Qualla: Golden Gumboot

Golden Gumboot: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Frances76 at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. The boot is nearly eight metres tall, the colour of a buttercup, and you can climb the inside of it. It stands on the main street of Tully, a sugar town wedged between rainforest mountains and the Coral Sea, and it is precisely as tall as the rain that once fell here in a single year. In 1950, Tully recorded 7.9 metres of rainfall — the most ever measured in an Australian town in twelve months. To make the number something a person could stand beside, the locals built a gumboot to match it. The result is one of the most cheerfully absurd monuments in the country, and the front line of a rivalry that has simmered for half a century.

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Image: Frances76 at en.wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

Golden Gumboot: The Wettest War in Australia

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Olszewski, CC BY-SA 4.0. Three towns sit in this stretch of the Wet Tropics — Tully, Babinda, and Innisfail — and each insists it is the soggiest place on the continent. Since 1970 they have competed for the Golden Gumboot, an award handed to whichever town records the most rain in a year. The contest is...

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Image: Chris Olszewski | CC BY-SA 4.0

Golden Gumboot: Building a Boot to Scale

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mavis2012, CC BY-SA 3.0. The monument opened on 10 May 2003, the work of Tully's Lions and Rotary clubs and a budget of around ninety thousand dollars in cash and donated labour. Fabricator Bryan Newell designed and built the thing in fibreglass, ribbed and creased like a real rubber boot left out in the...

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Image: Mavis2012 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Golden Gumboot: A Frog on the Boot, and Other Big Things

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mavis2012, CC BY-SA 3.0. Look closely at the side of the gumboot and you will find a passenger: a fibreglass green tree frog, climbing the leather as though the whole thing were just another wet log in the forest. It is a fitting mascot, because frogs love what humans here merely endure. The Wet Tropics ...

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Image: Mavis2012 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Golden Gumboot: Knocked Down, Reopened

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Olszewski, CC BY-SA 4.0. In February 2011, Cyclone Yasi — one of the most powerful storms ever to strike Queensland — slammed ashore almost directly over Tully, flattening cane crops and tearing roofs from houses. The Golden Gumboot, fittingly, took its share of the punishment and was closed for repairs....

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Image: Chris Olszewski | CC BY-SA 4.0