Opening of Wakai Waian Caloundra

Celebrating the Opening of Wakai Waian Healing’s Caloundra Clinic

On Friday 14 August, our team, Richard, Chris & Sandy, were honoured to join Wakai Waian Healing as guests at the official opening of their new clinic in Caloundra. It’s not often we get to see a space we’ve built come fully to life, filled with the people it was designed for, and it made for a genuinely special day.

The opening began with a Welcome to Country, honouring the Traditional Owners of the land the clinic now calls home. Wakai Waian spoke about what the day meant for the organisation, describing it as a significant milestone, and thanking the partners, friends and stakeholders who came together to celebrate. For Wakai Waian, the opening was about more than a new address. It marks a strengthening of access to culturally safe, high-quality social and emotional wellbeing and allied health services, and the start of deeper, lasting relationships with the communities of the Sunshine Coast region.

It’s a milestone worth marking. Caloundra is Wakai Waian’s third dedicated clinic, alongside Rockhampton and Thursday Island, extending their reach in delivering psychological and mental health services across regional and remote Queensland.

A Project Built for This Moment

We had the privilege of designing and delivering the Caloundra clinic; a two-level fitout where Indigenous artwork was the starting point of the design, not an afterthought, running through the space as its defining feature. Six therapy rooms, two sensory OT spaces and a new internal staircase later, the result is a space built specifically to feel calm, safe and welcoming rather than clinical.

Standing in that finished space on opening day, surrounded by the community it was built for, was a reminder of why that brief mattered so much in the first place. From the first conversation about artwork through to construction, every decision on this project was made with this exact moment in mind; a room full of people who finally had a space that felt like theirs.

Congratulations to the entire Wakai Waian Healing team on the opening of their Caloundra clinic, and on everything this next chapter represents. We’re proud to have played a part in building the space, and even prouder to have been in the room to see it properly welcomed into the community it will serve.