To the Editor: On my way to Canberra for the Charles Darwin exhibition at the National Museum of Australia, I diverted to Pambula, on the far south coast of New South Wales, for two reasons.

Pambula is part of the Australian connection with Darwin through Syms Covington, who, at the age of 15, sailed as a cabin boy on the Beagle in 1831. Darwin soon came to rely on Covington to collect specimens, excavate fossils and act as his personal assistant.

During the Beagle’s brief visit to Sydney, Covington was impressed by the colony. In 1840, after a period of employment with Darwin in England, he returned to Australia and eventually became a wealthy man.

At first he lived in Sydney, but by 1854 had moved to Pambula, where he became postmaster. His entrepreneurial activities included buying large tracts of land around the Pambula River and the little township of Pambula. On a large block, he built a house of solid sandstone bricks with cedar woodwork throughout — “Covington’s Retreat”. Covington continued to correspond with Darwin and, at the latter’s request, collected specimens for him. He died in 1861.

The house, at 28 Quondola Street, still stands and has been listed by the National Trust of Australia (NSW) in Heritage Council File HC32549. After being used for various purposes, including as an inn and as a police station, it became the residence of the local doctor, probably around the start of the 20th century — hence my second reason for visiting Pambula. The subsequent careers of some of the Pambula general practitioners, all of whom lived in the house, are of considerable interest. All came to Pambula from outside the area.

Grace Cuthbert (later Cuthbert Browne), MBE, left Pambula in 1929. She was Director of the Division of Maternal and Baby Welfare of the NSW Department of Public Health (1937–1965) and, among many other positions, President of the Australian Federation of Medical Women.

Naomi Wing, CBE, and her husband Lindon practised in Pambula from 1929 to 1936. She was an early advocate of rehabilitation medicine as a medical discipline and became President of the Australian Association of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine. The Naomi Wing Rehabilitation Centre in Zetland, Sydney, was named in her honour. Her husband, Lindon Worlledge Wing, KStJ, was an early practitioner of occupational medicine in Sydney. Their son, Emeritus Professor Lindon Michael Harper Wing, was Dean of the Medical School at Flinders University, Adelaide, from 1998 to 2007.

From 1936 to 1945, the house was owned by Keith Jones, who went to World War II from Pambula and whose name is on the town’s war memorial. After the war, he became a surgeon and, over the years, undertook a wide range of community activities. He was President of the Australian Medical Association (1973–1976), Chairman of the Australasian Medical Publishing Company Limited (1976–1982) and, for a time, Acting Editor of the Medical Journal of Australia. He was knighted in 1980.

Covington’s Retreat is now a Thai restaurant called “Covingtons Thai”.