Share your Sunshine Coast Story
Lost photos, old brochures, priceless local history
Picture Sunshine Coast. Sunshine Coast Council.
Got a shoebox of old Sunshine Coast brochures tucked in the back of a cupboard?
Or a faded snapshot of a brand‑new display home, a sales office opening or a ‘Sunshine Coast’ postcard you once sent down south?
Sunshine Coast Cultural Heritage Services wants to see it.
Historian‑in‑Residence, Jane Harding, is piecing together how our region’s identity was built – from the push to adopt the name ‘Sunshine Coast’ to the real‑estate boom that reshaped the coastline from Caloundra to Noosa during the 1960s and 70s.
She’s especially keen to hear about developments like Sunshine, Sunrise, Castaways, Marcus and Peregian Beaches, Currimundi’s Cooinda Heights and the early Kawana Waters rollout.
Jane is calling on locals to share stories, photos and the everyday items that captured the sales pitch of the day: brochures, flyers, postcards, maps, ads, sales kits and photographs of display homes, signage and promotional events.
Tourism treasures are welcome too – brochures, souvenirs and holiday memorabilia from any era.
Even if it’s incomplete or well‑worn, it could be the missing piece that helps tell the bigger story of how the Coast grew, and how it was promoted to visitors and would‑be residents.
To share real estate or tourism stories, photos or memorabilia for Jane’s project, visit the Heritage website.
Preserving women’s health history, one magazine at a time
Jane isn’t the only Historian-in-Residence working to uncover overlooked parts of the Sunshine Coast story.
Dr Samantha Grey, a medical historian and academic at the University of the Sunshine Coast, is researching the region’s health and social history – including the development of hospitals, maternity services and dentistry across the Sunshine Coast.
Her research examines the relationship between medical institutions and women in the mid-twentieth century, and how medical practice reflected broader social ideas and gender relations.
Samantha is also looking into a locally produced women’s health publication titled Birthing Naturally (also published under Birthing Women), created by the Sunshine Coast Women’s Health Council.
The Heritage Library currently holds issues 8 to 13 and is hoping the community can help locate issues 1 to 7 to complete the series and better document this part of the Coast’s women’s and health history.
If you have copies at home, know someone who might, or were involved in producing or distributing the magazine, Samantha would love to hear from you.
For contact details and upcoming historian talks, visit the Heritage website.
This program is supported by the Arts and Heritage Levy.