Stories

One of the great challenges facing the managers of museums and historic collections is to make them relevant to the next generation of potential visitors which has no personal experience of the conditions under which people lived and worked or of the equipment and facilities available to them. We must work on writing our stories while there are still many dedicated people with first-hand knowledge to assist.

Oral Histories

Members of the Australian Country Hospital Heritage Association have been working for several years to record, through interviews, the stories of distinguished health service professionals who have served our region. These are progressively being transcribed and will be transferred to modern digital media so that they can be made available through the Association's Collection both to members of the general community and to historians. To provide a 'taste' of what is available, a short edited version of an interview between a retired Obstetrician and Gynaecologist, Dr Tom Dewar, and a retired Specialist Dermatologist, Dr Mervyn Gold, has been included in the Association's November 2007 Newsletter. Dr Gold's career commenced when he graduated at the start of World War II and spanned over 60 years.

Other stories

While the stories of people are most important, there is a story to be told around each hospital, each practitioner or each new medical development. The Association will weave some of these stories into the pages of this website as well as into its physical museum. You will find links to a number of short stories associated with photographs which have been reproduced on the site. These are meant to be general interest stories to place a building, person or item of equipment in context rather than 'historical dissertations'. They are based on information in the ACHHA archives plus published documents which have generally been identified in the Sources section of each Story.

© Australian Country Hospitals Heritage Association Inc 2008-2023