Aunty Jenny Rosser has been a guiding presence on the new hospital design and, today, she was proud to welcome everyone to country and to the site for the new hospital which she says “feels peaceful and right”.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
But to complete the site’s spiritual preparation, Uncle Reg and Aunty Loretta conducted a cleansing ceremony with smoke and sacred water.
Pacifico workers, who’ve just moved into their new headquarters behind the Department Store in Macksville, said they plan to start construction on the new access road for the Macksville Hospital within the next month.
But executive director for regional and rural projects for health infrastructure Rebecca Wark said the official ground-breaking ceremony is now not expected until early next year.
Construction on the hospital is likely to take around 18 months with Member for Oxley Mel Pavey hopeful of a blue ribbon-cutting in mid-2020.
The new hospital schematics include a new emergency department, inpatient units, theatre and procedure room, maternity services and enhanced community and allied health facilities.
And the hospital grounds will cater to 150 vehicles with free parking.
The main entrance to the hospital will face the new highway, with many in-patient beds facing out towards breath-taking views of the Nambucca Valley from the site’s elevated position.
I love how this site looks straight onto Yarrahapinni mountain. That’s our sacred mountain, and it gives you a sense of being home when you look at it.
- Aunty Jenny Rosser
Dee Hunter from the Bowra-Macksville United Hospital Auxiliary said she was thrilled the Valley is getting its new hospital after such a big community effort.
“And the Auxiliary is committed to buying two new birthing baths for the maternity unit. We’re really excited to have that as our donation to the new site,” she said.
Maternity unit manager Karen Atkins said they’d already chosen the new birthing pools, after a reconnaissance mission to Byron Bay.
The new inbuilt baths will be “sunken down, with internal heating, LED lighting and be fast functioning”; the current bath is blow-up, and takes 45 minutes to fill up, whereas the new ones will be full in six minutes flat.
The two ‘labour, birth recovery, post-natal rooms’ will also be double the size of the current one and include a bath each and an ensuite.
“I like to call it a sanctuary. It’s like a resort-style room that women can feel comfortable in, and it hides all of the clinical beeping elements,” she said.
Once the new hospital is built, the midwives also look forward to a change in procedures which will focus on continuity of care, meaning patients will be attended to by the same midwife throughout their birthing journey.
Your questions answered
Detailed planning is still ongoing, and a more comprehensive floor plan schematic will be released soon.
The construction tender process will also start within the next couple of months.
In the meantime, here is a rudimentary floor plan which was released in April this year.
And here is the announcement of the new hospital site, (from eight months ago) in which the project officer, Mark Tyler details the layout. His presentation starts from around the six minute mark.
Steven Hughes asked: “What is being done to facilitate access to the hospital from the Pacific Highway as it can't be accessed from the south?”
Yes, we’ve been wondering the same thing. Today Mel Pavey said she didn’t believe there would ever be an off-ramp built going northbound along the new highway.
“Just in terms of what these roads cost to build, I wouldn’t want to raise any expectations of [an off-ramp] being built,” she said.
This would mean traffic from the south would necessarily have to commute via the old highway and old Macksville bridge and enter the hospital from the roundabout connecting Letitia Close and Old Coast Rd.
What’s in a name? Will the new hospital keep its ‘Macksville’ moniker or is there consideration about changing it to something like ‘Nambucca Valley and District Hospital’?
The project team were happy to remain non-partisan on this one.
Mel Pavey said today that although she had been following the debate playing out in the news, noone had yet brought the issue to her, personally.
That may change soon, however, with rumours that a name change submission is currently being drafted in the community.
“I’ll listen to the community as I need to,” Mrs Pavey said.
“But I don’t really think people care what it’s called. I just think they care that it’s getting built.”