Community & Business
12 June, 2026
Sister Kenny named QLD great
On Queensland Day, Sister Elizabeth Kenny, the bush nurse best known for developing a novel, unorthodox approach to the treatment of polio, was named a Queensland Great.
Last Friday, the 5th of June, amongst the winners of the Queensland Day awards, was a posthumous award placing Sister Kenny amongst Queensland’s greats.
Sister Kenny was born in Warialda, New South Wales, in 1880. Largely home schooled and only having received a few years of formal education at Headington Hill, she later found work as a nurse in Nobby.
In July 1912 Kenny opened a small hospital in Clifton called St. Candice’s.
She closed St. Candice’s to serve as a nurse in WW1, mainly working on hospital boats, before returning to Nobby to live with her mother in 1919.
In April of 1925, Elizabeth Kenny was elected president of the QCWA Nobby Branch.
The local icon is best known for her use of hot compression to treat polio rather than plaster, seeing far less long term complications such as the physical disabilities for which the disease was know.
Nobby has both a Sister Kenny Park and a museum, Sister Kenny House which is dedicated to the iconic, local, bush nurse.
