GOLD!!!!!!

Gympie.
Large and rambling township built around a once-successful gold mine.

One of many reminders that Gympie was founded as a gold mining town, the
finding of the sizable quantities of gold was credited with saving the newly
founded state of Queensland from bankruptcy in 1867.


Mining here was principally an underground operation with the gold contained in
quartz reefs, this differs from many of the rich gold areas in Australia where
the gold was alluvial, literally nuggets picked up from the ground or panned
from creek beds.

Gympie.

This remarkable town proclaims proudly that it was 'The Town that saved Queensland'. This grandiose and unusual claim is more fact than wishful thinking. In 1867 Queensland, less than a decade old, was facing possible bankruptcy (there was widespread unemployment and two banks had closed in Brisbane) when James Nash discovered gold near the present site of Gympie. Overnight the wealth from the goldfield (it was to go on to produce over 99 million grams of gold) led to Queensland's first goldrush and pulled the state back from potential disaster.

The story of Nash's discovery is a typical quixotic tale of luck. Nash was so down on his luck at the time that he literally had nothing more than a dog, a pick and a panning dish. When his pick broke he walked to Maryborough where, with an ounce of gold which he had panned, he bought rations and some more equipment. He returned to the Gympie area, went up a dry creek bed and within a week had 75 ounces of gold which he sold in Brisbane for £200. He registered his find and the rush was on. Tales of the early months in Gympie are typical of a swashbuckling mining town. One observer noted, 'Every night it was brawls and fights. Often you would not know which fight to look at first: the cause in nearly every case was beer and barmaids.' Nash managed to make £7000 from the field.

Located 166 km north of Brisbane and 95 m above sea level, Gympie is one of those strange towns which stretches for kilometre after kilometre over hill and dale to a point where, if you don't take the correct turn off the Bruce Highway, the town centre can be quite hard to locate. In recent times the town centre has been by-passed by the highway which makes the town centre's ribbon development (once it stretched along the Bruce Highway) seem quite strange.

Named after a local stinging tree which the local Aborigines reputedly called 'gimpi gimpi' and briefly called Nashville after James Nash had discovered gold in the area, (it would have been quite fitting had the name "Nashville" stuck as one of the biggest country music festivals in Australia is held here every year) it officially became Gympie in 1868. At this time all that existed was a mining shanty town with endless tents and numerous small stores and liquor outlets.

The growth of Gympie was remarkable. Within months there were 25 000 people on the goldfields. Within a year a gold battery had been built. It was proclaimed a municipality in 1880, became a town a decade later and was a city by 1905. The railway arrived in 1881 and in 1888 it became one of the few towns in Australia to have its own stock exchange. The gold mining continued until 1925. The city then became the most important regional centre for the area servicing the rich variety of agricultural activities which spread from the coast into the hinterland.

Today Gympie is the centre of the Mary Valley agricultural district where beef and dairy cattle thrive along with tropical fruit and vegetables.

There is still one productive gold mine in Gympie but it is a far cry from the bustling gold rush days of the late 1800s.