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Childers Ambulance Station is a heritage-listed former ambulance station at 69 Churchill Street, Childers, Bundaberg Region, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by Leonard Kempster and built in 1924 by Queensland Department of Public Works. It is also known as Childers QATB and Isis District Centre QATB. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 21 October 1992. == History == The former QATB building is situated on a prominent corner in the main street of Childers. It was erected in 1924 to plans prepared by Leonard Kempster of the Department of Public Works and is a single storey timber building comprising an ambulance station and superintendent's residence.〔 The Queensland Ambulance Transport Brigade (QATB) began in Brisbane in 1892. It was formed by Seymour Warrian of the Army Medical Corps after seeing an accident victim suffer considerable aggravation of their injuries through inexpert transport to hospital. The Brigade aimed to provide first aid and skilled transport to hospital for the sick and injured. In the first years the Brigade was wholly funded by subscription, but met such an important need that from 1895 they were subsidised by the government, both directly and by involving the Department of Works in the construction of ambulance buildings. In the late 1890s and 1900s they expanded into regional centres. By 1921, a specific layout for ambulance buildings had been formalised into policy. This incorporated a space for vehicles with easy street access, a casualty room, meeting room and sleeping room for ambulance bearers on a ground floor level and residential quarters for the superintendent above. The Childers ambulance station differs from this scheme in that the rooms provided are the same but the residence is set on ground level slightly behind the station, rather than above it. This may have been so that the station complemented the court house complex and post office nearby.〔 By the 1920s Childers was the centre of a thriving sugar growing and processing district in the Isis. The area was opened up by logging in the 1870s, followed by development as an agricultural area. The land in the immediate vicinity of the present town of Childers was surveyed in 1882 into 50 acre farm blocks. There was no official town survey, Childers being developed by private subdivision at the railhead of the 1887 Isis railway line from Isis Junction railway station on the North Coast railway line. This was opened on 31 October 1887, and was intended principally to facilitate the transport of timber from the scrub.〔 The coming of the railway not only promoted the development of the town of Childers; it also proved the catalyst for the establishment of a sugar industry in the district in the late 1880s. At the opening of the railway to Childers, Robert Cran, owner of Maryborough's Yengarie mill, announced that he would erect a double crushing juice mill at Doolbi, to supply his mill at Yengarie. This was completed in 1890, with the juice being brought in railway tankers from the Isis. Further expansion of the sugar industry in the Isis was closely related to the activities of the Colonial Sugar Refining Company, which erected a central crushing mill in the district 1893-94, and began crushing in 1895. By 1895, at least three other mills had been established in the Isis, with another two under construction, and Childers had emerged as the flourishing centre of a substantial sugar-growing district: in the years between 1891 and 1900 the population grew from 91 to 4000. In 1903 the old Isis Divisional Board (1886) was abolished and Isis Shire proclaimed, with the new seat of municipal government moving from Howard to Childers.〔 The first official hospital in Childers was opened in 1899 and members of the hospital committee acted as ambulance bearers when needed. In 1920, a Mr James Rushton purchased a garage, converted his Model T Ford and began a local ambulance service. He was instrumental in forming a QATB committee in Childers. The 1920s were a period in which public awareness of health issues grew, possibly triggered by the deadly influenza epidemics of the 1919-1920 period. The present hospital in Childers was built in 1929, but an ambulance station was constructed earlier in 1924.〔 The Department of Works plans show the ambulance station as comprising a plant room (for the ambulance and equipment), casualty room, bearers' room, board room and superintendent's room. The building was lowset to allow vehicular access from Randall Street. Pedestrian access was via a porch with seating accommodation from Churchill Street. Set to one side and to the rear of the station was the superintendent's residence linked to the station through the casualty room. Changes have been minor and include an addition to the northern elevation of the plant room (a possibility indicated in the original plans), replacement of the garage doors with a roller door and the replacement of the timber picket fence with a wire fence.〔 In 1986 the QATB came under the jurisdiction of the Minister for Police and Emergency Services. Following plans for the reorganisation of the service, the Brigade was disbanded on 30 June 1991 and the Queensland Ambulance Transport Service was established as part of the Bureau of Emergency Services. QAS constructed a new station on adjoining land in 1999 and offered the old station up for sale. It is now the Childers Neighbourhood Centre.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Childers Ambulance Station」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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