Retired obstetrician Dr Harry Moorhouse has lost count of how many babies he has delivered during his 52 years in Ballarat.
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A true doctor of the people, Dr Harry Moorhouse is a familar and much-loved face in Ballarat and throughout country Victoria, known as a ‘kind-hearted and humble man.”
Son, Philip says his father has delivered several generations of babies, at all hours of the day and night.
Dr Moorhouse, a Member of the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (MRCOG), worked in an Errard Street medical practice in Ballarat from 1966.
During semi-retirement, Dr Moorhouse did country locums throughout country Victoria until into his 80s, and often found he was attending mothers he had delivered 25 years before.
Growing up, Philip said he became used to being regularly asked "Are you Dr. Moorhouse's son?". He recalls one shop assistant asking if he was Dr Harry’s son and then saying excitedly, “He delivered me.”
Dr Moorhouse, now 88 and his wife, Rosemary, now 82, met on the wards at Geelong Hospital where Rosemary was a nurse and married on 8 November 1958.
During their life together, they had four sons and a daughter and, over the years their family has grown to 14 grandchildren and two great grandchildren. The couple celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary last weekend with family at Queenscliff.
The couple spent two periods in England where Dr Moorhouse completed his obstetrics and gyneacology qualifications.
“The first time was a week after we got married. We boarded the Orion to sail to England,” Mrs Moorhouse said. “In those days, you had to go to England to qualify and sailing was the only travel option. It took about six weeks.”
Once Dr Moorhouse had completed his study, the couple worked in Yorkshire at the “Old Workhouse Hospital” and Barnsley at the infectious diseases hospital, later known as Kendray Isolation Hospital.
Mrs Moorhouse said while it was common in Australia for nurses to stop working once they got married, she said it was different in England where “they liked Australian nurses.”
She said she didn’t think about nursing patients with scarlet fever and other diseases at the time, but years later, looking back, she realised the potential risks. “We must have had very good immunity,” she said.
While Rosemary has had a busy life, raising children and as the ‘doctor’s wife’, she also went back to study social welfare in her 40s and then worked as a welfare worker for the School of Mines Ballarat.
She also has been a long time volunteer at the Ballarat Art Gallery and the couple have been active members of the Ballarat Central Uniting Church for more than 50 years.
Their only daughter, Karen, is a nurse and is the the only one to have followed in the field. She recalls her father as eternally “curious’’ and sending them to look up facts in the Encyclopedia Britannica.
“Dad still does cryptic crosswords and is amazed at being able to check things on the internet on a mobile phone at the tea table,’’ she said. “We were always encouraged to follow our interests, whether it be ballet or chemistry.”
Both Karen and Philip recall their father as very much a “traditional country doctor’’ with home visits and patients turning up to the iconic “doctor’s house” in Eureka Street, bearing gifts of eggs, smoked eels an at one time, an orphaned lamb.
“We took it for granted that the phone would ring at any time of the day or night and Dad would head out,” Karen said. “His whole life was his work,” she said and remembers many school holidays while Dr Moorhouse did locums in country Victoria.
“So Dad would be working in these country towns and we’d spend our school holidays exploring them,” she said. After he retired, Dr Moorhouse continued doing locums, working up until he was in his eighties.
Dr Moorhouse and Mrs Moorhouse received congratulatory cards and messages from Queen Elizabeth II, Governor General Sir Peter Cosgrove and Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
During the anniversary celebrations, the family treated their parents and grandparents to a ‘This is Your Life’ memorable events presentation through six decades.