Llew O'Brien (Wide Bay, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise on behalf of the people of Wide Bay to convey our respects to our faithful monarch for the past 70 years, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Much changed during her remarkable reign, but her commitment to service did not. In Wide Bay, the outpouring of grief that our long-serving monarch had died was matched only by the excitement of her coronation back in 1953, when the front page of our local paper declared 'Our radiant Queen'. In the lead-up to the Queen's coronation at Westminster Abbey, our region prepared for coronation celebrations, with the 1953 Gympie Show named the Gympie Coronation Show, featuring buck jumping, bullock riding, wild steer races and a pound cake competition. The Gympie Town Hall was decorated. Shop windows had coronation displays. It included a street procession which the local paper described as the biggest procession in the history of the city. Nearly the entire population of the town, 8,000 at that time, came out to pledge their loyalty to the Queen en masse.

The world and Wide Bay have radically changed over the seven decades with her as monarch. She was Queen when Tin Can Bay went from the kerosene lamp to an electric street light in 1959, when Maryborough sold its first television, when we went from the telegram to the text message. She was Queen when we opened the Rainbow Beach Road, which the council dubbed the longest length of bitumen in one road, in 1966 at a cost of $235,000, opening up Rainbow Beach. And she was Queen when construction of section D of the Gympie bypass started at a cost of $1 billion. She was Queen when the Scottish Drive-in on Noosa Road, Gympie, opened in 1968, when people would bring blankets and eskies and watch blockbusters, including Jaws, Grease and the Rocky Horror Picture Show, projected on a 45-foot-long screen at $2 a ticket. She was Queen when the drive-in folded in 1990 and when Gympie got its first twin cinema. She served when Gympie had the world's biggest butter factories and was Queen when it churned its last batch of butter when it closed in 1978.

She was Queen as Wide Bay was assaulted by cyclones, floods and tornadoes such as the 1985 tornado, which destroyed the old Kin Kin butter factory. She was monarch for most of the highest floods in Maryborough's recorded history, including the second-highest surge, in 1955, peaking at 11 metres and 24 centimetres, above the 10.8 metre 1974 and 10.7 metres in 2013. She was sovereign when a cyclone hit Noosa in 1954 and the Hastings Street foreshore property owners built the first protective wall at Noosa beach to stop erosion and sea water from washing into the gardens. She reigned in 1999 when the floods in Gympie hit 21.9 metres and was monarch in 2022 when they peaked at 22.9 metres. She was also there for the floods of 1955 and 1992. She was Queen when, in 1958, Pomona railway porter Bruce Samuels climbed Mount Cooroora, running to settle a pub bet—a feat now annually commemorated in the highly successful King of the Mountain festival.

Technology advanced, government services changed and traditions began in the 70 years of Wide Bay with Queen Elizabeth II at the helm. Throughout her reign, she was a constant in our lives, and, while much has changed around us, we always had the security that came with knowing she was there. Rest in peace, Your Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, and God Save the King.

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