Rodney Frederick Seaborn

A House Monitor in School House, Rodney was a member of the 1931 Senior Athletics Team. Post school Rodney enrolled at Sydney University where he studied Law. In 1939, just prior to the outbreak of World War II Rodney commenced a medical degree at the University of London and spent his time as an intern in the centre of London during the Blitz at Charing Cross Hospital. This experience had a profound effect on Rodney and he chose to specialise in psychiatry at Bunstead Hospital in Surrey where he saw firsthand the effects of trauma brought on by war.

Returning to Sydney, Rodney worked at the Concord Repatriation Hospital and later headed the team at Callan Park Psychiatric Repatriation Unit. Rodney’s interest in the rehabilitation of those addicted to drugs and alcohol saw him elected as Vice President of the International Council on Alcohol and Addiction. For this work he was awarded an Order of the British Empire in 1977.

Rodney had a lifelong dream to own a hospital, a hotel and a theatre and over his lifetime he achieved this dream. In 1956 with financial help from a friend, Rodney started his own psychiatric hospital. Property in Mosman was acquired for this purpose and when “Allanbrook” was sold thirty years later it covered some five acres and cared for over sixty patients.

Rodney’s desire to own a theatre and a hotel came to fruition following the establishment of the Seaborn, Broughton and Walford Foundation which Rodney established with his cousins in 1986. He purchased the Waratah Hotel in Oxford Street changing its name to Wattle House. It became the headquarters for the SBW Foundation. The first task of the Foundation was to purchase and restore the Stables Theatre, which soon saw performances of Michael Gow’s Away and Richard Barrett’s The Heartbreak Kid.

Since 1986, the SBW Foundation has continued to support the Arts and has assisted companies such as the Independent Theatre Company, the Ensemble Theatre, the Blue Mountains Festival and most recently, NIDA with the endowment of the Archives and Performing Arts Collection. Rodney was especially proud of his role in preserving a large collection of archives, manuscripts, books, programmes, magazines and the personal papers of prominent theatrical figures.

Rodney’s service to the Performing Arts through the establishment of the Seaborn, Broughton and Walford Foundation and his philanthropic support of the Arts was rewarded with an AO in 1998. Tributes flowed from the Performing Arts community when Rodney passed away in 2008 at the age of 96.