Doctor MacGillvray

Physician, Naturalist, Ornithologist and local hero, Dr. William MacGillivray became one of the best-known ornithologists in Australia. William David Kerr MacGillivray was born on his parents’ pastoral property Kallara Station on the Darling River in 1867. The family moved to Edington Station, Cloncurry whilst William was still a child.   

Doctor MacGillivray studied Medicine at the Melbourne University and practiced in rural hospitals in Victoria before arriving in Broken Hill as a young surgeon in 1901. He served the Broken Hill community continually for 36 years, interrupted by his military service as a surgeon between 1916-1919. 

Whenever Dr. MacGillivray took holidays from medical practice it was always to join an expedition into the outback to observe and record the bird life and the indigenous flora. In the 1920s he organised expeditions to Cordillo Downs, a remote township almost 900 km north of Broken Hill for a total eclipse of the sun, and then further still to the Gulf of Carpentaria. He also undertook field trips to the Great Barrier Reef, making some of the earliest and most significant contributions to the study of its birdlife. 

Dr. MacGillivray married Eileen Ware in Broken Hill in 1926 and became a towering figure in the community. He established the Broken Hill Naturalists Society alongside Broken Hill botanists and conservationists Albert and Margaret Morris and Maurice Mawby, supported by mining company Zinc Corporation Ltd. 

The museum that young William MacGillivray started as ten year old boy progressively became more diverse and more impressive: he now collected Australian native birds and small animals to preserve and keep. An ardent conservationist, he kept a small zoo in his home, and his own garden was an herbarium and botanical wonderland of Australian indigenous flora. 

MacGillivray was also President of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists' Union and wrote articles on birds for The Emu and for the Great Barrier Reef Commission. At the time of his death he was writing a book on Australian native birdlife, intending it to be an educational book for school children. He died before he could finish the book, at the age of 67 after a short illness. It was a huge loss which shocked and saddened his Broken Hill community.  

Doctor William David Kerr MacGillivray is remembered and honoured by the people of Broken Hill. Just after his death in 1933 fifty trees were planted in the Broken Hill Cemetery in his memory. A main thoroughfare within the Broken Hill Cemetery is now named MacGillivray Drive. There are memorial plaques located at each end of another, second MacGillivray Drive, that sits at the base of the Broken Hill Line of Lode.  

Audio transcript available.