General News
18 July, 2022
Local reflects on memories of former Baby Health Centre
Maryborough’s Baby Health Centre was heralded as an invaluable service to the community when it opened in 1930 and while no longer standing, the 90-year-old building’s demolition last week is again opening the doors for the community’s...
Maryborough’s Baby Health Centre was heralded as an invaluable service to the community when it opened in 1930 and while no longer standing, the 90-year-old building’s demolition last week is again opening the doors for the community’s betterment.
The former Baby Health Centre on the corner of Clarendon and Neill streets was demolished last week to pave the way for the $100 million redevelopment of the Maryborough Hospital.
The project will see the hospital’s capacity increased, with a new urgent care centre, 32 impatient beds, new maternity unit and birthing suites, two operating theatres, a day medical centre and additional car parking, among other improvements to the site.
In recent times the building had housed Maryborough’s VicRoads agency until its relocation to Nolan Street in February this year, marking the end of the building’s use.
While the building no longer stands its history will live on through local historical societies, including the Maryborough Midlands Historical Society who are now in care of the building’s foundation stone.
The building will also remain in the minds of local residents including Edna Jarvis who remembers being taken to the Baby Health Centre as a child in the 1930s and 40s and still has the health check card she was given over 80 years ago, as well as the cards for her children who all went through the centre.
Ms Jarvis said she has many memories of the centre which she described as a “pretty big deal” back in the day.
“I can remember being brought to the centre from time to time as a kid but when I had my kids, I would bring them in every few weeks,” she said.
“It was a pretty big deal back then I suppose, as a kid we lived on a farm in Alma and when I was born in 1935 it was almost horse and cart times back then.
“We were one of the lucky families and we did have a car so we could drive into town, but still it was unusual I suppose for farmers to make the effort to go all the way into town for something like that — it was important to the community.
“It seems like the building was here one day and gone the next in terms of its demolition and I’m not really sad to see it go, it’s nice to have those memories but the hospital development is important as well.”
According to Betty Osborn’s Against The Odds: Maryborough 1905-1961, the Baby Health Centre was officially opened on Friday, October 10, 1930 by Dr Vera Scantlebury, who was director of infant welfare for the Victorian Department of Health at the time.
It was constructed by the Wandel Brothers of Maryborough at a cost of £1150, which in today’s money equates to around $100,000, according to the Reserve Bank of Australia, and opened five years after the initial centre in High Street had been outgrown.
The Clarendon and Neill streets site was Maryborough’s answer to the baby health centre movement which began in 1917 as a result of high infant mortality in Victoria.
The Monday, October 13, 1930 edition of The Advertiser reported on the opening of Maryborough’s Baby Health Centre, stating the centre would fill a “long-felt want” in the community and its value “demonstrated by the resultant improvement in juvenile health”.
During the official opening of the new centre, Dr Scantlebury, as reported in The Advertiser, spoke of how the movement had improved juvenile health — with 74 of every 1000 babies dying in 1916, compared to 47 out of every 1000 in 1929, with 1929 also seeing 287,704 attendances at the centres.
Although it started small, the baby health centre movement grew in size so that by 1950, just shy of 400 centres, including 15 mobile circuits, were available to families across the state.
The centre in Maryborough was one of the first 52 to be established in Victoria, with the town loosely described as a pioneer in terms of regional health, with the same sentiment now felt with the hospital’s new development.
