Libby Harricks Memorial Oration

The 2010 Libby Harricks Memorial Oration - 1.30pm Sat. 24 April.

"Early identification of hearing impairment in Australia. Well begun is not all done"

Orator: Professor Greg Leigh, Chairman of the Australasian Newborn Hearing Screening Committee.

The 2010 Oration will be held in Sydney at the Grace Hotel during the 6th National Deafness Sector Summit.

Sponsors welcome - please contact info @ deafnessforum.org.au (remove spaces before sending)

The Oration is in honour of our first President and profoundly deaf achiever. The aim of the Libby Harricks Memorial Oration is to create greater public awareness of the hearing problems associated in the broadest sense with the Deafness Forum’s constituency, to publicise the Deafness Forum’s national role and to highlight the work done on behalf of the Deaf and Hearing Impaired community by voluntary groups throughout Australia.

The 2009 Libby Harricks Memorial Oration was held in Sydney on Friday 22 May 2009, at the GPCE.

The 2009 Orator was Professor Graeme Clark

Thanks to our sponsors of the 2009 Libby Harricks Memorial Oration:

Previous Orations:

Copies of previous Orations listed below are available from the Deafness Forum.

Order form below 

• The Bionic Ear: from an idea to reality, delivered by Professor Graeme Clark AC 2009
• Access, equity and hearing loss in Australia in 2008, delivered by Professor Bob Cowan 2008 
• Hearing and Communication - A Primary Concern in Aged Care. delivered by Mr Richard Osborn 2007
• Hearing Loss:The Silent Epidemic. Who, why, impact & what can we do about it. delivered by Professor Harvey Dillon 2006
• Deafness and disability transformed: An empowering personal context delivered by Alex Jones 2005
• A Sorry Business: Lack of Progress in Aboriginal Hearing Health delivered by Dr Peter Carter - FRACS 2004
• Disability Law and People with Hearing Loss: We've come a long way but we're not there yet. delivered by Donna Lee Sorkin 2003.
• The Prevalence, Risk factors and Impacts of Hearing Impairment in an OlderAustralian Community delivered by Professor Paul Mitchell 2002.
• The Politics of Deafness delivered by Senator the Honorable Margaret Reid, Senator for the ACT and President of the Senate in 2001.
• Recent advances in the understanding of Ménières disease and tinnitus delivered by Professor William P R Gibson AM, MD, FRACS, Professor of Otolaryngology, University of Sydney, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital Sydney, 2000.
• The Inaugural Libby Harricks Memorial Oration delivered by Emeritus Professor Di Yerbury AM, Vice-Chancellor of Macquarie University, 1999.

To purchase a copy of previous orations click below

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1945 -1998
Bachelor of Pharmacy 1965
Co-Founder SHHH 1982
President SHHH 1986 & 1992
Disability Council of NSW 1986 - 1990
Access 2000
President & Vice-President, Australian Deafness Council (NSW) 1988-1991
Member of the Order of Australia 1990
Chairperson Deafness Forum 1993 - 1996
Board Member Australian Hearing Services 1992 - 1996
Olympic Access Committee 1996 - 1998
Quota South Pacific Area Deaf Woman of the Year 1993

Please complete and return the following section with your donation.
(Donations of $2 or more are tax deductible.)

Libby’s story is one of courage and triumph over adversity by utilising the knowledge of her own severe hearing loss to help others.

Libby started to lose her hearing following a bad dose of flu in the English winter soon after her marriage in 1969. Having returned to Australia in 1970 she began to find difficulty in understanding conversation and instructions, particularly on the telephone which was very important in her profession of pharmacy.

In spite of advice to the contrary, Libby tried hearing aids and found they helped. Had she heeded the negative advice, Libby believed she might never have embarked on the road to self-help, which so enriched her own life and that of many others.

She thought her two boys quickly learnt to sleep through the night and her friends remarked they had loud voices, which was the boys’ mechanism for coping with a deaf mother!

The more the doctors said nothing could be done to help, the more Libby looked towards self help and so she learnt to lip read, a tool she relied on heavily in her quest to help others.

Libby’s will to win led her, with the help of others, to get involved with the setting up of a support group, which became SHHH - Self Help for Hard of Hearing people. The American founder, Rocky Stone, was invited to Australia in 1982 and did a lecture tour entitled "The Hurt That Does Not Show" which cemented the bonds between the US and Australian groups and helped the local SHHH develop.

Libby, with others, then began SHHH News, a quarterly publication, and with Bill Taylor set up the first Hearing Information and Resource Centre at "Hillview", Turramurra with support from Hornsby/Kuringai Hospital. This centre provided reliable information on, and demonstrated, assistive listening devices for hearing impaired people. Through this interest, Libby became an enthusiastic user of technology and with her handbag full of electronic aids was enabled to join in a full social life with family and public.

Libby became President of SHHH in 1986 and began to develop her role as an advocate for hearing impaired people generally. She became involved in ACCESS 2000, under the Australian Deafness Council, and a member of the Disability Council of NSW. Her horizons broadened further as Vice President of the Australian Deafness Council and then as the first, and two terms, President of the newly formed national peak body in deafness, the Deafness Forum of Australia. In this latter role Libby made a huge contribution to bring together all the different organisations into a central body, and actively lobbied on behalf of Deaf and hearing impaired at the highest level - the archetype of a successful achiever despite her profound hearing loss.

For her work on behalf of hearing impaired people Libby was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 1990. Later she was appointed by the Government to the Board of Australian Hearing Services and was asked to represent the needs of hearing impaired on the Olympic Access Committee.

Unfortunately, Libby faced another hurdle when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1995. Following surgery, she continued her family and volunteer work with undiminished vigour. She would wickedly show off her wig at public functions after her chemotherapy, and talked openly of her "mean disease". She died peacefully on 1 August 1998 and was honoured by hundreds who attended her Thanksgiving Service on 6 August.

In her own words, Libby related her outlook:

"I look back over these years since I became hearing impaired and realise that any efforts that I have made have been returned to me threefold. I have found talents I never knew I had, I have gained so much from the many people I have met and worked with to improve life for people with disabilities and through self help I have turned the potential negative of a profound hearing loss into a positive sense of purpose and direction in my life".