Australian Dictionary of Biography

Max Bell, 1996

Supplied by David Hancock

Maxwell (Max) Alexander Bell (1930–1996), golfer, taxi driver, and euthanasia advocate, was born Maxwell Alexander Bowen on 5 December 1930 at Broken Hill, New South Wales, only surviving child of Alexander George Bowen, labourer, and his wife Olive Rose, née Byrne, both New South Wales born. Following his father’s death in a mining accident in 1942 and his mother’s remarriage to Hedley Victor Bell, a photographer, four years later, in 1949 Max changed his surname. He had a working-class upbringing and spent part of his early life in Adelaide, but nothing is known of his education.

Describing himself as being ‘bitten by the golf bug’ (News 1948, 7) from his first visit to the Royal Adelaide Golf Club, by the late 1940s Bell aspired to become a professional player. Starting as a caddie, around 1948 he began competing, first as an assistant professional and then professional golfer at the North Adelaide Golf Club. Seeking more experience, in 1953 he motorcycled to Sydney and competed across New South Wales, living periodically at Arncliffe, Armidale, and Camdenville. He was also at various times a boxer and a bodyguard. By the early 1990s he had returned to Broken Hill, where he worked as a taxi driver. He never married.

In 1995 Bell was diagnosed with stomach cancer. He underwent surgery that July, which left him with constant nausea and vomiting and a terminal prognosis of twelve to eighteen months. Once powerfully built, he was becoming ‘a mere shadow of his former self’ (Exit International n.d.), having lost twenty kilograms in ten weeks by mid-1996. With the advice of the medical practitioner and prominent euthanasia advocate Philip Nitschke, he decided to try to use the Northern Territory’s controversial and short-lived Rights of the Terminally Ill Act 1995, Australia’s—and the world’s—first right to die legislation. Putting his house up for sale, he took his two cats and dog, Patch, all of whom he considered family, to be put down, donned his checked flannelette shirt and broad-brimmed straw hat, and drove his taxicab the 3,000 kilometres from Broken Hill to Darwin that June. Describing himself as ‘not living … just existing’ (ABC 1996) and ‘a walking dead man,’ he explained that, rather than being frightened by death, he was ‘afraid of living … with poor quality and old age’ (Alcorn 1996, 1, 13).

As the six-day journey left Bell even weaker, Nitschke admitted him to the Royal Darwin Hospital, where he remained for almost three weeks. Nitschke unsuccessfully attempted to get a palliative care specialist, a surgical specialist, and a psychiatrist to sign the paperwork that would allow Bell to become the first person to use the new legislation when it came into effect on 1 July. No one who was appropriately qualified was prepared to break ranks with the Australian Medical Association, whose Northern Territory president, Chris Wake, had warned that medical practitioners could be charged retrospectively if the legislation was overturned.

Angry and appalled, Bell signed himself out of hospital and on 9 July commenced the drive back to Broken Hill, where he initially camped in his almost empty house. Nitschke travelled to Broken Hill soon after and was with him for his final weeks. Bell’s life ended on 2 August 1996 ‘in just the way he’d dreaded’ (Nitschke 2013, 87): over the course of three slow days, while in palliative care at Broken Hill Base Hospital, unable to eat or, at the very end, even speak. A ‘feisty character’ (Nitschke 2013, 86), Bell was a private individual who did not share much about his past. He was farewelled at a small funeral and was buried with his mother and sister, Margaret Dawn, who had died in infancy, at Broken Hill’s Catholic cemetery.

Bell’s attempt to end his life remains significant in the history of the Australian and global right to die movements. His story attracted considerable media attention nationally and overseas. A powerful and widely discussed episode of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Four Corners program, ‘The Road to Nowhere,’ featured Bell in Darwin and followed his unfolding story. Channel 7’s Witness then filmed Bell’s final days. Seeing his suffering, just a couple of months after Bell’s death, three Darwin medical specialists authorised the prostate cancer sufferer Bob Dent’s wish to end his life, making him the first person in the world to use voluntary euthanasia legislation. As Nitschke commented: ‘it was the live action on the television screen that hit home’ (Nitschke 2013, 88). After an unsuccessful challenge in the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory (Wake and Gondarra v. The Northern Territory of Australia), the Act was repealed by the Commonwealth parliament in 1997.

Fictionalised accounts of Bell’s journey were presented in the 2003 play Last Cab to Darwin and its 2015 film adaptation. In 2023 the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory commenced assessing Bell’s blue Holden Commodore taxi, which had been left to Nitschke, for its collection. Best known for his struggles during the final months of his life, Bell gave a face to human suffering, with his story offering painful insights on the entanglements of medicine, politics, and the law.