http://www.gazettes-online.co.uk/issues/22583/pages/5598 - he was in 1861 practising medicine at 31 Anglesea Road, Woolwich in a business with Robert Daly Walker.
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http://books.google.com/books?id=EmQqAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA592&dq=%22John+Theophilus+Heeley%22&lr= - and in 1859 married Helen Webster, eldest daughter of John Webster, Esq, solicitor of Manchester. He's listed as a surgeon of Whittlesea, Cambridgeshire.
He was in Australia by 1864, when he's listed in Victoria in the newspapers.
In 1861 they are there:
RG9/1045 69/5
Highcauseway, Whittlesea
John (T/J?) Heeley, 31, Physician LNCPI (LRCPI?) SAC?, b. Edgbaston Warwickshire.
Helen, 29, wife b. Manchester
John R. H., son, 1, b. Whittlesea. (John Howard Ratcliff Heeley).
(that is, he may be listing himself as Licentiate Royal College of Physicians of Ireland)
In 1871 Helen is living in Cookham, Berkshire:
RG10/1292 67/59
Crawford Terrace
Helen Heeley, "wife", married, 39, b. Lancashire
John H, 10, scholar b. Whittlesea
Arthur, 9, son b. Woolwich (may have been born as Edmund Arthur Herbert)
Thomas Harrop, uncle, 60, income from dividends, b. Manchester (there is a note: 'imbecile from birth').
In 1881 Helen is claiming to be widowed and is living with sons John and Arthur in Leicester. She may have died there in 1911 aged 79. John R. H. and her are living together in Leicester in 1911; he died there in 1928.
Arthur became an artist and moved to Cornwall. He had a wife Catherine (nee Illingworth) and a daughter Dorothy who is on the 1911 census. (may be Dorothy Venour Heeley?)
Going back to John's movements, there's various possibles coming into Victoria - under spellings like Heely, Hearley, Healey, Heafey etc. It might be hard to track him-- I suspect that the US thing might have been a red herring as he probably wanted to have some excuse for where he had been for those years when he was married to Helen!
Have you been able to trace him in the medical directory/medical register? He should show up during those years he was practising in England, and that should say where he was educated.
