 A capsule of our country's spirit
What is it about the Wide Bay/Burnett
that makes it so much a part of who and what we are?
Glenis Green delves into the history of a
region that once rescued Queensland's economy and provided Australia's fifth prime
minister.
IF the Australian spirit could be defined by the people and history of a single region,
then the Wide Bay/Burnett would surely take the honours.
For more than 100 years it has embraced a cultural, industrial, agricultural and
community diversity which echoes its unique geographical landscape.
From the bracing Bunya Mountains to the snowy sands of Fraser Island – gathering
up such major centres as Bundaberg, Childers, Gayndah, Murgon, Kingaroy, Hervey Bay,
Maryborough and Gympie along the way – the Wide Bay/Burnett boasts the richest of
heritages.
But it has always been the strength of character of its people, from yesterday's
pioneers to today's entrepreneurs, which has been the one constant – the metaphorical
mallet forging the region's progress.
People like Andrew Fisher – a former Scottish coal miner who made the region his
home and became Australia's fifth Prime Minister.
Described as a quiet, honest and warm-hearted man – but with a reputation for
being militant – Fisher migrated to Australia in 1885 and became an inaugural member
of the Australian Labor Party.
He found work with the Queensland Colliery Co. at Torbanlea near Maryborough.
Fisher lived in Howard until 1887 when, after a rejection as manager of a mine owned by
Isis Investment Co., he left the Burrum fields for the gold fields of Gympie.
Active in the church and community, by 1891 he was elected president of the Gympie
branch of the Amalgamated Miners' Association and also president of the newly formed Labor
Party.
Blame the paper – start your own
 Successful as Gympie's Labor candidate in the 1883 poll for the Legislative
Assembly, he later blamed the local paper, The Gympie Times, for bias when he lost his
seat in 1896 – and set about starting his own paper, the Gympie Truth.
He won back his seat in 1899 and was appointed Secretary of the Railways and the
Minister for Public Works in the first Labor Government elected anywhere in the world
– which only lasted six days.
In the first federal election in March 1901, he won the seat of Wide Bay, then married
local Gympie girl Margaret Irvine before moving to Melbourne.
In November 1908, Fisher became Prime Minister and Treasurer in Labor's second minority
government.
Defeated in 1909, his government did not remain out of office for very long with the
party winning convincingly again in April 1910 – with effective control over both
houses of parliament.
His government was defeated again in 1913, only to win a resounding victory at the next
federal election in 1914.
As our Prime Minister when World War I broke out, Fisher is remembered as promising
England that "Australia will support England to the last man and the last
shilling!"
Showing signs of the stresses and strains of such high public office, he resigned in
October 1915, going on to be Australia's High Commissioner in London before dying in
Britain in 1928.
Gold was pouring out of them thar hills
 Times were tough in Fisher's era,
but they were also exciting for the people of the Wide Bay/Burnett as the timber
industries hit their straps, sugar factories expanded, regional newspapers and mail
services flourished and the gold was pouring out of them thar hills.
On a grimmer note, State legislation, enacted in 1897, resulted in the persecution of
the region's early inhabitants – the Wakka Wakka Aboriginal tribe to the west, the
Kabi to the east and the Kaiabara tribe in the Bunya Mountains.
A protector was appointed with the power to send Aborgines to reserves and keep them
segregated from the white population, taking away their freedom to choose where they
lived. This Act remained until 1939.
The Cherbourg Aboriginal settlement near Murgon started as an Aboriginal protectorate
on January 24, 1904 – a site of several thousand hectares which was part of the
Cherbourg occupation licence held by the Moore brothers of Barambah Station.
The reserve was gazetted as a mission station, with its status only changing in 1986
when it was transferred to a trust under State control to be administered by the Cherbourg
Community Council as a local government.
Today it is recognised as one of the most progressive Aboriginal communities in
Queensland with emu raising, an emu, ostrich and goat abattoir, a nursing/respite hostel,
motel, TAFE college and commercial farming activities.
The pioneers of the past were just as energetic.
The Hynes – a sawmilling dynasty with five generations working in timber –
are as synonymous with the region as its very lifeblood, the mighty Mary River.
Richard Matthews Hyne came to Brisbane aboard the Fusilier in 1864, moving to
Maryborough nine years later with his family.
