News reports of hoons entering the hospital grounds in their vehicles to run down kangaroos late at night, or hunt them with arrows, had become all too common for Mrs Howley in recent years.

"One day at 3am I got a call from a security guard at the hospital telling me he had six roos down but only one had survived," she said.

"You should have seen the broken little bodies that I'd get. It was terrible."

Attacks on the roos have stopped since Hunter New England Health installed gates at the facility, she said.