Better health care facilities for Inverell are no longer a pipe dream, says long-time local campaigner Bob Bensley.
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Mr Bensley has been a constant advocate for the Inverell District Hospital redevelopment since member for Northern Tablelands Adam Marshall announced his intention to campaign for the cause in 2014.
He was thrilled to watch Mr Marshall introduce contractors Richard Crookes Constructions on Tuesday, with construction on the now $60 million project set to begin early next month.
“The last six months has been amazing where (Adam Marshall) he’s just worked behind the scenes up until the budget. Out came the good news, and of course now we’re floating,” Mr Bensley said.
He worried that, with such a long history of the community campaigning for the facility, some locals would find it hard to believe the time has finally come.
“I can show you a copy of The Inverell Times supplement 1977, which was the centenary of this hospital,” he said.
“The chairman of the local board said that the Minister for Health was coming to town for the centenary and he would like to see ‘a polite demonstration’ about the need for a new hospital. That’s 41 years ago.”
Mr Bensley said some documents suggested locals had been asking for bigger facilities since the 1950s and 60s.
“The last three and a half years I’ve had people say ‘it’ll never happen’, ‘it’s a series of pipe dreams’, ‘there’s no money yet, so why would you expect anything to happen?’, ‘we won’t see it in our lifetime’. So today, as far as I’m concerned, is the start of the breakthrough that was needed and that’s all been due to Adam Marshall,” he said.
Mr Bensley has been deeply invested in the fate of the hospital since his grandson was born in 2001, less than a month after a downgrade to the maternity ward from 10 beds to six.
“The night after she had the baby they came to her at three o’clock in the morning and said ‘Mrs Bensley, we’ve got to transfer you out of your bed, we’ve got more people coming in. We haven’t got room for you.’ That was proof straightaway that they’d downgraded a facility that shouldn’t have been downgraded,” he said.
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It was even more upsetting for the Bensley family 10 months later when the child was admitted to the hospital for whooping cough. Mr Bensley said there was no longer any children’s nursing staff.
“That 10 month old baby couldn’t push a button if he was going to choke of the whooping cough. General nursing staff were stuck with having to look after him as well as everybody else, so we did a 24 hour vigil for a week to get through that,” he said.
This led to Mr Bensley becoming the local hospital’s harshest critic and biggest advocate. He’s been full of smiles since tenders were called for the project in April, and is finally optimistic about the future of the building.
“He knows every square inch of this hospital and he’s been passionately advocating for this,” Mr Marshall said on Tuesday.
Inverell mayor Paul Harmon agreed, and thanked Mr Bensley for “rattling the cages” and refusing to compromise on the quality of the redevelopment.