Mossman District Hospital is a heritage-listed public hospital at Johnston Road, Mossman, Shire of Douglas, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by Hill & Taylor and built by J J Riley. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 12 June 2009.
History Mossman District Hospital was built by contractor JJ Riley for the Port Douglas Hospitals Board, and was opened on 23 August 1930 by James Kenny, the Member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly for Cook. It was constructed to plans prepared by the Department of Public Works for a standard pavilion-type timber and galvanised iron hospital, and amended by Cairns architects Hill and Taylor to incorporate evocative Spanish Mission style concrete facades.
Mossman lies inland from Port Douglas, on the flood-plain of the Mossman River between the Great Dividing Range and the coast, about north of Cairns. Port Douglas was established in 1877 as an alternative to Cairns as a service port to the Hodgkinson goldfield that had been proclaimed on 15 June 1876, but with the construction of the Cairns–Kuranda railway line 1882–1891, Port Douglas gradually declined as a town and port. The Mossman district, although initially taken up as homestead selections supplying fodder, maize and tropical fruits to the goldfields, converted to sugar-growing in the 1890s and prospered in the early twentieth century.
The township of Mossman was created from a private subdivision made following the establishment of the Mossman Central Mill on the Mossman River in 1894–1895. By 1910 the township comprised little more than the Exchange Hotel, a store, butcher's shop, hall and timber church, clustered around the sugar mill. These buildings and most of nearby Port Douglas were severely damaged by a cyclone on 16 March 1911. In the aftermath, businesses at Port Douglas gradually gravitated to Mossman and by 1920 the district's major services – including the Douglas Shire Council offices – were located in Mossman. In the 1920s the Court House and banking facilities moved from Port Douglas to Mossman, which by the end of the decade was the administrative centre of the shire. The town was given an additional boost with the completion of the Captain Cook Highway between Cairns and Mossman in 1933.
Prior to 1930 the district hospital was located at Port Douglas. Constructed , it was administered by a volunteer Hospital Committee and funded through local subscriptions, fund-raising and donations. Public hospitals were not yet a responsibility of the Queensland Government, and although government assistance was given with the design of hospitals and payment of a resident medical officer's salary, funds to construct and conduct the hospital were raised locally. Public hospitals at this period were regarded as charitable institutions, and patients were means-tested.
The Hospitals Act 1923 gave the Queensland Government greater administrative responsibility for health care and the ability to fund the construction of hospitals. Funds from the Golden Casket lottery scheme established in 1920 were available, but used predominantly for the construction of maternity wards and baby clinics.
The Hospitals Act also introduced the concept of district hospitals. Existing local hospital committees could particulate in the new system, evolving into local hospital boards that included local and Queensland government representatives.
From 1913 the Douglas Hospital Committee held meetings month about at Port Douglas and Mossman, reflecting the expansion of the hinterland community. From January 1923 the community was advocating construction of a hospital in Mossman, especially a maternity hospital.
In late 1924 the Douglas Hospital Committee made the decision that they would maintain the hospital at Port Douglas, but not extend or develop it any further, in anticipation of a new hospital being constructed at Mossman. By late January 1925 the Department of Public Works had prepared plans for a proposed Mossman hospital, to comprise a main block, maternity ward and nurses' quarters. These were single-storeyed timber buildings, high-set on timber stumps, with wide surrounding verandahs, and connected via covered ways. The plan was of the pavilion-ward type, reflecting contemporary thinking on hospital design. From the 1860s to the 1930s almost all hospitals erected in Queensland were pavilion plan – developed in Europe and England in the 1850s – based on the principles of providing good ventilation, light and sanitation, and on selecting a generous area of land, preferably elevated and on the outskirts of a town, to achieve this.
In the early twentieth century Queensland developed a variant of the pavilion plan hospital, the principal characteristics being: high-set timber construction; medium-to high-pitched roofs clad in corrugated iron, wide surrounding timber verandahs; ceiling vents and roof ventilators to assist air flow; the combination of male and female wards within a single pavilion, separated by smaller rooms such as matron's room, doctor's room, nurses' room and single bed private wards; and bathrooms, toilets and kitchens contained in semi-detached blocks off the main pavilions. In hospitals constructed after 1925, the provision of an operating theatre and an x-ray room became standard. Between 1901 and 1938, 78 pavilion plan hospitals/wards were erected in Queensland; by 1996 only 23 (just under 30 per cent) were extant and substantially intact; of the others, one had been removed from the site and the remainder had been demolished.
