Australia’s first private birth centre
The Launceston Birth Centre is Australia’s first private birth centre, founded in 1983. We are run by a consumer committee and serviced by a dedicated team of private midwives.
The Launceston Birth Centre’s ethical and professional foundations are built upon a belief in the immeasurable benefits of natural and family-centred childbirth. We proudly furnish this belief with our midwives’ many years of experience, versatility of care and safe practice.
About the centre
Situated across the road from the Launceston General Hospital, we offer a spacious, home-like environment with two birthing suites. Each room has been designed for your comfort and privacy.
We have a family room and full kitchen facilities providing flexibility for your support family/friends and your chosen endorsed midwife. Each birth suite comes with it’s own private bathroom. Our lovely deep bath is available for you during labour and birth (alternatively a portable birth pool may be used, please discuss this option with your midwife).
Our Birth Centre welcomes your children, parents and friends, so you can decide who will be with you or near you as you give birth. We have created a caring and warm setting to nurture you through your natural birth choice.
Our History
The Launceston Birth Centre has been supporting women and families across Northern Tasmania since 1983. Established as a community-run, not-for-profit organisation, the Centre was founded in response to growing demand for greater choice in maternity care, including access to homebirth and continuity of midwifery care.
After two years of advocacy by local families, childbirth educators and midwives, the Birth Centre opened in July 1983 at the former Matron's Flat of the Nurses' Home, with the first baby born in August that year. Birth numbers grew quickly, with 4 births recorded in 1984, 18 in 1985 and 30 in 1986.
Over the years, the Birth Centre has operated from three locations: the Nurses' Home (1983–1990), the Queen Victoria Hospital Gynaecology Wing (1990–1996), and since 1996, its home at 14 Frankland Rise, Launceston. Throughout this time, it has remained one of Australia's longest-running independent, community-based birth centres.
The Centre's history has been shaped by the dedication of countless volunteers, committee members and midwives. Special recognition is given to founding midwife Barbara Purcell, respected midwives Elaine Smallbane and Terry Cartwright, and long-serving midwives Anna Holloway and Jean Vasic, whose commitment to women, babies and families helped build the Birth Centre's reputation for personalised, woman-centred care across generations.
Significant milestones include government funding through the Alternative Birthing Services Program in the early 1990s, the establishment of student midwife placements with the University of Tasmania, major facility upgrades through state and federal grants, the launch of the Birth Centre website in 2007, and the successful community effort to keep the Centre open in 2019 when closure seemed imminent.
For more than 40 years, the Launceston Birth Centre has supported thousands of women and families through pregnancy, birth and the postnatal period. Today, it continues to honour the vision of its founders by providing a welcoming space where women and families can access safe, evidence-based, relationship-focused midwifery care.