Huge boost for Gold Rush Festival return as MP backs community push

A 47-year festival tradition has disappeared from Gympie since 2020, but passionate locals refuse to let their town's golden celebration stay buried forever.

Mal Dodt (inset left) is among a group who have launched a campaign to revive the city's beloved Gold Rush Festival after Covid killed the 47-year tradition four years ago.

For almost 50 years Gympie’s city centre was awash in the excitement of go kart races and colourful floats each October as the region celebrated its gold rush history at a festival bearing the name - until Covid brought it to a crashing halt.

Now the push is on to bring the beloved celebration back in 2026.

Plans are in the works to revive the Gympie Gold Rush Festival and make it potentially bigger than before.

The festival first started in 1973, and ran each October for 47 years before the Covid pandemic and lockdowns in 2020 forced its cancellation in the name of public health and safety.

But unlike the Gympie Show and Muster, the Gold Rush festival never returned.

Action from the Gympie Gold Rush Festival 2013. James Nash High school students.

Influencer and creator of the Gympie: The Real Treasure is the Town Facebook page Mal Dodt is among those working to resurrect the festival.

He is working alongside Brisbane-based Gympie retiree Andrew McEwan, to bring it back.

Making that happen “will be a big job” but one worth fighting for the “feeling of community”.

The hope was to bring the parade and “party in the park” back in 2026, and then go all out for the city’s 160th birthday in 2027, Mr Dodt said.

CRASH: Gympie Times photographer Tony Watson leaps out of the way as a entrant in the Gold Rush billy cart race crashes in Monkland St, near the Nash St intersection, after losing a tyre, in the early 1990s. Gympie black and white photographic enthusiast Max Krough took this amazing action picture of the instant of disaster, with the tyre that caused the crash still rolling along the road on the lower right side of the photograph and Mr Watson still in the air as he jumped out of the way.

He said there was hope this may include the return of the iconic soapbox derby run in the centre of town.

Insurance costs around that specific event were still a crucial issue, but Mr Dodt said observers lined the streets “six or seven deep” to catch the action back in the day.

He said funding remained the biggest hurdle, and was a major reason why the event never returned after the pandemic.

Its return hinged on it being “100 per cent” community driven.

“It will be a big job … finding the right people,” Mr Dodt said.

Gympie Gold Rush Festival 2013. C & K Gympie South Community Kindergarten.

They hoped funding might be found in the halls of the federal or state governments, and the possible return of business sponsorship.

The duo have one supporter already in Wide Bay MP Llew O’Brien, who raised the festival’s potential return in a speech in the House of Representatives this week.

Mr O’Brien said he had his own personal, “special” connection to Gold Rush.

“It was one of the first places I took Sharon, my wife, in 1989 on a date, so I’ve got a special place for the Gold Rush,” Mr O’Brien said.

Mary Street came alive for the Gold Rush Festival, October 17, 2015. Photo Patrick Woods / Gympie Times

The festival was built on community spirit in which “locals, businesses, schools and community groups all chipped in to create a lively mix of entertainment and activities that honoured Gympie’s colourful past and showed off just how vibrant the town is today”, he said.

The festival’s cancellation and disappearance was “unfortunate” but “ the good news is that there’s a real buzz about town to bring back the Gympie Gold Rush Festival in 2026, just in time for Gympie’s 160th birthday celebrations in 2027”, Mr O’Brien said.

A meeting for members of the public about the festival’s potential return will be held at 9am on Saturday, December 13, at Gunabul.