Hospital auxiliaries are among the least reported institutions in the country. They run street stalls and raffles, they hold an annual general meeting, and the results turn up as a photograph and a paragraph. Nobody adds them up. So we did.
| Published | Who gave | Where | What it bought | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 Aug | Dorrigo branch, United Hospital Auxiliary of NSW | Dorrigo Multipurpose Service | Not itemised in the release | $35,000+ |
| 31 Jul | Kempsey United Hospital Auxiliary | Kempsey District Hospital | Gifted equipment, not itemised | $35,901.07 |
| 28 Jul | Coffs Harbour Pink Ladies, Male Bag Foundation, Rotary Club of Coffs Harbour, Greenhouse Tavern | Coffs Harbour Health Campus | Transperineal prostate biopsy equipment | $180,000+ |
| 20 Jul | Rotary Club of Coffs Harbour with the Greenhouse Tavern | Paediatric Ambulatory Care, Coffs Harbour | Day procedure chair and wall-mounted monitor | $30,000 |
| 8 Jul | Ms Jill de Clercq, Coffs Harbour resident | Special Care Nursery, Coffs Harbour | Airvo 3 high-flow oxygen device | Not stated |
| 1 Jul | Coffs Kids Charity | Coffs Harbour Health Campus | Bilirubin machines, ophthalmoscopes, breast pumps and more | $65,000+ |
The thread running through all six
The releases are written by the health district, so their framing is theirs and not ours. What is striking is how consistently that framing lands on distance.
The oxygen device given by a Coffs Harbour resident to the Special Care Nursery
helps babies with breathing difficulties, reducing the need for newborns to be
transferred to a hospital outside of the Mid North Coast for treatment
. The paediatric
chair funded by Rotary and a local pub reduces the need for children to be admitted
overnight in hospital
. The prostate biopsy equipment is described as bringing
enhanced cancer services closer to home
, and the urologist who will use it, Visiting
Medical Officer Dr Hedley Roth, says This is the gold standard for performing prostate
biopsies.
Read together, that is a picture of a regional health service where a meaningful part of the equipment that keeps a patient in their own town is bought by the town itself.
What the auxiliaries actually are
Two of the six are branches of the United Hospital Auxiliary of NSW, and their releases
show the machinery. At Dorrigo, the branch's president Lizzy Bennett told the annual general
meeting the auxiliary had donated more than $35,000 to the Dorrigo Multipurpose
Service
, raised through raffle tickets, the Made in Dorrigo markets, Dorrigo Dahlia Day,
street stalls, the Misty Mountain Getaway and the Dorrigo Rotary Gala Ball.
At Kempsey, the auxiliary's annual general meeting revealed an impressive $35,901.07
in gifted equipment to Kempsey District Hospital
. Maxine Walker, president for the past
six years, was returned unopposed, and the release credits the businesses and residents of
the Macleay Valley, including a charity bowls day at Kempsey Heights Bowling Club that drew
a full house of 28 teams.
Twenty-eight teams of bowlers is a specific, checkable, unglamorous fact, and it is roughly what a hospital's equipment budget looks like from underneath.
Our view, labelled as such
It would be easy to write this as a scandal and it would be wrong. Community fundraising for hospitals is old, it is genuinely valued by the staff quoted in every one of these releases, and none of them describes a gap being plugged. Auxiliaries buy comfort and capability at the margin, and they have done so for a century.
What the arithmetic does earn is a question, and it is a fair one to put rather than to assume: what share of frontline equipment at these hospitals is bought by volunteers and donors rather than budgeted for? Nothing we read answers it. Six releases in five weeks is a rate, not a proportion, and a rate tells you nothing about the denominator. But $345,901 in five weeks is large enough that the proportion is worth knowing, and the people best placed to publish it are the district and the auxiliaries themselves.
The second thing worth saying plainly: the individual donors have names in these releases because they chose to be named in a government publication. The bowls day, the dahlia day and the gala ball are the actual mechanism of regional health philanthropy, and they deserve to be reported as infrastructure rather than as colour.
How we sourced this
Every figure and quotation comes from one of six media releases published by the Mid North Coast Local Health District between 1 July and 4 August 2026, each read in full and each linked below. The total of $345,901.07 is our own addition of the five stated amounts; we did the arithmetic and anyone can check it. Three of those five are written as "more than" a round figure, so the true total is higher than our number, not lower.
What we have not done, and what this does not show. The 8 July donation states no amount, so it is excluded from the total and the real five-week figure is larger by an unknown sum. We have not contacted the district, either auxiliary, or any donor. We do not know what these hospitals spend on equipment from budget, so we cannot say what share is community-funded and we have not implied one. We have not checked whether other donations in this period went unpublished, and a media-release feed is a record of what an organisation chose to announce, not a complete ledger. The auxiliaries' own financial statements, which we have not seen, would be the accurate source for annual totals.
Sources
- Mid North Coast Local Health District, Dorrigo UHA celebrates another year of supporting local healthcare (4 August 2026, read 6 August 2026): the more than $35,000 donated to the Dorrigo Multipurpose Service, president Lizzy Bennett, and the fundraising activities behind it.
- Mid North Coast Local Health District, Kempsey United Hospital Auxiliary wraps up a stellar year (31 July 2026, read 6 August 2026): the $35,901.07 in gifted equipment to Kempsey District Hospital, president Maxine Walker's sixth year and return, and the 28-team charity bowls day.
- Mid North Coast Local Health District, Community donation support patients with prostate cancer (28 July 2026, read 6 August 2026): the more than $180,000 donation, the four contributing organisations, the transperineal prostate biopsy equipment, and Dr Hedley Roth's description of it.
- Mid North Coast Local Health District, Community donation boosts paediatric care at Coffs Harbour Health Campus (20 July 2026, read 6 August 2026): the $30,000 from the Rotary Club of Coffs Harbour with the Greenhouse Tavern, the day procedure chair and wall-mounted monitor, and the reduced need for overnight admission.
- Mid North Coast Local Health District, Donation supports newborn babies at Coffs Harbour Health Campus (8 July 2026, read 6 August 2026): the donation from Ms Jill de Clercq, the Airvo 3 high-flow oxygen device, and the reduction in transfers out of the region. No amount is stated.
- Mid North Coast Local Health District, Coffs Kids Charity supports local children with equipment donations (1 July 2026, read 6 August 2026): the more than $65,000 of paediatric equipment and the items it covers.
Volunteer with an auxiliary, or know what these hospitals budget for equipment? Tell us and we will check it against the record and log the outcome on this page.