[1] Located in Adelaide Street, Birdsville, the single-storeyed, prefabricated steel, Australian Inland Mission Hospital building was erected in 1952–1953 on the site of its predecessor, which burnt down in November 1951.

[1] Although European explorers had passed through the Diamantina district in the 1840s and early 1860s, this semi-arid region was not occupied until the mid-1870s when a number of pastoral runs were established.

Birdsville, known originally as the Diamantina Crossing, is reputed to have sprung up around a rough depot constructed by general merchant Matthew Flynn in the late 1870s on the stock route from Boulia south to Adelaide.

[1] The Presbyterian Australian Inland Mission (AIM) leased the Royal Hotel buildings (erected from c. 1883) from 1923 to 1937 as their first bush nursing home, or hostel in Queensland.

Importantly, Birdsville became reliably connected to the station properties in the Diamantina district and with the new Aerial Medical Service, established by Flynn in 1928 under the auspices of the AIM and based at Cloncurry.

Flynn decided on a pre-fabricated building, designed for the arid conditions, to function as a community house and public hall as well as a hospital.

The hospital opened in December 1937, and a separate Aboriginal ward, a simple transverse gabled building with corrugated iron cladding and roof over a steel frame, was added before 1951.

[1] On 10 November 1951 the AIM Hospital at Birdsville was destroyed by fire thought to be caused when a kerosene refrigerator blew up.

Within days of the disaster the Charleville Flying Doctor Base flew out medical supplies and rigged an emergency transceiver and aerial to restore communications, while Rev.

A skilled cabinetmaker with outback experience, he constructed the building and made most of the original furniture and fittings, such as cupboards and tables on site, using North Queensland silky oak.

Other furniture was of tubular steel, regarded as ideal for bush conditions, while canvas deck chairs lined the front verandah.

A reporter from Brisbane's Courier-Mail attended and the ABC broadcast the event in their news the next day, referring to it as "the miracle at Birdsville".

Other rooms include a dispensary, two wards men's and women's, the latter used by the nursing sisters or visitors when not needed for patients; a wireless room-cum lounge with an open fireplace, that once housed the transceiver and a circulating library for the use of local people; a large kitchen with floor to ceiling cupboards and an adjoining pantry; bathrooms, toilets and sisters' accommodation.

The Company began to expand rapidly around the time of the development of its Comet Windmill (c. 1910) with branches established in Brisbane and Townsville.

[1] From as early as the late 1890s the company was involved in designing, manufacturing and erecting steel-framed buildings for many purposes including rural and town uses.

There was extensive use of their locally-manufactured, prefabricated metal buildings throughout the hot, sparsely populated areas of pastoral Queensland and the Northern Territory.

Buildings prefabricated by this company included: hangars; Sidney Williams Huts; the Supreme Court complex in Darwin; Christ the King Catholic Church at Tennant Creek; dormitory and school accommodation on Croker Island; and AIM hospitals at Tennant Creek (pre-1937) and at Dunbar on Cape York Peninsula (c. 1953).

These cottages were built in 1963, to accommodate elderly bushmen who wanted to spend their final years in retirement in the precincts of the town.

Its function was taken over by the Diamantina Shire Council, which built a clinic on adjacent land provided by the Uniting Church Frontier Services.

[1] The north-west facing hospital building is a rectangular structure with a gabled hip roof and is surrounded on three sides by enclosed verandahs.

[1] The former Australian Inland Mission Hospital was listed on the Queensland Heritage Register on 17 July 2008 having satisfied the following criteria.

a simple building designed for life in inland Australia that comprised wards for patients, a dispensary, kitchen, bathrooms and toilets, and quarters for two nurses including a living room.

The significance of its community association is evidenced by the Australia-wide fund-raising campaign and subsequent attendance and interest in the building's opening in 1953.

The opening was witnessed not only by shire residents, but also by media from Brisbane and filmed by Fox Movietone for the documentary "Diamantina Drama".

The former AIM Hospital, Birdsville has a special association with the Presbyterian Church's Australian Inland Mission founded by the Rev.

Dr John Flynn, which has made an important contribution to the development of medical and community services to inland Queensland since 1923.