It was the name of a Private Hospital, named by Kempsey's famous Midwife Nurse Kirkpatrick after the East Belfast suburb of her grandparents.

Mary was born in Ballymacarrett, County Down in Northern Ireland to George and Sarah Magee on October 3, 1862.

She married Hugh Kirkpatrick in the Methodist Church in 1880 and their first child, Janet, was born the following year in an area rocked by sectarian violence.

Mary was pregnant with their son David when Janet tragically passed away from tuberculosis aged just sixteen months.

Following David's birth, the couple decided to emigrate to Australia in search of a better life.

They arrived in Sydney on April 4, 1884, where Hugh worked as a van driver.

Mary gave birth to another daughter, Mary Ann, in February 1886 but Mary Ann was also to die young, at eleven months, from hydrocephalus.

They moved into the country at Wagga Wagga then to Armidale where another son George was born in June 1889.

At the time, Hugh was working as a butcher but his gambling habits meant the family had little money for food and clothing and shortly afterwards Mary asked him to leave.

Not yet thirty years old and with two young children, Mary washed and ironed for neighbours to survive the depression of the 1890s but realised she needed a respectable profession that would provide a good income.

Taking her two sons to the Macleay in 1900, she practised midwifery, walking to patients' homes to deliver babies and building up her reputation.

In Kempsey, she met Dr Brabazon Casement who was encouraging local women to practise midwifery and thus ease his own caseload.

He was impressed with Mary for he offered to pay for her formal training at the Home Training and Lying-In Hospital in Sydney.

After formally graduating as a midwife, Mary opened the first private maternity hospital in River Street, West Kempsey in February 1904.

She left there after two years and worked for a couple of other midwifery practises, mostly attending patients in their own homes.

In 1913, Mary opened Hollywood Private Hospital in the house which still stands in Marsh Street, West Kempsey.

Her two sons, David and George, worked on properties when they were old enough until in 1910 they took up a selection at Nulla Nulla Creek and began clearing the land.

In 1914 David married Mary Partridge, and the couple went to the Nulla to live whilst George joined the Police Force and was posted to Broken Hill.

David and Mary's son, David Gordon, would later become known as Australia's most famous country singer, Slim Dusty.

From Broken Hill, George Kirkpatrick enlisted in the First AIF and was tragically killed in action at Lagnicourt, France in April 1917.

Mary had taken a break from nursing in 1915, placing Nurse Martha Norman in charge of "Hollywood".

It was Nurse Norman who moved Hollywood to Forth Street shortly afterwards.

Devastated by the death of her son George in 1917, Mary did not return to nursing for five years.

In 1922 Nurse Kirkpatrick (or Nurse Kirk as she was better known) opened Down Private Hospital at 40 Marsh Street, only a few doors down from the original Hollywood.

It was later called Kirkwood, then Kingsley, with Nurse Kirk continuing to work there although her career was nearing its end.

In 1932, the third bridge over Nulla Nulla Creek was named Nurse Kirkpatrick Bridge to commemorate her work as a midwife and her sacrifice of a son "in the cause of the Empire".

Mary Kirkpatrick passed away in February 1943, aged eighty years.

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