Maryborough Base Hospital

Maryborough Base Hospital is a heritage-listed hospital at Walker Street, Maryborough, Fraser Coast Region, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by Queensland Colonial Architect John James Clark and built from 1887 by Robert Taylor. It is also known as Maryborough General Hospital. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 2 February 1998.HistoryThe current site of the Maryborough Hospital, which is the fourth hospital site, was established in 1887 when a complex of brick buildings was constructed to the design of Queensland Colonial Architect John James Clark. The hospital site has experienced many phases of development, most obviously in the late 1920s, the late 1930s and in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Many of the individual buildings, dating from both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, are of cultural heritage significance.The original township of Maryborough was situated, not in its current place, but on the north of the Mary River, after wharves were established in 1847-8 providing transport for wool from sheep stations on the Burnett River. In 1850 Surveyor, Hugh Roland Labatt arrived in Maryborough with instructions to "examine the River Mary...to suggest...the best site or sites for the laying out of the town, having regard to the convenience of shipping on one hand and internal communication on the other...also...point out the spots desirable as reserves for public building, church, quay and for places for public recreation." The site recommended by Labatt was not where settlement was established but further east and from the early 1850s this is where the growing town developed.