He was elected as the fledgling city's alderman and then mayor, firing up the town's
first gas works, spearheading the establishment of both boys' and girls' grammar schools.
But after his wife Elizabeth died in 1879 he returned to England to improve his
knowledge of the timber industry, opening the National Saw and Planing Mills on his
return.
Today the name of Hyne & Son is still an integral part of Maryborough and is known
throughout Queensland with descendants Warren, Richard, Chris and their families still
living in the district.
The region's sugar story began with another English import – Thomas Braddock
– who met John Walker in Ballarat during the gold rush days and together they formed
the Union Foundry.
During Gympie's gold rush, they opened a branch of the foundry in Maryborough and
Braddock moved to the river city in 1873 to work there, with the business eventually
becoming Walkers Ltd in 1897.
A partnership was also formed about the same time to take over the Maryborough Sugar
Factory and the Braddock name is still connected to the factory to this day with David and
Tom Braddock in executive roles.
Gold – it's back!
That history repeats itself is probably never more evident than in Gympie, where today
at the start of a new millennium a new "gold rush" is injecting millions of
dollars into the community economy.
Recent discoveries of rich, new gold veins and the recent official opening of the
lucrative new Lewis Mine by the entrepreneurial Gympie Gold Pty Ltd has the city gripped
in a new bout of gold fever.
Already immortalised as "the town that saved Queensland" after the discovery
of gold in its hills in 1867, city leaders are saying that the new gold finds are saving
Gympie all over again.
Gympie Gold's managing director Harry Adams said prospects were now looking so good
that the company was set to triple its current $20 million annual output of gold within
the next two years.
Modern gold exploration and mining now represents an investment of more than $150
million since the company began revisiting old veins in the Monklands area of Gympie in
the early 1980s.
Almost 200 jobs have been created and initial production of 33,000 - 34,000 ounces of
gold annually is set to soar to more than 100,000 ounces next year. Already it is the
eighth greatest gold-producing mine in Australia.
It is a glittering heritage which began when prospector James Nash first found gold on
the site now occupied by Gympie's Town Hall, 133 years ago.
At the time Queensland was facing bankruptcy due to drought and a fall in wool prices.
Nash made the five-day journey down the Mary River from Maryborough and after digging
up 75 ounces of gold in six days, he staked his claim – and the Gympie gold rush was
on.
The resulting boost to the State's economy enabled the colony to survive.
The Nash name is still synonymous with Gympie – Nash Street runs parallel to the
town's main Mary Street and James Nash State High School has educated several subsequent
generations.
Cooloola Shire's deputy mayor, Col Chapman, who has lived in Gympie all his life, said
the rebirth of the town's gold industry had boosted community enthusiasm and job
prospects.
He said the 1893 floods which inundated many of the old mineshafts and tunnels had
precipitated the shutdown of mining around 1910.
"I was born in 1927 and I still remember the mullock heaps but the mines weren't
working," he said.
However, the people who built the Bay and Burnett were not all at the business end of
things.
 Two
young nurses – Cecelia Elizabeth Bauer and Rose Adelaide Wiles – made the
ultimate sacrifice for their community.
They gave their lives to nurse a family stricken with pneumonic plague when the scourge
struck Maryborough. [More on the plague,
from researcher Timothy Moroney]
Their sacrifice surely stopped the plague's spread and their families still live in
Maryborough to this day.
Other names woven into the fabric of the region include Scottish-born Andrew Dunn who
started the Maryborough Chronicle in 1887, then went on to buy the Rockhampton Morning
Bulletin, the Warwick News and The Toowoomba Chronicle in a family newspaper dynasty which
was to be the embryo of today's Australian Provincial News and Media empire.
Every district in the Wide Bay and Burnett has a wealth of tales to tell of the
pioneers who shaped the region before and after Federation – the Mungomerys, the
Gregory girls (Sarah Blue, Elizabeth Goodwin and Margaret Irwin), the Pings, the Meads,
the McCallums, the Tanners, the Truscotts . . . just the remembering and telling
could take another century.
The region voted strongly for Federation in the 1899 referendum even though the overall
Queensland vote was a narrow win for the "Yes" case. The rest, of course, is now
history.
Assistance from Vicki Shapcott of the Cooloola
Shire Library and Touring the South Burnett, published by the South Burnett
Tourist Association.
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