Dr John Egan

Dr John Egan died on 12 June 2026 at the age of 96. Moree Online News reported a brief illness. His nephew Rick Feneley wrote in WA Today and The Sydney Morning Herald that on the day of the stroke that ended his life Egan had walked about 8,000 steps, and that a funeral video showed him on a cross-trainer at Balmoral Beach the day before.

His funeral was held on Thursday 2 July 2026 at Sacred Heart Church in Mosman and was livestreamed for distant mourners. Daughters Meg and Fiona delivered the eulogy.

John Egan was born on 6 December 1929, the third child of Charles Egan, a doctor who later worked in psychiatry, and grew up with older sisters Patsy and Margaret. The family moved often among hospital and asylum posts, including Callan Park, Gladesville, Rydalmere, Morisset, Newcastle and Bloomfield in Orange. In 1943 Charles took the family to Hay, where he ran the wartime internment camp.

John attended about ten schools. In his late teens he visited relatives in Tenterfield and recalled talking with saddler George Woolnough, grandfather of Peter Allen. He followed his father into medicine and trained through residency at St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney.

In 1957 Egan moved to Moree with his wife Rhona and their first children, joining Dr John Campion in general practice. For twenty years he worked long hours from Heber Street and Frome Street surgeries and hospital rounds, delivering more than 2,000 babies. He and Campion campaigned successfully against the segregation of Aboriginal patients at the local hospital, supported Aboriginal enrolment at the Catholic school, and helped the Daughters of Charity establish free clinic services on the mission. He also travelled regularly to Toomelah to provide free care.

In 1977 the family returned to Sydney. Egan practised at Harbord and elsewhere and remained a point of contact for former Moree patients. Colleagues and family remembered a doctor whose humility matched his stamina.

Egan married Rhona Hart, a cardiac nurse he met at St Vincent's. They raised nine children and were active in Moree's St Philomena's School community before returning to Sydney. They also owned a property on the Garah Road near Moree, where he enjoyed learning about farming.

After Rhona's stroke in 2016 he spent about six years at her Mosman nursing-home bedside, walking there each day until her death. In later years he lived in Mosman, attended Mass at Sacred Heart, and kept up long daily walks. He was uncle to journalist Rick Feneley, who wrote a widely read tribute after his death.

In Moree, Egan is remembered for round-the-clock general practice, for more than 2,000 deliveries, and for working with John Campion and the Daughters of Charity against segregated hospital care and for free clinics on Aboriginal missions including Toomelah. In Sydney he remained a family doctor and a daily walker whose final day summed up a life of movement, faith and medicine.

Feneley's tribute cast him among "the best of our better angels," a phrase that captured how patients and relatives described a quiet, tireless GP.