Gympie Ambulance Station

Gympie Ambulance Station is a heritage-listed ambulance station at 17 Crown Road, Gympie, Queensland, Australia. It was built in 1904. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 16 September 2011.HistoryGympie was established after the discovery of gold in October 1867 by James Nash in the Upper Mary River district. The new gold field put Queensland on the map as a significant gold producer, contributing much needed finances to the young colony. By Christmas of 1867, according to the Gold Commissioner, the Gympie field had a population of 4,000 . Although the alluvial deposits were quickly exhausted, from 1868 shallow reef mining occurred.As it evolved from a hastily established mining settlement, Gympie developed a distinctive character with an irregular street pattern amid a series of valleys and ridges. Development of roads within the town followed the terrain rather than adopting the standard grid pattern that was applied to townships surveyed for settlement, and consequently many roads run along ridgelines with linking roads across valleys and hillsides. Existing buildings and mining homestead leases were accommodated in the first survey of the township in April 1868. The early makeshift structures of Gympie gradually gave way to more permanent and substantial public and private buildings.By the end of the 1870s, an intensive phase of underground reef mining was underway, facilitated by the injection of share-holding capital into mining companies for machinery and employees. During the early 1880s mines began yielding large amounts of gold, marking a new era of wealth and prosperity for Gympie. The Gympie goldfield passed through its most profitable period from 1901 to 1906 and in 1903 produced its peak annual output. After 1906 production declined and by 1925 the last of the big mines had ceased operations, ending a 50-year phase of deep reef mining in Gympie.