“An extraordinary asset at the pinnacle of student housing”: This is how University of Wollongong vice-chancellor, Professor Paul Wellings, described his first look inside the Graduate School of Medicine Mudgee House on Monday.
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The five-bedroom house on Lions Drive is catering for student doctors during their 38-week rotation in Mudgee as an initiative to encourage rural practice.
Completed earlier this year, the house is now occupied by the fourth group of students finishing their university’s rural program.
On Monday the house held its first “house warming” where university officials, members of Mudgee’s medical fraternity, tradesmen and corporate sponsors joined to celebrate their input.
Professor Wellings said the house has “state-of-the-art” facilities and provides flexibility with rooms allowing for singles or couples to stay as situations may require.
He said the Mudgee House would provide a model the university could take to other regional towns and hopefully provide doctors in rural areas for the long term.
About 67 per cent of the university’s intake of medical students comes from rural areas.
Dean of the Graduate School of Medicine, Professor Alison Jones, said she was blown away by the capacity of the community to deliver such a project.
On behalf of the university she thanked partnerships developed with Club Mudgee, Mid-Western Regional Council, Moolarben Coal, and Wilpinjong Coal who all contributed in various ways to the project, as did architect Barbara Hickson and builder Mathew Rayner.
Mudgee doctor and Graduate School of Medicine Regional Academic Leader, Gary Moore, also played an integral role to instigate the project.
Mid-Western Regional Council general manager, Warwick Bennett, thanked all parties involved for bringing together a project when the region was in desperate need for medical, pre-school and housing facilities. On behalf of ratepayers, council donated the land for Mudgee House. The first sod was turned in November 2010.
