Oak Lodge Doctor's Surgery

Oak lodge was at one time the residence and chambers of a local G.P. On the following page (see below ) is a floor plan from which you can view the rooms which were set up as a surgery, waiting room and dispensary..

Oak Lodge viewed from Bridge St

The doctor, William Goodwin Chadboume (“Bill”) Clark was born at Reading, Massachusetts, U.S.A. on l6th July 1870.

Clark was brought up on a farm in New England and wanted to be a sailor, however his parents had a different career in mind and he was directed to a medical career. He studied medicine at Boston Medical School (part of Harvard University) graduating in 1895.

In 1898 after his internship he decided to travel and came to work in a hospital in Melbourne. He married Emily Dickson, a nurse at the hospital, and they spent their honeymoon in Tasmania. He liked it so much he settled there, first in Launceston then later in Hobart.

After a year in Hobart, he saddled his horse and, with his wife and baby son in an accompanying carriage, rode to Franklin in the Huon Valley where he took on a general practice. He was there for 5 years before deciding to move to Richmond in 1909.

He took up residence here at Oak Lodge where he reared his family of five and conducted his general practice. Apart from four years during the First World War which he served as Deputy Superintendent of the Royal Hobart Hospital, he continued at Oak Lodge until his retirement in 1947.

He was the archetypal country practitioner of the period when medicine was changing from an art to a science. He dealt with a whole range of illness, did his own dispensing and delivered over 1,000 babies without a single maternal death - a remarkable achievement in those days. He was a man of the highest integrity with a strong philosophy of the rights and responsibilities of the individual, yet a man of great humour, understanding and generosity.

He was much loved and respected. The anecdotes about him are legion and he is still remembered in the local community 53 years after his death.

His youngest daughter, the last surviving member of his immediate family, died in 2001 at the age of 9l years. A son, Max, distinguished himself as a destroyer captain in the R.A.N.S. during World War II. This immigrant, the first American doctor to be registered in Tasmania, illustrates the influence that such people and their descendants have on the character of the young Australian Nation.