Early Life
Brown was born in Oberon, New South Wales, one of twins and attended Trunkey Public School, Coffs Harbour High School (1957–60) and Blacktown Boys High School. In his senior year he was elected school captain. After graduating, he enrolled in medicine at Sydney University where he obtained a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery degree. He practised medicine for a time at the Royal Canberra Hospital. During his tenure at the hospital he and other senior medical staff took a pacifist stance by refusing to certify young men who did not wish to fight in the Vietnam War as fit to be conscripted. He then worked as a resident at Darwin and Alice Springs hospitals. At the latter post he met John Hawkins, a surgeon who had kayaked rivers in Tasmania. He travelled to London in 1970 and worked at Hounslow Cottage Hospital and St Mary Abbot's Hospital in South Kensington. He was the resident doctor on duty at St Mary Abbot's Hospital when the body of Jimi Hendrix was brought in. At the time of his retirement, many media outlets erroneously reported that he had pronounced Hendrix dead. Brown later clarified that while he had been on duty when Hendrix was brought in, "he had been dead for some hours," and Hendrix was officially pronounced dead by a different doctor—who was, coincidentally, also an Australian.
Brown moved to Tasmania in 1972 and worked as a medical general practitioner in Launceston. He soon became involved in the state's environmental movement, in particular the campaign to save Lake Pedder. By 1972 he was a member of the newly formed United Tasmania Group, Australia's first "green" party. In a newspaper interview in 1976, Brown announced that he had a gay partner in order to highlight discrimination and encourage law reform as homosexual activity was a crime in Tasmania at the time.
In 1976 he fasted for a week on top of Mt Wellington in protest against the arrival at Hobart of the nuclear powered warship USS Enterprise.
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