he started taking an interest in eye health. During this time he also joined the Communist Party, a move that
brought him under the surveillance of the New Zealand Security and Intelligence Service (NZSIS).
To continue his work in eye health, Hollows realised that he would have to go overseas for further professional
study. He applied to study at the Royal Ophthalmic Hospital (Moorfields) in London, the world’s oldest and most
famous eye hospital. In 1961, having raised 5 000 Pounds by working as a locum in Auckland, Hollows left for
England on the steamship Hobart, paying part of his way by working as ship’s doctor. To further subsidise his
studies he worked for the Maritime Radiomedical Service in London providing medical advice to ships at sea.
While at Moorfields Hollows was joint winner of the Diploma of Ophthalmology Junior Prize. When he qualified
he took up a position as Ophthalmic Registrar at the Royal Infirmary in Cardiff. There he came under the influence
of epidemiologist Archie Cochrane, and the use of epidemiology—‘study amongst the people’. Much of Hollows’
work in Cardiff was on the study of glaucoma, an eye disease that can lead to blindness, in patients from Welsh
mining towns. In the 1960s he published several articles relating to glaucoma. In 1965 Hollows was offered
two positions, one in New Zealand as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Otago, the other in Australia as an
Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales. The discovery that the NZSIS had started investigating
his time in Britain decided Hollows on which position to take. The fiery hard-drinking, pipe-smoking radical was
not one to mince words: ‘What bloody subversive role could a senior lecturer in ophthalmology, sitting on the edge
of the f...ing Antarctic ice cap in Dunedin, possibly play?’ He took the position in Sydney, arriving in Australia
in 1965.
As part of his appointment as Associate Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of New South Wales,
Hollows worked at the Prince of Wales Hospital at Randwick. His interest in the eye conditions of Aboriginal
people was fuelled in 1968 when, after attending a lecture given by author Frank Hardy on the strike by the
Gurindji people at Wave Hill in the Northern Territory, Hardy later asked him to examine the eyes of two Gurindji
stockmen. Hollows found that they were suffering from Labrador keratopathy, a condition caused by reflected
ultraviolet light. On visiting the Gurindji camps at Wave Hill, Hollows also found an appalling high incidence
of trachoma and cataracts to an extent not seen in any other Western society. His protests regarding the medical
conditions of the Gurindji brought Hollows to the attention of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation
(ASIO), and gained him the reputation in administrative circles as a stirrer. Hollows and his university colleagues
set up the Aboriginal Medical Centre in Redfern, and started eye clinics in Bourke and Engonnia, both in New
South Wales. His reputation as a radical was increased when he became a prime mover in the protests against the
touring South African rugby team in 1971.
Hollows’ concern for the general health conditions of Aborigines, and the high incidence of trachoma amongst
the indigenous population, led to an inevitable meeting between Hollows and Territorian ophthalmologist and
Roman Catholic priest, Father Frank Flynn. Flynn had identified the high incidence of trachoma amongst Territory
Aborigines in the 1940s, and had striven for a practical, mass program of study and treatment of the affliction.
In the early 1970s Hollows came to the Territory, and spent time on the Tiwi Islands studying the eye problems of
the islanders, and Flynn and Ida Mann’s research on indigenous eye problems. While the authorities had failed to
respond to Flynn’s reasoned urging for an Aboriginal eye program, they did not stand a chance when Hollows took
up the issue. Abrasive, and often foul-mouthed, Hollows barged and bullied his way through the bureaucracy, and
headed straight for the political leaders. In 1975, just before the Labor Government was dismissed, the Minister
of Health approved a grant of one million dollars to the College of Ophthalmology to conduct a rural eye health
program. The National Trachoma and Eye Health Program was launched in 1976, with Hollows as Director,
and Flynn as Consultant. Initially with just a couple of trucks and later with well-organised teams, Hollows
criss-crossed the country between 1976 and 1981. During the initial two-year screening program 10 500 people
in 465 camps, country towns and large urban centres were checked for eye infection and disease. Of that number,
1 500 Aborigines were treated, with 1 000 eye operations being performed. Hollows spent a great deal of his own