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Gympie: the town that saved Queensland
A G R I C U LT U R E
D I G E S T
Situated 168km north of Brisbane, Gympie is one of Queensland’s most important agricultural towns, but farming isn’t what it has always been known for. The town first came to prominence in 1867, when a gold discovery kickstarted ‘one of the wildest gold rushes in Queensland’s history’. w: Ralph Grayden
The colony of Queensland was broke at the time, having recently separated from New South Wales. The colonial government tried to kickstart the local economy – and drive population growth – by offering a £3,000 reward to anyone who found gold. Local farmer James Nash soon discovered rich deposits near the Mary River and the ensuing influx of prospectors, as well as the income from the goldfields, earned Gympie the moniker ‘the town that saved Queensland’. Nash claimed his reward but the government got off on a technicality (they said the gold needed to be found within a particular 90-mile area and Gympie was just outside it). They later agreed to pay him £1,000. Fortunately, Nash’s discovery was fruitful and the Gympie goldfields yielded more than £14,000,000, £7,000 of which reportedly went directly to Nash. Unfortunately, he lost it all on bad investments.
Well before any of this, Gympie was the established home of the local Gubbi Gubbi people who gave the town its name. Gympie derives from ‘gimpi-gimpi’, the Gubbi Gubbi word for a nasty local tree that counts among the world’s most venomous plants. (‘Once stung, never forgotten’, says Australian Geographic.) Later, it became home to Labor Prime Minister, Andrew Fisher, who found his way out of the local mines to represent the federal division of Wide Bay before serving as PM for three separate terms. Today, agriculture is Gympie’s most important sector and the Gympie region’s total output for growing, processing and selling food and beverage is $655 million a year. It also employs more than 3,000 people. Key produce includes dairy, beef and other livestock production, as well as fruit and vegetables, especially macadamia nuts. Gympie played a decisive part in the growth of the macadamia industry worldwide. The origins of as many as 70% of
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the nuts commercially produced in the world today can potentially be traced back to a single tree taken from Gympie to Hawaii in the 19th Century. One of the reasons for Gympie’s impressive agricultural productivity is its climate. The town receives 1,118mm of rainfall a year with a peak in summer and early autumn. February alone receives an average of 166mm of rain. That also means Gympie is notorious for its floods. In February this year, the Mary River peaked at 22.8m, subduing more than 1,000 homes. It was the third time the two had been inundated in the past 11 years. That hasn’t deterred people from moving to the town. With its proximity to the Sunshine Coast beaches, thriving local economy, abundant parks and relatively low cost of living, homebuyers have recently been flocking to Gympie. This has caused the median house price to rise 30.9% over the past year, according to realestate.com.au.
