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1217 Katherine Hospital

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In 1931, Dr Cecil Cook, Chief Medical Officer and Chief Protector of Aborigines in North Australia, decided to close the existing Australian Inland Mission (AIM) Hospital at Maranboy run by two nurses and replace it with a new hospital in Katherine, where there was a larger population, a solid river system, and a doctor already in the area. While these plans were under development, malaria and influenza epidemics in the Katherine region forced the utilisation of the school building as a provisional hospital, which was only vacated upon the completion of the hospital building in December 1934.

While pay and living conditions were not very attractive to medical staff in these early times, the global economic depression at the time contributed to the filling of positions. One of the series of doctors to fill the position in Katherine was the well-known Dr Clyde Fenton. After the Second World War, Katherine Hospital was in a state of chaos as a result of having served as a hostel for travelling service personnel and subsequently for staff from the Department of Civil Aviation. In January 1946, Dr Mossy Hain from the staff of Alice Springs Hospital was sent to Katherine in an attempt to re-establish order and locate missing medical equipment. During the Katherine floods in 1957, Dr Kenneth Moo, the doctor at the time, transferred all patients to his elevated house. In 1959 a new Aboriginal Ward was added as an extension to the main building. There were 50 births during 1959-1960, and the daily bed occupancy was twenty-three.

In the 1960s, many patients were still being transferred to Darwin for treatment, with the ambulance from Katherine often sent to meet the one from Darwin half way. This changed gradually as more doctors set up private practice in Katherine and medical services were increasingly stabilised. The first operating theatre was opened by the Minister for Health on 22 November 1964, and the first's children's ward was built. A new Sister's Home was built in 1969, which became the Katherine Institute for Aboriginal Health in 1982.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Katherine Hospital was an accredited sixty-bed, non-specialist medical diagnostic and treatment facility catering for the needs of a regional population of about 19,000. The hospital also opened a cultural area dedicated to Aboriginal cultural ceremonies as a result of a recommendation by Katherine Hospital's Aboriginal Cultural Advisory Committee.

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