Eidsvold is a tiny little community. The town has a population of around 500 but it also has many farms surrounding it that call Eidsvold their home town. To get your bearings it is a little over 3 hours north west from Gympie and 2 hours west from Bundaberg. It is situated on the A3 Country’s Way highway (fancy name for the Burnett Highway).
The locals all tend to go to Bundaberg for shopping, although a town called Mundabera is not far away with the choice of 2 grocery shops and a few more specialty shops.
Eidsvold itself has a library, a police station (although the actual station is only open from 8-12 on a Wednesday), the pub, a butcher, a grocery shop with hardware combined, a news agency, post office, 2 cafes and a service station and a farm supply place.
It is a very historic town with its origins dating back to the 1800’s where it was first settled in the 1840’s and with the discovery of gold in 1887 it become a popular haven for miners.
Nowadays it is known as the beef capital of the Burnett area. The sign on the butchers says it all really “country killed meats”. And must say the meat is divine!
It is also known for its citrus, timber and agriculture.
Being such a small town there is limited places to stay. There is the 2 ½ star caravan park (which is clean, quiet and the caretakers are friendly), the showground (where you can stay for up to 48 hrs which is free and has public toilets (no showers) and even electricity), the motel and there are motel rooms at the pub.
Do you know, not too much. It is a quiet little quintessential country town. That is part of its beauty, part of its charm.
There is Archer station which is a heritage listed site and can be visited upon request. The tourist information centre can organise this for you.
Talking about the tourist information centre I must say it is probably one of the flashiest centres in such a small town I have seen in a long time. Part of the centre holds a RM Williams Learning Centre as well as a gallery to display and promote local artists.
The RM Williams section is awesome. Unfortunately we can’t comment on the gallery part as it was being changed but if the RM Williams part is anything to go by it would be good and well worth the money, which is a minimal cost.
The RM Williams story is that he bought property at ‘Rockybar’ near Eidsvold and while he left in the 1970’s 2 of his sons remained and still work property in the area today.
The hospitality and friendliness is so refreshing. It is probably not for everyone, especially big city folk. Certainly not for a period, but it is definitely worth a stop. It is quiet, friendly, welcoming, laid back town with lovely locals.
It was ravaged by the January floods and now ironically is in drought and there is a fear that the high vegetation growth since the floods may cause a very serious and real threat this bush fire season. They are trying to combat this by getting in now and starting some back burning but it is also very windy at present so I’m sure that’s posing an issue to that. They also have had the uncertainty of whether the hospital will remain open. And while the mine lease was revoked in 2002 that has not stopped controversy because currently soil samples (taken last year in November when investigations started) that were taken on 2 government housing properties that were built near the gold mine were found to have cancer-causing arsenic levels that were 71 times the acceptable level. This hit the news in July this year and there so far has been a lot of buck passing within the Government!
Don’t let this put you off as there is the same sort of old gold mine issues in all old gold mining areas such as Victoria, etc.
Eidsvold may ordinarily be your bucket list but if you are passing through it will at least be a friendly accommodating little place.