Eumundi Voice Issue 120, 26 June 2025

History

Holding a special place in the heart

Imagine a quiet Monday morning in Eumundi. All the bustle of a market Saturday is gone and everything is cleared away. A few people are going about their business, and one senior couple remain. They stand hand in hand outside the School of Arts Hall lost in their thoughts. A passing member of the Eumundi Historical Assn spots them on her way into the hall, and a conversation begins.

The conversation reveals that the couple met at a dance in the hall in the 1940s. This was a time when over 10,000 Australian soldiers and airmen were stationed between Maryborough and Caloundra. The Brisbane population at the time was 350,000, which included the North Coast (called the Sunshine Coast since 1967). The wartime activity to defend the coastline increased the population of Brisbane by 80,000, and our elderly visitors had been part of that strategic placement. Most of the trainees from here then served in Milne Bay or on the Kokoda trail.

The couple were invited into the hall where they sat on the stage looking into the space where they had danced and found some peace and joy during a fearful period of our history – a time often described as “the darkest days”. Thirteen ships had been sunk just off our coast, and Japanese submarines had made their way into Sydney Harbour. Training camps were set up throughout our region – considered the most likely place for a Japanese landing – with artillery guns pointed out to sea along Sunrise Rd. Local farms fed the 10,000 Australians and thousands of American service personnel. There was no mucking about. “It was on,” as local Ron Sutton described in his presentation at the Cooroy RSL recently.

In the middle of all this, their love for a lifetime managed to find a place to grow. There they sat, reliving the good times and the bad, looking back over the early days and where it had taken them.

Spaces like our historic halls hold immense significance in many lives, making them precious and increasingly rare. The Eumundi and District Historical Assn is proud of the work its members do obtaining and maintaining these community places where people can remember old times, and where young people can create new memories in their own way.

Eumundi holds a special place in so many hearts, and we may never know the true extent of our importance.