NAMBOUR this weekend celebrates the value of an idea and the power communities that embrace ideas have to change lives for the better.

The 50th anniversary celebrations for Sundale yesterday recognised people from many backgrounds who came together to make the idea of honouring pioneering families a reality in the form of aged-care facilities that have continued to grow with demand.

We are now in an age where communities are demanding government to deliver infrastructure to service growth.

When a Nambour Apexian’s idea of a retirement centre collided back in 1960 with the generosity of three businessmen driven to return some of their success to their town, the best they could count on then was that government would match the contribution.

An ethic of self-help over handouts was the general rule. Nambour was not found wanting in that respect.

Sundale opened in 1963 with three cottages, 20 hostel units, a dining area, kitchen and supervisor’s flat.

Today it cares for 340 aged in their own homes, 400 in retirement villages and 330 through the provision of rehabilitation services. As well, it manages 50 rental properties and delivers childcare to 117 children.

The main kitchen at the James Grimes Care Centre prepares and delivers 1450 meals a day with a further 985 produced at its villages at Coolum, Palmwoods and Kilcoy. That’s a total 2435 meals a day or 90,000 a year

The celebrated Eden Rehabilitation Centre at Cooroy and the Sundale Rehabilitation centre in Nambour are setting benchmarks for treatment that is restoring quality to people’s lives struck by injury or illness.

A book, Sundale – Creating Communities 1963-2013, written by Elaine and Inga Green and published to coincide with this weekend’s

celebrations, tells the story of how the energy of a small group of community-minded people made that all possible.

Remarkably, what was then a small rural industry-based community, through imaginative fundraising and generosity of spirit generated in today’s dollars $1.42 million to complete the first project, raised $1.8 million, of which $250,000 was donated in just 13 weeks to start the James Grimes Care Centre, and $8.2 million to construct the first stage of the Rotary Garden Village on a five-hectare donated site.

All was done without ever once going into debt.

What is now an aged-care industry was born of that kind of community sacrifice.

It could be argued that the community spirit that today drives a multitude of charitable endeavours from Wishlist, through to Give Me 5 for Kids, the Island Charity Swim and countless runs and paddle-athons was built on the foundations laid by the effort to build Sundale.

It was the Nambour Chronicle which itself gave birth to the Sunshine Coast Daily that, at the Nambour Apex Club’s prompting ran a reader poll to determine the community’s greatest needs.

The response overwhelmingly was the simple proposition that Nambour and district’s frail aged should not have to leave familiar surroundings to move to Brisbane and elsewhere for care.

What followed was simply remarkable.

Nambour Apex Club’s decision to take advantage of a federal government subsidy that had just been put in place, coincided with the decision by business partners Clem Renouf, James Grimes and Roy Charlton to donate a seven hectare land parcel to their church for the same purpose.

A chance conversation on the footpath led to the businessmen throwing their lot behind the project, one of the largest ever undertaken by an Australian Apex club.

The three businessmen also each contributed 1000 pounds to the venture.

A foundation committee including Mr Grimes, Mr Renouf, Mr Charlton, Chronicle editor Peter Richardson, Noel Parry and Ian Hayne first met on May 27, 1960.

It was succeeded in mid-1961 by a management committee that included the three business partners, Ray Wilson, Robert “Bob” Sherwell, and Mr Hayne and Mr Parry. The town became consumed with the project to the point that for months it was as if the community’s every activity revolved around fundraising.

At one point 30 Apexians were collecting scrap metal three mornings a week before work and loading it into railway trucks.

Typical of the innovative approach to fundraising, Chronicle reporter Wilfred Griggs took to a pole in Currie St for 24 hours.

The next year in February Mr Hayne and Tommy Carter, clutching phone directories, took to a SEQEB-supplied pole on which Harcus and Poole built a room serviced by Michael’s Plumbing Works. Over the course of seven days the men contacted 5000 people by phone raising nearly 7000 pounds.

Incredibly for an organisation engaged in a complex process of almost continual expansion, Sundale didn’t gain charitable status in its own right until 1972.

For all of the previous decade all money raised was directed through the accounts of the Nambour Apex Club.

That, however, was far from the club’s sole contribution. Its members rostered regularly to do landscaping and maintenance work finishing off a day’s toil with a barbecue and singalong with Hazel Smith at the piano.

Hazel became a Sundale resident, entertaining guests for more than 30 years.

Rotary Club of Nambour nominees joined the committee of management in the early 1980s to help supervise construction of the Rotary Village at Sundale, adding to a successful corporate structure that has continued.

The 50th anniversary will see Sundale become a company limited by guarantee and its committee of management evolve into a board of directors with governance standards and responsibilities determined by ASIC.