Mal Dodt to re-enter Gympie Show’s best pikelet competition

It has been years since Mal Dodt, Gympie’s resident pikelet king, first unleashed his secret recipe at the Gympie Show. The wait is over.

George Foreman may have regained the world Heavyweight boxing title at 45 years of age, but businessman and region historian Mal Dodt — the hard-hitting Gympie Show pikelet champion — hadn’t made a pancake before turning 48.

After blitzing Gympie District Show’s best pikelet competition for two years running, Mr Dodt vacated his throne in the interest of promoting fair game.

But, as with Foreman, Mr Dodt found it difficult to sit back and watch others scramble for his rightful place on the top rung.

Six years later, the Gympie local is back flipping pikelets in the lead up to the cookery competition, a staple of the Gympie Show which will run from May 15 to 17.

When Mr Dodt is not working his regular business job or flipping pikelets, he is a keen photographer of Gympie.

“I created a Facebook account ‘Gympie The real treasure is the town’ which has a lot of followers, so I think they asked me to enter into the competition again to get things going,” he said.

“I think it had died down a little bit during Covid, you know, everything went a little bit haywire after that.”

“I’m also the best photographer in Gympie,” Mr Dodt said.

It’s true: the pikelet aficionado won Gympie’s best photographer in 2024, as voted by the Courier-Mail readers.

With a $1.50 entry fee into the competition, he has run the numbers, and evidently likes his chances of scoring the $10 first-place prize for best pikelet — buried in the ‘cakes, tarts, biscuits and scones’ category of the Gympie Show cookery.