CWA Macquarie Group is a strong voice rallying for better health services in the region

They are known as the Macquarie Group, whose membership dwindled in the last few years, yet one of the strongest and unanimously passed motions at the CWA 100th Year state conference at Randwick Racecourse in May this year was their brainchild.

They called on the government to urgently provide obstetrics and maternity services in rural and remote towns across NSW.

A young mother from Coonamble, pregnant with another child, nearly died trying to get to Dubbo Hospital, a drive of nearly two hours to give birth to her baby safely.

When details of the incident reached CWA, it was the last straw for them, Ms Godwin said. They have been privy to a number of life-threatening instances of mothers from remotest towns in the far west risking long drives to attend prenatal checkups because there weren't many doctors around.

"You can't wait to go in labor then drive over three hours to get to Dubbo. Some of them travel beforehand which is disruptive to a family and expensive to find an accommodation," Ms Godwin said.

The CWA policy committee members did their research before lodging their motion and found some of the towns reeling without nearby obstetricians or doctors including Cobar, Gilgandra and Baradine.

Both federal and state governments have acknowledged the shortage of doctors, nurses and specialist medical practitioners in rural towns so they have embarked on recruitment programs or brought in services in the remotest towns through the Royal Flying Doctors Service.

The spate of near-death incidences involving remote town residents has spurred the CWA to take their advocacy further to the highest level of government calling for health services in regional areas to the forefront during their centenary conference.

"There seems to be a contraction of health services in rural areas. Really, these issues were there 100 years ago and are still around after 100 years," Ms Godwin said.

The CWA started in western NSW because CWA founder Grace Emily Munro nee Gordon was born in Warialda in 1879 and lived at nearby Bingara on her marriage to grazier Hugh Munro in 1898.

Her youngest child died while she was in Sydney looking after another sick child and that loss and grief was the catalyst for Munro to work for charities and the Australian Army Corps helping women and children during the first World War.

In 1922, Munro organised the first CWA conference and traveled around NSW and Queensland to establish branches that quickly grew to 68 by 1923, including the Dubbo branch. In 1926 she retired due to ill health, but there were over 100 branches that sprouted, restrooms for mothers and children and maternity centres were built in many towns.

Ms Godwin said the original theme of "drawing together of all women, children and girls in the country and making life better, brighter and more attractive, thus helping stop the drift from the country to the city" is still true to CWA today.

"We went through a bit of slow down in the early part of the century because so many women are working and involved in other organisations ... and juggling family and work they just don't have to the time to devote to charity.

"Things have improved in country areas since the 1920s but the issues to be concerned about are still the same and some getting worse like the health situation in regional areas today.

"So many small towns can't get doctors or hospitals shutting down or reducing their services, particularly maternity.

"That was the main thing the CWA was formed, to give women maternity services, general health care, and better education in country areas.

"During World War 1, there were more women and children dying at childbirth than men dying in the war, and that was never acknowledged.

"Many women lived in pretty spartan conditions and struggled with transport they rely on horses and sulky or whatever means that can get them anywhere."

In the 1950s, Ms Godwin said the Macquarie Group established a boarding house at Brisbane Street for students from remote towns but the original building called Matthew Robinson Hostel is no longer there.

Many motions supported by the Macquarie Group have been pursued by successions of governments such as luminous signs on side carriages of trains so they can be seen by people on carts and horses traveling at night, milk ration to children at school, and white paint lines on the road for pedestrians and vehicle drivers.

Ms Godwin joined CWA in 1990 when she and her husband Doug and their children returned to his family's farm on the outskirts of Dubbo after nine years stint as a researcher in the United States. They met as students at the University of New England where Ms Godwin graduated with a degree in rural science.

"Mainly just to meet people for the friendship and fellowship and learning things," she said.

Since then, Ms Godwin has been part of a country women's movement that got to work helping farmers and their families at the height of the millennium drought by delivering "care packages" for women.

The Macquarie Group bundled countless parcels containing non-perishable food, grocery items as well as toiletries that women went without when the drought was destroying livelihoods, as well as farmers' lives.

"Mental health issues were an enormous toll on all in the family, the drought has affected their everything... It was a matter of supporting one another and just continuing to meet and have a cup of tea and talk things over," Ms Godwin said.

Even during the pandemic they have not stopped fundraising and helping families in need, but it wasn't simply baking scones and collecting recipe books or knitting pillows for people recovering from cancer.

Their advocacy work for country women and their families is like never before, they're just "not so vocal and confrontational because it's not CWA's way," Ms Godwin said.