page_title: Gympie Memorial Park
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Gympie Memorial Park / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Gympie Memorial Park under flood during 1931. Floodwaters in the Gympie Memorial Park near the entrance gates. Gympie is a city in south-eastern Queensland, situated on the Mary River about 162 kilometres north of Brisbane. Gympie is the centre of an important dairying and agricultural district. In the early days timber was a significant industry. In 1867 James Nash found nuggets of gold in the bed of a dry gully in the district and a spectacular gold rush commenced. Gympie was originally called Nashville after the discoverer of the gold. In 1868 the name was altered to Gympie, an aboriginal term for the stinging trees found in the district. The discovery of gold proved the salvation of Queensland as, at that time, the colony was passing through financial difficulties. The largest mine was the Scottish Gympie which worked at levels from 650 to over 800 metres deep, and had underground roadways exceeding 50 kilometres in length. In 1909 fifty-one mining companies were operating. A huge nugget of pure gold, called the Curtis nugget was found in the Gympie district. It weighed about 18 kilogrammes. The gold petered out in the 1920's. (Information taken from: The Australian Encyclopaedia and Explore Australia, 2003, Sydney Australia, Penguin Australia.
context_page_description: Gympie Memorial Park is a heritage-listed memorial at River Road, Gympie, Gympie Region, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by Harry Moore and Alfred Herbert Foster and built from 1919 to 1921. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 18 September 2009.
context_section_description: Gympie Memorial Park was established in 1919–1921 as the Gympie and Widgee District Fallen Soldiers' Memorial Park, with a landscape design prepared by Brisbane's Parks Superintendent Henry (Harry) Moore and a focal timber bandstand designed by Brisbane City Council's architect Alfred Herbert Foster. The park was opened on 20 April 1921 but the first official function in the park was an address to His Royal Highness Edward, Prince of Wales, during the Prince's visit to Gympie on 3 August 1920. Funded largely by community subscription and built on land donated by the Henderson family, owners of Ferguson & Co.'s Union Sawmills, the memorial park was intended as a lasting tribute to the citizens of the city and its district who had died for their country during the Great War of 1914–1918 and the Boer War of 1899–1902. The bandstand erected in the park in 1919–1920 is also a memorial to a former and much-respected local bandmaster, Mr Frederick Thomas Percival.
  The park is located in Nash's Gully in central Gympie, on the northern side of the Mary River. A little further up the gully, near the later Gympie Town Hall, James Nash had found alluvial gold in 1867, sparking Queensland's first major gold rush in October that year. The Nashville Goldfield was proclaimed and a township was established on the field to support the miners. By mid-1868 the name of the field had been changed to Gympie, reputedly an Aboriginal word for the stinging trees found in the district. The alluvial gold was worked out within 12 months, but reefs on Caledonian Hill, the Hilton, One Mile, Monkland and Two Mile were being worked from early 1868 and by the mid-1870s the township of Gympie had become the centre of one of the richest goldfields in Queensland. About 50 mining companies were still operating at Gympie in 1909, but by the 1920s output was waning. The town of Gympie acquired city status in 1905 and at the outbreak of war in 1914 was the centre of a well-populated timber-getting, sawmilling, dairying and agricultural district.
  Although fought in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, the Great War had a profound impact on Australia. In 1914 the nation retained strong ties to the "motherland" and had no hesitation in entering the war in support of Britain. Over 300,000 Australians from a population of four million volunteered for service overseas, and approximately 60,000 of these died. Almost every community in every Australian state lost young men in this war. No previous or subsequent war has had such an impact on the nation in terms of loss of life.
  Even before the end of hostilities, memorials were being erected by Australian communities to honour local people who had served and died during this international conflict. These memorials were a spontaneous and highly visible expression of national grief. To those who erected them, they were as sacred as grave sites. With British policy decreeing that the Empire war dead were to be buried where they fell, war memorials became substitute graves for the Australians whose bodies lay in battlefield cemeteries overseas. Great War memorials took a variety of forms in Australia, including honour boards, stone monuments, tree-line memorial avenues, memorial parks, and utilitarian structures such as gates, halls and clocks. In Queensland the soldier statue was a popular choice of monument, while the obelisk predominated in southern states.
  On 9 January 1919 a group of prominent citizens met to establish the Gympie and Widgee District Fallen Soldiers' Memorial Fund and to discuss how best to honour the community's war dead. Several alternatives were proposed, including a garden, a park, a scholarship and a stone "digger" monument. On behalf of his family – and as a tribute to his father William Henderson, who was one of the founders of Ferguson & Co.'s Union Sawmills in Gympie in 1868 – Mr Arthur Henderson offered as a site for a memorial park, a triangular parcel of land bounded by River Road and Reef and Young streets in Nash's Gully, in the heart of Gympie. This was Machine Area 12, occupied by t
caption: Gympie Memorial Park in flood, 1931
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