The biggest thing we’ll miss.

“The biggest thing we’ll miss in the Special Care Unit at Maitland in the old hospital will be the view out the window to the farmlands.”

This was Jo-Anna Proctor’s response to a question about what she would like to take from the current Maitland Hospital to the new site. Jo-Anna works in the Special Care Unit. It is situated on the second floor of Block D, a 1930s building that has a view across the Mt Pleasant floodplain.

She explains:

….you can imagine on three shifts over a 24 hour period, the different views that you get ... The different seasons. We see drought, we see the flooding rain through there and it turns into a lake. The farmers are out there bailing the hay at the moment. We watch the cricket happen at the weekend – families can look at that… The helicopter lands at the end of the field, so when we’ve got retrievals we know when the chopper is here. … That’s what we look at and we love it because it gives us that view to the outside world….

Listen to Jo-Anna Proctor sharing the above reflection about ‘the biggest thing’. The recording was done on a busy day in the unit. You can hear people talking and background noise.

Jo-Anna Proctor looking at the view from the Special Care Nursery verandah, January 2021. (Catharine Neilson) — **Jo-Anna Proctor looking at the view from the Special Care Nursery verandah, January 2021.** (Catharine Neilson)

Looking out the window, Jo-Anna continues:

The things I’ve seen along here … You get people playing golf and doing golf putts. You get – before they put the fence along the road – people would drive their cars. I don’t think they were meant to because it is Council land and they used to damage the field. They would have their dogs on leashes out the window and you could see them exercising their dogs, not exercising themselves ‘cause they were driving. People have ridden horses up and down here. …

I think there was some kind of ceremony … at the start of the Covid times. It felt like it was some kind of a funeral or a celebration of somebody’s life because … without hearing what was going on and just seeing it, people were dressed like they were attending a funeral and there was … like a gazebo … I don’t know whether they had to do it in an open space so that they could manage social distancing, but that’s one thing I’ve never seen it used for before.

Views from the Special Care Nursery, January 2021. (Catharine Neilson)

Views from the hospital have regularly attracted attention and been caught by a camera’s lens. On 16 February 1933, for example, at the time of the construction of Block D, the Maitland Mercury praised the ‘pleasing views’ available from the building: ‘..in the distance ... the cool green of lucerne flats, and, beyond the town, the timbered hills.’ Although there was a cautionary note about the ‘eyesore’ of the creek and ‘its stagnant pools’.

Sydney William Smith view of Veterans Flat (Mt Pleasant floodplain) from the hospital, 1930s. (Maitland City Library - Picture Maitland)

View from the hospital chimney stack, late 1930s. (Maitland Hospital Collection 164)

From top of hospital towards Long Bridge, early 1950s (Maitland Hospital Collection 165.37)

From top of hospital, towards Maitland, early 1950s (Maitland Hospital Collection 165.38)

Overlooking farms, prior to 1955 floods. (Maitalnd Hospital Collection 165.45)

Peter Godwin, photograph of Long Bridge three weeks after 1955 flood (Maitland Hospital Collection 165.121)

Peter Godwin photograph from the hospital about 3 weeks after the 1955 flood. Pathology building and former isolation ward in bottom right hand corner. (Maitland Hospital Collection 165.122)