1:30min

Professor Brian Layland (L) and John Davis in the Tharawal Innovative Clinical Teaching and Training Centre
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By Rhiannon Riches
Assistant Editor
A new clinical teaching and training centre in Campbelltown in south-west Sydney includes facilities for optometry.
For 12 years, the Brien Holden Vision Institute has provided an optometric service at Tharawal Aboriginal Medical Service at Campbelltown, 50 kilometres from Sydney CBD.
The service began operations half a day per week and now operates one full day each week.
Former Optometry Australia (Optometrists Association Australia) national president John Davis is the resident optometrist and is consulting at the clinic every Friday.
The recently completed Tharawal Innovative Clinical Teaching and Training Centre was officially opened on 27 November 2015.
Provision was made in the new building for the optometry clinic and equipment was transferred from the clinic’s previous location.
New Chair
Brien Holden Vision Institute has funded a Chair in Clinical Optometry at the University of New South Wales School of Optometry and Vision Science.
More than five years ago, the late Professor Brien Holden proposed to the board of the institute that it investigate the establishment and funding of a Professorial Chair in Clinical Optometry within the School of Optometry and Vision Science at the University of New South Wales.
It was agreed that the institute would contribute $1.25 million over five years to establish the Chair.
The chairman of the institute’s board, Professor Brian Layland, said the board completed its final $250,000 contribution in July 2015, the month Professor Holden died.
At a function organised by the UNSW, the valuable contribution to the school was acknowledged when the Chancellor David Gonski and then Vice Chancellor Professor Fred Hilmer presented Professor Layland with a framed certificate of appreciation.
Journalist Kerry O’Brien delivered an address to the attendees.