The late Dr Dianne Houghton is remembered as eccentric and kind-hearted, according to her neighbours and former patients.
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Dr Houghton died in 2018 leaving a multi-million dollar bequest to fund the non-for-profit Haymarket Foundation in Sydney. The non-for-profit specialises in treating the health needs of at-risk homeless people in the Sydney CBD.
Former patients of the Bonny Hills resident recall hours of conversation about her two German Shepherd dogs, but only hints of her past working in developing countries such as Iran.
Long time patient, 73-year-old Bonny Hills resident Geoff Bell, said Dr Houghton was a very private person.
"I really got on well with her and she told me lots of things about how she lived in the (Islamic) Republic of Iran for a while. She had lived and worked with a medical group over there," he said.
"I used to see her on the beach with the dogs every morning before work and we would have a little chat. She was a great dog lover and if you got her talking about them you would be there for hours.
"I do remember that she had a two-foot plastic skeleton in her surgery called George and on the very last appointment I had with her she gave me that skeleton. Every time I see that skeleton I remember her.
"She was a very private person and a very good doctor. When she left six or seven years ago, she was just gone."
Bonny Hills environmental campaigner and 2021 Environmental Citizen of the Year, Judy Love said it would be wonderful for a plaque to be placed in Bonny Hills to remember Dr Houghton.
"We first met her when (my late husband) Fred and I first began weeding in the area and were doing Landcare work near her house. I was working and got something (stuck) in my eye and she came down to help, she was very good to me there," she said.
"She had two beautiful purebred German Shepherds and two poodles. Not only did she love dogs, but they were her life and she doted on her dogs.
"Everyone who walked dogs in Bonny Hills, or who attended her surgery in the 1990s, would have known Dianne.
"She was a very, very interesting person who did so much good, but had no need for social contact with anyone. She was really eccentric and there was mystery about her."
The sudden closure of her Laurieton medical practice caused a stir in September 2012 when patients found they were without their regular general practitioner and access to their medical records.
Dr Houghton founded the Christ Church St Laurence Charitable Trust as a bequest in her will and her estate was later finalised in March this year.
The income from her five real estate properties and a portfolio of blue chip shares was directed to help charitable objects of the Christ Church St Laurence parish, of which she was a high mass attendee.
That income was then selected to fund the lease of the Haymarket Foundation General Practice for the next 20 years. The donation would honour Dr Houghton's wish for a significant new initiative in support of the underprivileged and also her own work as a doctor.
Haymarket Foundation chief executive Peter Valpiani said the foundation has committed to a $2.2 million dollar upgrade to the premises with the first patients expected through the doors in 2022.
"In the Haymarket Foundation's crisis accommodation facilities 97 per cent of residents have at least one diagnosed chronic illness with 65 per cent having four or more such conditions," he said.
"Despite this, two-thirds don't have a GP."
Mr Valpiani said the service will have four GPs providing specialist services including management of mental health, drug and alcohol issues, trauma-informed care and pathology.
"This service will help people get the right diagnosis and management of health conditions - and it may help them find and maintain social or affordable housing as well," he said.
The general practice operates out of the St Laurence Centre opposite Central Station, in Sydney and is a premises of the Anglican Parish of Christ Church St Laurence.
Charitable Trust member and church warden Dr Antony Miller said Dr Houghton was a very private person, who had an apartment overlooking the church and attended irregularly during weekdays.
"She was a very private person always and there were almost no records of her past life, but we believe she spent quite a bit of her career working overseas possibly in East Africa and South East Asia," he said.
"When she decided to make this bequest not very long before her death, she made the church wardens into the executors of the will and the trustees of the will.
"We spoke about the bequest on December 8, 2018 and she passed in January 2018. Essentially she told us about her assets, she wanted us to preserve their value and use their rental value to advance charitable services.
"She wanted her bequest to be used in something new, original and in a major initiative. That has worked out well and I'm glad that she is being remembered in the community."
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