By January 1926 a large, level site off Johnston Road, about south-west of the centre of Mossman, had been acquired for the new hospital. A plan of the proposed hospital layout for the site was prepared by Public Works in April 1926, positioning the main building close to the centre of the site, facing east, and accessed from Hospital Street. To the north of the main building, connected via a covered way, were the nurses' quarters, and to south, also connected via a covered way, the maternity ward. At the western side of the site, and not physically connected to the main building, were a number of ancillary buildings, structures and facilities: a doctor's residence (with private driveway off Johnston Road), tennis court, wardsman's quarters, water supply pump house, drying green, laundry and powerhouse, incinerator, and morgue. The buildings were spaced well apart, to allow for future expansion on the site.
In April 1926 the Douglas Hospital Committee (established under the Voluntary Hospitals system) was replaced by the Port Douglas Hospitals Board (formed under the 1923 Act). Through 1926 debate between the Board and the Queensland government centred on whether the Port Douglas hospital buildings would be re-located to Mossman, or new construction approved. The Department of Public Works estimated a cost of to erect an entirely new hospital and if the nurses' quarters and doctor's residence were re-located from Port Douglas. Local estimates were called, which proved lower than Works had anticipated, and in October 1928 the Board accepted from the government a loan of $14,000 for construction of entirely new hospital buildings.
However, the Board also referred the Works Department design to Cairns architects Hill and Taylor, to prepare an alternative scheme in concrete based on the original plans. Richard Hill and Arthur John Henry Taylor were in partnership in Cairns from 1927 to , with a branch office in Townsville 1933–1939. The partnership was resumed in 1945 but was dissolved in 1952. During the interwar years Hill and Taylor developed an extensive practice in northern Queensland. Their work included the Cairns City Council Chambers (1929–1930, Cairns City Council Chambers); the Johnstone Shire Hall at Innisfail (1935–1938, Johnstone Shire Hall); the Barron Valley Hotel (1940) at Atherton, and buildings at several district hospitals besides Mossman, including Boulia (emergency operating theatre, 1936), Cairns (nurses' quarters, 1937), Mareeba (new hospital building, 1937), and Proserpine (new hospital building 1939–1940, Proserpine Hospital).
For the Mossman Hospital, Hill and Taylor proposed replacing the planned timber balustrades to the verandahs with decorative, arcaded concrete verandah facades in the Spanish Mission style popular at the time. They argued that the concrete exterior would be less expensive to maintain, would save on fire insurance costs, and would better withstand cyclonic weather. The Department of Public Works approved the amended design and in mid-1929 extended the loan to .
Spanish Mission style architecture was popularised in Australia from the late 1920s. The emphasis on wide colonnaded or arcaded verandahs and white stuccoed exterior walls set against lush gardens (as popularised in the Californian version of the style), translated well to Australia's warm climate, particularly in Queensland. In utilising this idiom for the Mossman Hospital, Hill and Taylor created the illusion that the buildings were of a more substantial construction than was the reality – being principally timber-framed, clad and lined structures – and the white-walled buildings in the garden setting against a mountain backdrop proved to be extremely picturesque. It is the only Queensland public hospital constructed with a Spanish Mission exterior.
Decorative embellishments were kept to a minimum (to reduce costs and lessen maintenance) and included: curved concrete arches to the verandahs; moulded Maltese crosses in the front balustrades; a curved parapet defining the central entrance, with the raised lettering 'Mossman District hospital'; and concrete arches defining the entrances off Hospital Street and Johnston Road.
When opened in 1930, the hospital comprised: a main building with male and female wards, operating room, dispensary wing, outpatients wing, and kitchen wing; maternity ward; nurses' quarters; and medical superintendent's residence. The hospital was soon operating at capacity, a reflection of the growth of the Mossman district during the 1930s, and extensions were necessary within a few years. About 1936 new nurses' quarters were erected just inside the entrance to the site off Hospital Street, north of the drive, and at this time the 1930 nursers' quarters were converted into a female ward. A new operating theatre was constructed (Hill and Taylor called the tenders for this late in 1939). By 1946 the former nurses' quarters at Port Douglas (a detached timber building) had been moved onto the site and located just inside the main entrance gate, to serve as the Board Room and Secretary's Office for the Port Douglas Hospitals Board. Also by this date, an isolation block had been constructed at the north-west corner of the site, connected via a covered way to the female ward (1930 nurses' quarters). New staff quarters were erected on the western side of the site, north of the doctor's residence. In 1965 the outpatients wing/former dispensary at the northern end of the main building was demolished and replaced by a new building that provided accommodation for administration, outpatients and a dental clinic.
Major renovations and additions to the main building were made in 1992, when a large extension was constructed to the rear of and between the main building and the maternity ward, so that the formerly detached maternity ward was made part of the main block.
In 2016 the hospital remains a working facility of Queensland Health and provides 24 beds for acute inpatients unit and 8 beds for residential aged care.
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