History

Central Gippsland Health has a long and rich history. In August 2017 we celebrated 150 years of health service spanning the Gippsland communities from southern seaboards to mountains in the north.

The current health service and its predecessors, Gippsland Hospital and Gippsland Base Hospital together with entities in Rosedale, Loch Sport, Heyfield and Maffra has provided continuous health care to the first communities of the entire Gippsland region through to today’s communities across Wellington Shire.

Gippsland’s own benevolent hospital grew from a public Mechanics Hall meeting in 1864. It opened its doors in August 1867 with the first inpatient being a miner with gangrenous disease of the lungs – he stayed for 455 days. Today the Sale Hospital still stands proud on the original 12 acres.  The two turrets and dome of the original building have long made way to modernised facilities.

Through a series of amalgamations, Gippsland Hospital, Gippsland Base Hospital, Maffra and District Hospital, the J.H.F. McDonald Nursing Home and Evelyn Wilson Nursing Home became Central Gippsland Health Service in 1999. The Heyfield Hospital, Stretton Park and Laurina Lodge Hostel soon after became associated through management agreements.  In July 2017 the name changed to Central Gippsland Health – reflecting the collective of health services provided in Aged Care, Community Services and Hospital campuses in Sale, Heyfield and Maffra.

Today’s CGH Board of Management, staff and volunteers continue to uphold the service and the spirit of the early pioneers who worked hard to establish a hospital in the 1860s