A fatal collision with a car while cycling in Mount Waverley ended Damion Drapac’s medical career barely a year after it began.

Damion, who was 30 when he died in 2019, had taken the long road to a career in medicine, going through the rigorous selection process for medical school three times in four years before finally being accepted.

Property investor Michael Drapac has given Deakin University $6.1 million to set up a scholarship for disadvantaged students to study medicine.Credit:Chris Hopkins

Middling marks in his first two years of university, while studying nutrition and dietetics at Monash, counted heavily against him, his father Michael Drapac said.

“He was penalised for those two years,” Drapac said. “So many students are denied access to the course, not because they haven’t demonstrated vocational and empathetic suitability, but because they weren’t in the top 1 per cent of academic students.”

Eventually Damion gained a place in Deakin University’s Doctor of Medicine course, and Drapac said he had never seen his son so driven and inspired to help others as in the months before his death.

“Being a doctor was his way of being the best version of himself,” his father said.

Michael Drapac with his late son Damion, after whom the Damion Drapac Centre will be named.

Drapac, a property investor, has just gifted Deakin University $6.1 million – the largest donation in the university’s history – to establish a centre for advancing equity for aspiring medical students.

The Damion Drapac Centre, as it will be named, will provide scholarships to medicine students from disadvantaged, diverse and regional backgrounds, groups typically under-represented in the medical professions.

The scholarships, worth $60,000 a year, will not solely be awarded based on an applicant’s academic results, but also by their demonstrated commitment to a career in medicine. They will be offered in perpetuity.

It is hoped many graduates who pass through the centre will go on to work in regional communities, where doctor shortages are greater than in most parts of Melbourne.

Recent Deakin medicine graduate Damion Drapac was killed while cycling in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs in 2019.

Deakin vice-chancellor Professor Iain Martin said, “you don’t need to scratch very far at the moment to see just how hard it is to get doctors in regional and rural Australia”.

Martin said students studying medicine from “non-traditional … less wealthy” backgrounds faced greater obstacles to success, including the expense of studying medicine, and in most cases no family members with lived experience of working in the profession.

The centre will employ four staff dedicated to supporting its scholars through their studies.

Three scholarships will be awarded in the centre’s first year, in 2026, growing to 12 scholars across four year levels by 2030, Martin said.

He said the donation was significant for Deakin’s medical program.

“We really want to use this to increasingly make sure that our medical program reflects the diverse communities that we draw and serve, from the western suburbs of Melbourne right out to rural southwest Victoria.”

Current Deakin student Carl Angus also had to find his own, circuitous route into a medical career, after an early misstep. Angus gained an undergraduate place at Monash University’s intensively competitive School of Medicine as a 17-year-old, but struggled to adapt to Melbourne life and withdrew within two years.

Now 37 and working at a sawmill in Colac, Angus is two years into his four-year Doctor of Medicine, having gained a degree in accounting and worked as a secondary school maths teacher in the 17 years since quitting Monash.

He has his heart set on being a country doctor.

Angus was inspired to make his second attempt at studying medicine after taking a group of senior students to an open day at Deakin.

“We went to the Doctor of Medicine open day, and they spoke about how one of their best students [had been] a chef,” he said.

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