The first hospital in Barcaldine was community funded and administered. The Victoria Hospital opened in 1888, so-called because fundraising to establish a hospital began in 1887, the year of Queen Victoria’s Jubilee. A women’s committee raised the funds, and the men took over to run it.
It burnt down in January 1896, and the patients were housed in the empty Brewery building. The replacement Victoria Hospital was operational by the end of 1896.
The hospital continued to be run by a community hospital board until the 1920s when costs started to stretch the resources available in the town. In 1928 the last meeting of the Victoria Hospital Board was held and the institution became known as the Barcaldine District Hospital under the administration of the state government.
Barcaldine District Hospital
The last meeting of Victoria Hospital Board was held on July 4, 1928. Thereinafter the institution was known as Barcaldine District Hospital. Over the next twenty years, the hospital capacity was stretched to breaking point and a new hospital was planned.
In January 1949 a contract had been signed but it wasn’t until 1953 that it was ready for occupation.
The work was done in stages, the west wing built and occupied in November 1952. Then the remaining parts of the old hospital were demolished and work began on the east wing. Nurses’ quarters of similar construction were part of the project and a dental surgery was attached to the western end of the complex. Barcaldine Hospital officially opened on November 28, 1953.
By the mid-1990s, Barcaldine Hospital had become outdated after more than forty years and was due for redevelopment. The work was done in two stages, Stage 1 opening on 1 February 1998. Stage 2 began immediately afterwards to adapt the old hospital section into expanded facilities and was opened on 12 June, 1999.
PRIVATE HOSPITALS
Kenilworth Nursing Home
Kenilworth Nursing Home was a private maternity hospital that opened in February 1919. It was staffed by three nurses (Green, Long and Southgate), an assistant, and Dr. Cook as visiting surgeon. Its location was advertised in a number of locations: Fir Street in 1920, on the corner of Myrtle and Gidyea Streets in 1921, and on the corner of Maple and Acacia Streets in 1923.
It closed in May 1924 when a maternity ward opened at the Victoria Hospital.
Glencoe Private Hospital
Glencoe Private Hospital opened in 1920 in Elm Street (the current site of the Catholic Parish Centre /old Presbytery). Dr J. P. O’Hara was in charge.
It became ‘famous’ when Mr. T J Ryan (a former Queensland Premier) died there in 1921.
It closed its doors as a hospital in the 1930s but in 1942 students from Rockhampton’s Range Convent School were evacuated to Barcaldine as part of the war arrangements. Local priests Frs. Pyke and Page gave up their presbytery so it could become a boarding house for 22 girls, and they moved into the old Glencoe building.
