From the outside, the compound looks part prison, part military base.

Barbed wire stretches around the facility and security is so high we were made to sign non-disclosure statements before we were given its location.

What sits behind the fence is an Australian first. A large-scale, legal cannabis crop will soon be grown at a top-secret Sunshine Coast location and The TODAY Show was given a tour.

"We do everything from growing to producing, harvesting and manufacture," Adam Benjamin said.

"Once you cover the ground that this is not smoked, it’s an oil, it doesn’t get you high, this is a medicine, I think most of the public and a lot of doctors want to come on-board and understand this better as a medicine."

Medicinal cannabis is now legal in every Australian state. The federal government has flagged Australia as a potential global leader in exporting cannabis oil.

At the Sunshine Coast farm, which is run by company Medifarm, plants will be imported from Israel - a country that’s been researching medicinal cannabis heavily for two decades.

"In Australia, although it's our first rodeo we've been able to look at the road map from overseas, remembering that Israel leads the world," Mr Benjamin said.

The plants have been genetically developed by the Israelis over many years.

"It's the unique genetics and in those plants, if you can imagine, one gene plant, one particular plant being grown for epilepsy another gene line being grown for chronic pain."

TODAY reporter Jess Millward tours the compound. (Image: TODAY Show)

Medicinal cannabis is now legal in every Australian state. (Image: TODAY Show)

The Queensland government has announced that trials involving children being treated with medicinal cannabis at the Lady Cilento Hospital will be expanded.

The results of the trials, which have been underway for one year, have been mixed.

"We've had a good response in four. By that I mean seizure control has improved, not completely gone and their quality of life has improved," Dr Geoff Wallace from the Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital said.

Dr Wallace believes more research is needed into the potential benefits of medicinal cannabis but that even when that's complete, cannabis oil won’t be a first line treatment in the future.

Medicinal cannabis has been known to help with not just epilepsy but symptoms of chronic pain, multiple sclerosis and in some cases help ease the effects of cancer treatment.