Cairns Hospital
Cairns Hospital, known as the Cairns Base Hospital between 1932 and 2013, is the largest major hospital in Far North Queensland, Australia. It is located at 165 The Esplanade, Cairns North, Cairns. The hospital offers general service to Cairns' population of about 155,000 and other nearby communities. The building complex has a 667 space multi-storey car park with a pedestrian overpass linking it to the rest of the hospital.
History of Cairns
After five years of competition from the already established town of Port Douglas and the nearby settlement of Smithfield, Cairns became secure, with a series of successful agricultural ventures by Chinese businessmen and labourers frustrated with the overworked northern goldfields. Three Englishman, George Clayton, Thomas Hill and Thomas Swallow developed thousands of acres of crop plantations to the south and east of the Cairns settlement. By 1885, there were sufficient local population base and social organisation for the borough of Cairns to be declared a municipality and for aldermen to elect their first mayor, R. A. Kingsford.
Construction of a railway line from Cairns to Herberton in 1886 brought many immigrant workers (predominantly Italian and Irish) to the area. These new residents, in turn, generated demand for opening up land to be used for agriculture, with a predominance of sugar cane on the lowlands, and fruit and dairy on the tableland. This increased the importance of Cairns as a regional centre. Conscious of its new status, Cairns aldermen were persuaded to upgrade street lighting, considered a luxury at the time.