The Canberra Mothercraft Society formed in 1926 to "support infant health and welfare in Canberra", according to author Mary Hutchison.
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The society celebrates its 90th anniversary this year, making it the longest standing health service provider in the ACT and the longest continuous provider of a public hospital service in Canberra, through the Queen Elizabeth II Family Centre (fondly known as QEII). It also founded what is now the Children and Maternal Heath services.
QEII is much-loved institution through its critical support of babies and their families and the society has quietly guided it through the decades, helping when needed, letting the hospital do its job.
QEII chief executive Mary Kirk said a consultant who once worked with the hospital said she had never come across an organisation as devoid of ego and as focused on getting the job done as the Canberra Mothercraft Society.
Probably not such a surprise, given it was a society formed initially by women for women.
Hutchison, in a new book called The QEII Years 1963-2013 Staff Memories, also goes back to the origins of the society.
She writes that the society opened its first baby health centre in Canberra in 1927 - a couple of months after the opening of Parliament House.
The Depression hit but the society soldiered on, embracing a focus not only on the welfare but the health of children. By 1935 "additional funding enabled the baby health centre sisters to visit all homes with children from fifteen months to school age," Hutchison wrote.
It was involved in the development of preschool and childcare, opening an occasional care centre in Civic in 1948. It also started an emergency housekeeper service in the 1940s.
"During the 1950s, the society's two baby health centres expanded to nine and in 1960 to 12. Clinics held at various community premises were opened in rapid succession."
The society "also started to work in earnest on a plan that had been on its agenda for some time - a post-natal home for mothers and babies".
"Turning the plan into reality became a decade-long process that required both tenacity and the capacity to move on from disappointments - skills which the women of the society had in abundance," Hutchinson writes.
The then Queen Elizabeth Coronation Gift Home for the Care of Mothers and Babies opened in Civic in January 1963 and was officially opened in May by Dame Pattie Menzies, who called the home a "godsend".
Her words ring true still today, with QEII celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2013 and helping thousands of families in that time with issues from unsettled babies to infants failing to thrive.
It relocated to Curtin in 1997 and continues to provide a residential service for parents who need help with children from newborns to three years.
The centre is still guided by the Mothercraft Society, led by many wonderful women including current president Viola Kalokerinos.
The society will celebrate its 90 years with cocktails on Wednesday at University House, when The QEII Years will also be launched.
The book contains many beautiful anecdotes including one from retired sister Rhodanthe Lipsett, who remembered visits to mums in bush areas such as Tharwa and Pierces Creek, opening "100 gates" and shutting them, once being chased by a bull and having the visits come to a temporary halt so mum could listen to Blue Hills.
