A helicopter rescue service born from Hinterland community spirit in 1979 has a gleaming new base, a surge in demand, and a visitor centre coming later this year that will tell the full story. For anyone on the Blackall Range who has looked up to see a blue and yellow aircraft banking over the canopy, this is who is in it, and what they are doing.
Humble beginnings near Yandina
Long before the gleaming new hangar at Sunshine Coast Airport, before the AW139 helicopters with their glass cockpits and winch systems, there was a shed at the Big Cow tourist attraction near Yandina and a group of local people who believed their community deserved an aerial rescue service.
That was 1979. The Sunshine Coast Helicopter Rescue Service was founded by a determined group of locals including surf lifesaving legend Hayden Kenny OAM, the late Des Scanlan, Jim Campbell, Rod Forrester, Bill Freeman, Roy Thompson and the late Don Moffatt. It ran on community will as much as anything else. The organisation that grew from those origins, now known as LifeFlight after a 2013 merger, is today Queensland’s leading aeromedical service. It has helped close to 90,000 people since its founding. And according to LifeFlight Chief Operating Officer Pete Elliott, that origin story is not simply a piece of history.
“LifeFlight’s origin story plays a crucial role in our identity to this day, reminding the organisation how far it has come and that we were and shall always remain a community helicopter rescue service deeply embedded in the areas where we work.”
Pete Elliott, LifeFlight Chief Operating Officer
The pioneers who are still alive maintain an active connection to the community, advocating and fundraising for the service. At the 2025 Sunshine Coast LifeFlight Gala, Hayden Kenny OAM designed a specialty 1962 Malibu replica surfboard that raised $11,000 at auction, a characteristically local and hands-on contribution from a man whose name is woven through the region’s emergency services history.
A new base, three times the size, and built for the future
On 31 March this year, LifeFlight’s Sunshine Coast rescue helicopter flew its first mission out of the organisation’s brand-new aeromedical facility at the Sunshine Coast Airport’s Aerospace Precinct. The timing was pointed: on launch day, the crew was immediately tasked to a real mission, winching three men from a capsized boat off Noosa Heads.
The new base is the most significant infrastructure investment in LifeFlight’s 46-year Sunshine Coast history. The Queensland Government-funded $18.5 million facility spans 1,500 square metres across three separate hangars, three times the size of the facility it replaced.
In practical terms, the extra space matters more than it might sound to an outsider. Pete explains that in the previous hangar, housing a second helicopter required removing the rotor blades first. That kind of constraint creates delay, and in aeromedical response, delay has consequences.
“The additional space means maintenance work can get done faster as there is extra manoeuvrability for the aircraft. The space means increased aircraft availability for lifesaving missions.”
Pete Elliott, LifeFlight Chief Operating Officer
The base can now accommodate two AW139 helicopters and one Challenger 604 jet simultaneously. It includes expanded engineering spaces, a dedicated apron area for LifeFlight’s exclusive use, a patient transfer room with medical facilities, six-person crew accommodation, and new training rooms and simulators.
The crew accommodation matters operationally too. More crew can now be housed on site and respond to missions faster, a detail that is easy to overlook but directly affects how quickly a helicopter is in the air when a call comes in at 3am.
Community fundraising, through the annual Gala and the Local Legends donor recognition program, contributed to the base fit-out, including the expanded crew quarters, patient transfer room, and additional equipment. The Queensland Government fully funded construction itself.
The Hinterland: beautiful, demanding, and busy
For residents of the Blackall Range, LifeFlight is not an abstract emergency service. It is the aircraft that arrives when someone goes down in a gorge at Kondalilla, slips on wet rocks at Gardners Falls, or collapses on a walking track in the Glass House Mountains. The Hinterland is, in aviation terms, technically demanding terrain.
In 2025-26, LifeFlight crews were tasked to incidents in locations including Maleny, Kenilworth, Kidaman Creek, Conondale and Mount Beerwah. Missions from the Sunshine Coast base were up 18 per cent in 2025, with the base helping close to 700 people across the year. In the first quarter of 2026 alone, 144 people were helped.
Pete Elliott attributes the rising demand to a combination of population growth, increasing tourism, and the service’s own expanding capability, the advanced AW139 helicopters can travel farther and faster than earlier aircraft, opening up more of the region to effective aeromedical response.
Training Pilot Aaron Regan, based at the Sunshine Coast, describes a region where the environmental conditions themselves can make any location challenging.
“Low cloud, wind and precipitation can make any area in the Hinterland technically demanding.”
