Di Clarke, the first full-time nurse at the Lakes Entrance Community Health Centre, helped pioneer a new way of caring for the community when its doors opened in 1975.
Now, 50 years on, Gippsland Lakes Complete Health (GLCH) is preparing to celebrate its anniversary with a community event on October 11 and the launch of a history booklet.
With the help of long serving staff like former nurse Di, GLCH has compiled stories and photographs capturing its history.
“I had no idea I was helping to pioneer an entirely new way of delivering healthcare in Australia,” Di said.
“The centre was set up with basically no equipment, so we had to form an auxiliary to raise funds for further supplies. Everything was built from scratch, often with our own hands and community support.”
“I’ve treated people on boats, delivered babies at the community health centre, I’ve been on pub floors treating injuries, I’ve been everywhere you can imagine because we didn’t have much medical backup to start with.”
Di’s recruitment to the job was equally unconventional.
“I sat beside the manager’s hospital bed while he recovered from falling off his own boat with a broken leg,” she said.
Her appointment was celebrated with a front-page story in The Lakes News, which declared, ‘the centre will operate as the first port of call for all health and welfare needs’.
From the start, there was no manual for how to run a community health centre. The approach was holistic, looking at the total well-being of the person and the community.
Di can remember door knocking residents in Lakes Entrance with the social worker, asking what health services residents needed.
“From those conversations, we compiled a list: district nursing, home care, meals on wheels, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, dental services, antenatal and postnatal care, health education, early intervention programs. The list went on and on. We started with the basics and kept growing as we got more funding and expertise.”
Gippsland Lakes Complete Health started as a vision shared by locals, who recognised the urgent need for better health services in the region.
For years, the Lakes Entrance community advocated for a hospital, believing it would address the area’s healthcare gaps.
While that didn’t happen — government policy at the time required a population of 100,000 — change began in October 1973 when Dr E. Wilder, Chairman of the Hospitals and Charities Commission, introduced the idea of a community health centre, a cost-effective and prevention-focused alternative.
Over the next two years, a committee worked with local and state health bodies to bring the centre to life. Many became its first management committee, playing a key role in planning and building community support.
At the centre’s opening, Dr Wilder is quoted in The Lakes News as saying, ‘we are after health, we are not after sickness, preventative medicine is the motto’.