Hedley and the heart surgeon

Hedley McGee’s speedway activities in the 1960s inadvertently led him into the medical sphere. Sir Harry Windsor, one of Australia’s leading thoracic surgeons at the time, approached Hedley wanting him to build a heart-lung machine for the then breakthrough field of open-heart surgery and heart transplants. Sir Harry obviously felt that all that experience Hedley had with precision engineering and valves was of real value, the pair having developed a relationship through Hedley’s visits to injured speedway drivers at Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital (situated barely a kilometre from the Royale Speedway). The machine, as requested, was completed and delivered to the doctor’s specialist department at St Vincent’s Hospital.