Birth of Douglas Edward Schofield

Douglas Edward Schofield was born at Stirling District Hospital, the small community cottage hospital on Wrenwood Lane that served the townships of the Adelaide Hills. He was the first child of Edward and Marion Schofield, who had married in the district less than a year before. The delivery was uncomplicated, attended by the hospital's matron and her nurses on a still summer morning.

Edward Schofield taught biology at the local high school; Marion had been a Carrington of the Hills before her marriage. Douglas was their first, and his birth made parents of a household barely a year old. For Marion it was a first confinement; for Edward, a first child to carry home up the hill.

There was nothing remarkable in the birth beyond its ordinary weight. Douglas was one child among the many the cottage hospital had registered across its decades — a local baby, born to local parents, in the place the district kept for exactly that purpose. The matron entered his name in the register; the Schofields carried their first son home to the Hills; and the day returned to its ordinary business. It was, by every measure the district kept, an unremarkable morning, and that was precisely what the hospital was for.