Bushkids turns 80

Over the past eight decades, the Queensland Royal Bush Children's Health Scheme (better known as Bushkids) has helped tens of thousands of rural children access life-changing health care.

Many of these children came from isolated areas or disadvantaged homes, and were unable to access care in their own communities.

Today, Bushkids works from centres in Bundaberg, Dalby, Emerald, Inglewood, Mount Isa, Warwick and Brisbane, where staff provide a range of allied health-care services including speech pathology, occupational therapy, psychology and family health support.

For many years, Bushkids has been funded largely by the Queensland government, and the organisation has strived to match every dollar of government funding with its own contributions.

From 2015, an additional five-year program of commonwealth funding will enable Bushkids to extend its outreach services across regional Queensland.

The huge number of children who have been reached by Bushkids over the past 80 years is only just becoming apparent

as staff research the history of the organisation as part of the birthday celebrations.

Bushkids 80th Anniversary program manager Matt Tesch is co-ordinating a packed program of events to mark the milestone year, and said the events would largely be about education.

"Although we have much to celebrate, we wanted to take the opportunity to put some education programs back into the community so that we can help empower families and give them the tools to deal with issues before they become significant problems," he said.

"We plan to host or partner in the delivery of a number of professional development and community education events to share and increase knowledge, as well as showcase what our teams are doing on the ground."

Mr Tesch said the birthday celebrations also aimed to link the organisation back to the many groups who helped to make it successful over the years.

"When Bushkids was first started, the idea was to establish homes in coastal areas where the children could come and recuperate while they accessed medical or surgical services.

"Initially, children came down to Maryborough, then our first home opened at Scarborough on the Redcliffe Peninsula in 1936, and our second at Emu Park on the central coast in 1937, with another at Torquay in Hervey Bay in 1938."

At the end of World War II, a former army base at Rowes Bay in Townsville was purchased by the local Rotary Club and gifted to Bushkids as a recuperation home for children from across north and north-west Queensland.

Eventually, the homes were registered as hospitals and greatly supported by successive health departments.

The children would be gathered from the farthest corners of Queensland - from Croydon and Windorah to Dirranbandi - and driven sometimes hundreds of miles across country to the nearest rail-head.

From there, they were escorted to and from the coastal homes by train (or bus, in many cases) by hard-working volunteers from the Red Cross ladies' auxiliaries.

Many other charities and groups such as the QCWA, and Lions and Rotary clubs were all heavily involved in Bushkids during this time.

This model of care continued until the 1990s, when a review of the service found that many of the allied health services could now be provided in regional centres.

Such history is set to be detailed in a special hardback book being written for the 80th birthday celebrations.

The book will be launched at a special event at Brisbane City Hall in December, and Mr Tesch said he would love to hear from anyone with memories or memorabilia to contribute.

"Already we've had some amazing contacts come forward from all over Queensland.

"It has been staggering to see how many former Bushkids there are out there, not to mention the people who have been involved through other organisations like the Red Cross over the years.

"We had some lovely memorabilia donated last week by a man whose mother had been one of the Red Cross escort volunteers who would regularly travel out from Brisbane by train to collect the children at distant locations and bring them to Brisbane for treatment."