Settlement, Struggle and Success

At a place like Margaret River, it must be remembered there is no sanitary service, and no milk supply. We must attend to our own pans, and may have to consider keeping our own cow. This was the WA Public Health Department's assessment of the situation when the first Margaret River Hospital opened in 1924. The Group Settlement Scheme (1922-1930) encouraged mainly British settlers to establish a dairy industry in the south-west and created the need for a doctor and a hospital in the then tiny town of Margaret River. Jenny and Bill Bunbury trace the history of this hundred-year-old hospital, now the Margaret River Community Centre, and parallel developments in the district before and since European settlement. Today, Margaret River is a tourist and surfing mecca and home of fine wines but for many years outsiders saw this forestry and farming district as the dark and dismal south-west. Settlement, Struggle and Success includes Bill's interviews with former hospital workers and other residents; while Jenny's investigation of hospital records describes a situation where doctors and nurses battled city- based bureaucrats to obtain basic improvements. This book describes the difficulties the group settlers faced, the effects of the Great Depression, the optimism of the post-war years and the social and economic changes that led to Margaret River becoming an internationally renowned tourist destination.