History

Nambour Selangor Private Hospital has a proud and distinguished history of providing quality health care services to the Sunshine Coast community over the past 70 years.

The ‘Selangor story’ began when two ex-Australian Army Nursing Sisters, Sr Christian Oxley and Sr Dorothy Ralston were approached to establish a private hospital in Nambour.

Sr Oxley had served in Malaya during WWII – enduring time as a prisoner of war in Selangor. Sr Ralston was evacuated from Singapore just days before the country fell to the Japanese.

The Sisters set up their first hospital in a rambling old home in Nambour - comprising the original house and two fibro-cement extensions. Using a 3000-pound war service loan and their own small savings of a few hundred pounds, the Sisters primarily purchased war disposal equipment and set up single, double and three-bed wards, an operating theatre and labour ward with the nurses’ quarters underneath.

The 24-bed Hospital was named ‘Selangor Private Hospital’ - acknowledging the Sisters’ wartime experiences - and opened in July 1947. Just 22 years later, the time came to expand the hospital at a new site.

In 1959, construction of a new Selangor Private Hospital began at its present site on Netherton Street in Nambour. The new building comprised accommodation for 27 patients in private rooms, wards for medical and surgical cases, a special ward for children, isolation room, operating theatre, and x-ray.

The new Selangor Private Hospital was officially opened in 1960.

Today, Nambour Selangor Private Hospital stands proudly in tribute to the efforts of its founders – delivering high quality, patient-focused private health care to the people of the Sunshine Coast.