General meeting September 2024

Margaret and Emanda gave a very interesting talk based on their successful walking tour “A Doctor in the House? Or Call the Midwife!” held during the Heritage Fleurieu Coast Festival in May 2024.

During the talk they explained that many of the buildings that were used as medical facilities in the late 1800s and early 1900s have since been demolished.

The Christ Church Rectory, demolished in 1991, housed Dr James Milner and family who settled in Yankalilla in 1867. The family were active members of Christ Church and the children went to its school. Sadly, the whole family was lost in a shipwreck as they were returning from Darwin to Adelaide in 1872. They are commemorated at Christ Church with the church chancel and porch, and a brass plaque inside the church.

May Daniels had a chiropractic, osteopathic and reflexology clinic on the corner of Doctors Hill Road and Daniels Road, formerly the ES&A (English, Scottish & Australian) Bank. May initially trained as a nurse, then as a chiropractor. She opened the clinic in 1978 and although the clinic was mainly chiropractic, many mothers came to her for antenatal advice as she had assisted in the delivery of many of them.

In 1921, Rosa May Jones (Mrs. Walter Jones) opened the Yankalilla Nursing Home in the house built by James Bowell on part section 1180, Allotment 25 behind his blacksmith and wheelwright business. District Trained Nursing Society (DTNS) nurses worked with the doctors. By the time of the Nursing Home closure in October 1956, 381 babies had been born there.

Several people at the meeting had anecdotes to share about their early medical experiences with some of the practitioners mentioned and in the now lost buildings.