Aaron Regan, LifeFlight Training & Checking Pilot
Crews prepare using a dedicated simulator in Brisbane that includes a South East Queensland terrain database, allowing them to train for specific scenarios in and around the Hinterland before encountering them in the field. In-aircraft winch training also takes place in dedicated areas. The winch itself, a feature of many Hinterland rescues, requires a level of crew coordination that is not obvious to the observer on the ground.
From a pilot’s perspective, maintaining a stable hover over a gorge or beneath a tree canopy means relying almost entirely on the Aircrew Officer in the cabin, who controls the winch and provides the pilot with precise movement commands.
“As we can’t see directly under the helicopter, the Aircrew Officer provides us with commands to move the helicopter, along with where any personnel on the winch are in relation to the ground or helicopter. For the pilot, having a good hover reference is vital.”
Aaron Regan, LifeFlight Training & Checking Pilot
As for the new base’s impact on Hinterland response: Aaron notes that the dedicated apron area means LifeFlight is no longer sharing taxiway space with other aircraft when preparing for a mission. And Pete Elliott adds the broader principle that underpins every improvement to facilities and fleet.
“It depends on the nature of the injuries, but for someone who is severely injured, every minute counts.”
Pete Elliott, LifeFlight Chief Operating Officer
The Jocelyn Walker Visitor Experience and Education Centre
Built into the new hangar is a space that will, later this year, open to the public as the LifeFlight Jocelyn Walker Visitor Experience and Education Centre. No confirmed opening date has been announced, but LifeFlight says it is working toward a 2026 opening.
The centre is named in recognition of Jocelyn Walker AM, a Sunshine Coast philanthropist who has lived in the region for nearly 45 years. Walker was the founding chair of the LifeFlight Sunshine Coast and South Burnett Regional Advisory Committee and became the first Vice Patron for the region in 2022. Her significant contributions to LifeFlight, financial and otherwise, are the reason her name is above the door.
“It is particularly special to share this evening with our pioneers who are all well known to me, having lived on the Sunshine Coast for almost 45 years. This new aeromedical base will bring in a new era for LifeFlight and leave a lasting legacy.”
Jocelyn Walker AM, LifeFlight Vice Patron
The centre is aimed at anyone with an interest in LifeFlight, local residents, school groups, community organisations, and tourists alike. Pete describes what visitors will find.
“Visitors will be able to get a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to run an aeromedical service. A variety of hands-on activities will give visitors an interactive experience, from learning about the history of LifeFlight, how the crew gets tasked and prepares for missions, to responding to an incident and virtually meeting crew members.”
Pete Elliott, LifeFlight Chief Operating Officer
The centre will also host First Minutes Matter workshops, LifeFlight’s free community emergency trauma training program, which teaches attendees what to do in a medical emergency before first responders arrive. For Range residents in an area where an ambulance road response can take a significant amount of time, that kind of training has direct practical value.
For those wondering whether a trip down the hill to Sunshine Coast Airport is worth it: the centre is being designed as an immersive experience, not a static display. The history it will tell begins, remember, near Yandina.
The service is free – and it is yours
One question that community members sometimes ask, and rarely get a clear answer to: if a LifeFlight helicopter rescues you from a gorge on the Blackall Range, do you receive a bill? The answer is no. The service is funded by the Queensland Government at no cost to patients, regardless of where they live in Queensland.
The Queensland Government fully funds the construction and operation of the base. Community fundraising, through the gala, through the Local Legends program, through donations, supports the fit-out, equipment and training programs like First Minutes Matter, which raised a record $525,000 at this year’s gala dinner.
How to follow LifeFlight’s activity
For Hinterland residents curious about helicopter activity overhead, LifeFlight regularly publishes media releases about significant missions in the Sunshine Coast region, which are picked up by local media. Queensland Ambulance Service (QAS) also posts about missions on X (formerly Twitter), including from the Sunshine Coast, often within hours of an incident concluding.
The Wall of Local Legends, a donor recognition display at the entrance of the new base, is another tangible way for community members to connect with the service. Information about donating and volunteering is available at lifeflight.org.au.
Quotes attributed to Pete Elliott (COO) and Aaron Regan (Training & Checking Pilot) were provided to Range Community News by LifeFlight’s media team.
Disclaimer: The information provided in this article is for general informational purposes only. While we strive for accuracy and timeliness, we make no representations or warranties of any kind, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability, or availability with respect to the article or the information contained within for any purpose.