Roy Thompson died on Aug. 7, eight days after Nola Thompson died from Stage 4 ovarian cancer, ending a 69-year marriage that helped shape philanthropy on the Sunshine Coast. He was 87 when he spoke publicly in 2021 about not living forever and giving money back to the community where the family built its fortune.
Their death comes as families and charities on the Sunshine Coast are still living with what the couple left behind: more than $20 million in gifts, scholarships and support that reached students, patients and researchers. Their eight children now carry the memory of a partnership that never stayed private for long once it turned its wealth outward.
By 2018, the Thompsons had given $15 million to the University of the Sunshine Coast, including $7 million for a building that became home to the Sunshine Coast Mind and Neuroscience–Thompson Institute. That gift also locked in scholarships and grants for students through 2075, a rare long tail for a family whose giving stretched well beyond one campus. The institute houses the Nola Thompson Centre for Advanced Imaging, tying her name to the work that will continue after both deaths.
The couple's philanthropy was broader than one institution. Roy Thompson launched the Sunshine Coast Rescue Helicopter Service in 1979, and the pair gave $2 million toward the Wishlist Centre, which provides affordable accommodation for patients and families across from the Sunshine Coast University Hospital. In April 2021, they entrusted more than $5 million to the Buderim Foundation to establish the Thompson Charitable Fund, reinforcing a habit of giving that had become part of their identity.
That habit stood in sharp contrast to the life they could have led. They were described as multimillionaires, yet they deliberately avoided a luxurious lifestyle, and Nola Thompson once said they were not social people. Roy Thompson, who grew up in a single-income household and later built his fortune as a publican and property developer, said people with more money than they need should start giving and that they could not take it with them.
Brendan Hogan said Roy and Nola in very real, humble ways helped change the face of philanthropy on the Sunshine Coast. Andrew Wallace said they brought up their eight children on a modest builder's wage in the 1970s and went on to transform a host of Sunshine Coast landmarks, a trajectory that helps explain why their names now sit on buildings, funds and services rather than on anything more extravagant. The unanswered question is not whether they gave away enough to matter; it is how much more of the more than $20 million is still to be fully accounted for as the region takes stock of what they left behind.
